The Cole Smithey Thread

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Holy shit.

I was browsing the archives on Cole's site and I came across this helluva story:

September 06, 2017​

OPERATION SNOWBALL: MY FIRST CAREER IN SHOW BUSINESS​

By Cole Smithey
You’d be hard-pressed to track down any information on Google about Jerry Harmon’s Operation Snowball. Sometime in December of 1967, when I was just three-years-old, my stepdad Jerry Harmon launched a touring magic act project called Operation Snowball. Under its auspices, “King Karnak, Barbie, and Cole” would become a ten-year annual touring magic show across the state of Virginia. The purpose of the act was to provide Christmastime entertainment for the patients at all of the mental institutions in Virginia; there were a lot mental hospitals in those days. Western State Hospital in Staunton, Virginia was on the list.
Western_state_hospital_virginia
Every year we’d kick off the tour with a show at the Towne Theater on Broad Street in Richmond before heading over to the Governor’s office for a photo op with the reigning Governor, who would give his blessing for our two-week tour that followed. I distinctly remember meeting Govenor Mills Godwin on several occasions. A government limo would drive us to a nearby airport where a government appointed pilot from Civil Air Patrol would fly us, with our gear, in a Cessna twin-engine plane to our shows. Sometimes we had to land in cow pastures. Sometimes we hit severe turbulence that would make the most hardened pilots lose their lunch. I was such a sleepy little kid that no amount of sudden altitude drops or bump-and-grind turbulence could wake me from my slumber.
Jerry had been a medic in the Korean war before being switched to intelligence where he trained soldiers in specialized combat techniques, such as decapitation using piano wire. Watermelons stood in for actual heads. Jerry flew fighter pilot missions, during one of which he had to crash-land his plane. The plane’s windshield exploded into his face, leaving scars from where tiny pieces of glass had to be extracted with tweezers. One story goes that he killed one of his own men for being a traitor. Fiction? perhaps. When he started Operation Snowball, Jerry was riding ambulance duty in a volunteer rescue squad in Richmond, Virginia when he wasn’t doing live television news broadcasts for a local station. He’d later become a radio announcer for WEZS (Easy Listening), while teaching Standard First Aid to police recruits every Tuesday night. I spent more Tuesday nights at the Richmond Police Station than I can remember.
Jerry cared about the Mental Health movement in Virginia. He worked for a Mental Health agency headquartered in one of the most beautiful buildings on Monument Avenue. So it was that we’d pull into the parking lot of Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg in the early afternoon, rush in to a cafeteria area with a stage, and perform for a half hour to war vets and mentally ravaged patients whose suffering was only being exacerbated by abuses they were suffering at the hands of their guards.
Jerry Harmon was a consummate performer. He had a line of patter that was so shiny you could eat off it. “Ice, the only thing in the world that is what it is cracked up to be.” My mom and I were the assistants. I had my “Twiggy and Stumpy” bit that I did where I pulled faces. I wore a Philip Morris-styled outfit with a pill box hat with an elastic cord that wrapped under my chin. It was uncomfortable as hell but this was show business after all.
I don’t have much memory of specific years; they all just blend together. But I have a strong memory of the first time I became aware of just who our audience was. I looked out from the stage at the grinning faces of people who would return to an abyss of sadness the moment we left their facility. I saw a Viet Nam war vet in a wheelchair. The man had no arms or legs. I was probably five or six at the time but I didn’t need anyone to explain to me how or why this poor man had arrived at this sad fate. War. War had robbed this human being of his humanity. Long before I hit puberty, I had an ingrained hatred of war that I carry to this day.
Jerry used a clothes hamper that he had dressed into a snazzy rolling lectern from which he would take out rope, Chinese Linking Rings, and a host of other tricks. KING KARNAK was emblazoned across the front. Jerry was a master at sleight of hand. Billiard Balls were a favorite. The show would climax with Jerry chopping my mom’s head off with a guillotine. Some members of the audience would have to be escorted out of the room before the trick could be completed. The patients would frequently mob us as we made our way to our waiting limo. It was frightening sometimes, but we were already on our way to our next show. We did two or three shows a day for our two-week run.
I’ve since gone down to Richmond looking through microfiche files of the Richmond Times Dispatch and the Richmond News Leader for articles or photos from the Operation Snowball years (1967 to 1976), but I couldn’t find anything. It’s funny to think that I had my introduction to show business at such a young age, but I learned the same fundamental lesson that anyone who dares set foot on the boards does; the show must go on.
I took special pride in bringing a fleeting moment of pleasure to people who had no hope in their lives. Jerry treated Operation Snowball like a military mission that had to be prepared for, executed, and completed. He never got paid a dime for his efforts. He might not have been the best dad, but Jerry was a humanitarian, as evidenced by his actions. Jerry had a huge ego, and was quite the braggart, but I never once heard him brag about Operation Snowball. That was something special. Perhaps someday you'll be able to see and read evidence of it on the internet.
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tl;dr: Jerry, Barb and Cole spent ten years performing as traveling magicians for the entertainment of literal retards.

