"Dear Professor Brunvand," an English woman wrote me. "I am not the kind of person who sends letters to America at the drop of a hat, but you should know that one of your stories really did happen."
The woman, Elizabeth Reed of Blackpool, Lancashire, referred to the legend about an elephant sitting on a car, which her local paper had dismissed as merely legendary. The article quoted one of my books, where I summarized the many variations of that legend."Some years ago," Reed explained, "I employed a young woman to clean my house. One morning she said, `I am going to tell you something that will make you laugh.'
"During the past weekend, she told me, her brother and his family had gone to an entertainment park called Bellevue in Manchester, where a circus was playing. They were driving a small red three-wheeled car with a flat round front. I believe it was a Morgan.
"When they came back to their car, the front end was crushed. A man was waiting for them, and said he was from the circus. `I'm sorry,' he said, `but as I was leading the elephant across the car park, it thought your car was the drum that it sits on in the circus, and it insisted on sitting on it.'
"The man arranged for the circus to pay for the damages. As the brother was driving his damaged car home, he was stopped by a policeman, who asked if there had been an accident.
"When he said his car had been sat on by an elephant, the incredulous policeman rang up the circus man, who confirmed the story.
"I am 76 now," Reed concluded, "and I have come to the conclusion that truth is stranger than fiction."
Maybe. However, I am not the kind of person who totally trusts such vague testimonials at the drop of a hat. After all, I've heard such claims repeatedly as this story is told throughout Great Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, Canada and the United States.
If the elephant isn't from a circus, it's from a zoo or a safari park. The beast supposedly sits on a VW Bug, a Mini or another compact car.
Two things never change, though. The vehicle is always red, and the elephant never forgets to sit down.
Most versions conclude with the police stopping the driver, who must prove the truth of his wild story. Sometimes the driver has had a drink to steady his nerves, and the whiff of alcohol makes the cops suspicious.
This legend goes back to the early 1960s in the States, but Mike Lawrence, a car buff in Chichester, Sussex, England, assures me that the story began in Europe in the 1950s when three-wheel "bubble" cars were introduced.
He named the BMW Isetta as a likely original target of the tale. He recalls a story about this model of tiny car being driven as a publicity stunt in a circus parade by a glamorous actress - perhaps Brigitte Bardot. Her car was placed behind an elephant in the parade, in order to emphasize its small size.
When the actress's car accidentally nudged the elephant, the motion triggered its "sit" response, and it sat onto the front of the car.
Neither Lawrence nor I have evidence that any such publicity stunt or accident really happened - a photograph, say, or a newspaper story.
(C) 1989, United Feature Syndicate, Inc.