What a beautiful day for a road trip~! We set out in a caravan of two cars, three dogs, good friends and set out for nearby Winston-Salem. First stop? Skippy’s for arguably the best hot dog in America. Lucky for us we live only half an hour away. We scarfed down some cool dogs and then drove up to Mt. Airy, NC and the nearby White Plains Baptist Church graveyard where Chang & Eng Bunker are buried.
The world’s most famous conjoined twins were the original “Siamese Twins” born in Thailand (then Siam). Because of their fame as an attraction with circus showman P. T. Barnum’s American Museum as well as world wide touring, the term “Siamese Twins” was used to denote any conjoined twins during that less-than-politically correct era. When you get to their gravesite, the White Plains Baptist Church has provided a takeaway brochure nearby with some information about Chang & Eng .
These two men were well respected by their neighbors and married two sisters. To find out how that unusual marital arrangement worked out for them, be sure to read the wiki entry on Chang & Eng. Or wait for the upcoming Gary Oldman film to come out which is sure to be fantastic in every sense of the word! Apparently the married twins began with one residence and a bed built for four. The sisters didn’t like that too much (wonder why?) and so eventually they bought separate households and the twins would alternately spend 3 nights with one wife and 3 nights with the other. The feng shui of 3 is much better than the feng shui of 4, by the way.
After the twins fulfilled their original “contract” with an American businessman who purchased them from their parents in Thailand, they began managing their own careers. Personal appearances and promotional merchandise like the paper dolls shown above contributed to their significant wealth. The brothers were born pre-Civil War era when medical procedures were far less sophisticated than they are today. They were joined at the chest by a section of cartilege and their livers were also attached. Had they been born in this century, the Bunkers might have been easily separated. As it was, when Chang died first Eng refused to let a doctor perform an emergency separation that may have saved his life. Eng died within the same day as his brother.
The book “Chang & Eng” written by Darin Strauss is next on my reading agenda–a friend has highly recommended it. This book is also the source material for Gary Oldman’s upcoming movie. This author has also written another book–Half a Life— winner of the National Book Critic Circle Award about a true and horrific event from his life that shaped his path forever. I’ll review them both and get back to you in awhile.