Pathologists who examined a heart found this week at a southwestern Michigan car wash still haven’t determined whether it came from a human or an animal. They plan to submit the organ for DNA testing in an effort to find out once and for all. The owner of Soapy’s Car Wash in Paw Paw discovered the heart Monday on the floor of a manual car wash bay.
Local doctors said it’s about the size of a human heart, but they couldn’t tell for sure whether it actually came from a person.
[That wins the sentence-of-the-month contest I just invented.]
Paw Paw Police Chief Patrick Alspaugh told the Kalamazoo Gazette more may be known about the heart within a week or two from the pathologists at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing.
Some facts about Paw Paw, Michigan, courtesy of Wikipedia:
Population: 3,363.
Status: The county seat of Van Buren County.
Location to Kalamazoo: 20 miles west.
Geography: 2.9 square miles, of which, 2.7 square miles. 0.2 square miles that (7.29%) is water.
Local tradition: A popular grape stomping competition among barefoot locals.
Per capita income: $21,859.
Claim to fame: Setting for the song “Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch” by Brian Eno, inspired by a local man rumored to set things aflame by breathing on them.
Rumored to be: Hideout for Al Capone.
Looked like:
Looks like:
Did it look like this? http://slog.thestranger.com/files/2007/0…
A week or two!? To figure out if it’s human or not?Seriously? That sounds outrageous.
Haha, Paw Paw is a stain. My train got stuck outside of Kazoo one night and the news report later said “an eastbound Wolverine State was delayed for nearly an hour after a Paw Paw man parked his truck on train tracks; he was later found [doing something hickish, I can’t remember].”
Ah, I always wondered what that meant in the Eno song. Thanks.
Damn!
I meant to leave that in San Francisco.
Paw Paw is cool. Stop at the Warner’s tasting room and try their handmade sparkling wine (“Natural”). Both Warners and St. Julian make tasty sherries, too.
Their annual harvest festival got too big for the town, so they moved it to Kalamazoo.
It has one mark of the hick town, however — a Chick-fil-A.
Paw Paw for Jesus! (For the uninitiated, see: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Ep… and proceed to Act IV)
They should be able to tell by how much fat surrounds it. If it’s originating from a small-town American, it will be covered with a half-inch of fat, and the arteries will be cracking. If it came from an animal, you’ll actually be able to see the muscle tissue and the arteries will be pliable.