Edit: Cole discusses his stepdad's career in a Facebook comment from 2020. His legal name was Walter J. Harmon and he was apparently a dedicated Freemason:
Walter "Jerry" Harmon was my step-dad from 1966 until my parents divorced in 1979. Every December for 10 years (roughly 1967 - 1977) we would perform magic shows at mental institutions throughout Virginia under the banner of "King Karnak, Barbie and Cole" for "Operation Snowball." Jerry worked as a radio announcer at WEZS radio station during much of this period. Although it is not currently possible to find public records or newspaper articles about the annual touring magic act, I can assure you the performances for mental patients were very real. We would meet with the acting Virginia Governor to kick off each year's tour. Jerry was a dedicated Mason throughout.
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A government limo would drive us to a nearby airport where a government appointed pilot from Civil Air Patrol would fly us, with our gear, in a Cessna twin-engine plane to our shows.
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he trained soldiers in specialized combat techniques, such as decapitation using piano wire.
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The patients would frequently mob us as we made our way to our waiting limo. It was frightening sometimes, but we were already on our way to our next show.
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lmao how little self-conciousness must he have to post something like that
 
Jerry had a huge ego, and was quite the braggart, but I never once heard him brag about Operation Snowball. That was something special. Perhaps someday you'll be able to see and read evidence of it on the internet.
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interestingly, if he did these performances for years throughout, you could likely find a newspaper clipping of it somewhere.
at the very least, evidence of it probably exists at the mental hopsitals he would perform at, probably in the form of some kind of event sheet, since a schedule or calender with the events marked for a certain time and date would probably exist.
maybe an autist here can find it somewhere.
also, Cole seems to have a soft spot for this step father. i wonder if they kept in touch in the years following her and barbs divorce, when did the guy die?
maybe someone at the ED or CWCki already found evidence of Operation Snowball.

i found the band, the Rockin' Dogs referred to in comments of this video. where cole gives a passive aggresive remark to the commentor
a ween beat me to it. it seems.
 
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Michael Janke said:
interestingly, if he did these performances for years throughout, you could likely find a newspaper clipping of it somewhere.
at the very least, evidence of it probably exists at the mental hopsitals he would perform at, probably in the form of some kind of event sheet, since a schedule or calender with the events marked for a certain time and date would probably exist.
maybe an autist here can find it somewhere.
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he's obviously bullshitting. if he would get a fucking photo op with the governor, the photos would be published. the bit with flying around virginia like a fucking buddy holly is also laughable. i don't know how can you pretend to have been the big shot in the mentally ill entertainment industry
 
TheMorawOne said:
he's obviously bullshitting. if he would get a fucking photo op with the governor, the photos would be published. the bit with flying around virginia like a fucking buddy holly is also laughable. i don't know how can you pretend to have been the big shot in the mentally ill entertainment industry
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barb is still around, maybe that one ween should have asked her if that ever happened, instead of autistically exclaiming, "where's chris" over and over.
but you're probably right, why would the government fly people to perform at mental hospitals around the state?
who is his step-dad, "Bozo the fucking clown"
 
Barb raised two genius philosophers

Chris: "Compliments will get you fuzzy-wuzzies. War gets you prickly-wicklies... as well as punches."

Cole: "War. War had robbed this human being of his humanity."
 
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TheMorawOne said:
he's obviously bullshitting. if he would get a fucking photo op with the governor, the photos would be published. the bit with flying around virginia like a fucking buddy holly is also laughable. i don't know how can you pretend to have been the big shot in the mentally ill entertainment industry
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It's real.

I'm not going to pay to find out what the articles say, but there was indeed a magic act in Virginia in the late 60s called King Karnak, Barbie and Cole, and they did something newsworthy.
 
Under its auspices, “King Karnak, Barbie, and Cole” would become a ten-year annual touring magic show across the state of Virginia. The purpose of the act was to provide Christmastime entertainment for the patients at all of the mental institutions in Virginia; there were a lot mental hospitals in those days. Western State Hospital in Staunton, Virginia was on the list.
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Wow, what are the odds?
 
Un uomo che ti ama said:
I'm not going to pay to find out what the articles say, but there was indeed a magic act in Virginia in the late 60s called King Karnak, Barbie and Cole, and they did something newsworthy.
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did the governor of virginia fly them around to perform at mental joints? it might be exaggerated, if partially true. the performances themselves could be real, but the reverence of it might not be.
 
Michael Janke said:
did the governor of virginia fly them around to perform at mental joints? it might be exaggerated, if partially true. the performances themselves could be real, but the reverence of it might not be.
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Not that unbelievable considering he mentioned a simple Cessna and not the Governor's private jet or something of the sort. Fuck, if they were performing on multiple places at the State, landing on both local airfields and improvised landing spots, on a mostly rural tour, it might have been the only way to feasibly do it. The Civil Air Patrol is basically a volunteer branch of the Air Force, they rely on membership dues for funding. Guys that join a force meant for rescues, disaster relief and the like usually love flying and would do volunteer work like that on a heartbeat!

Hogar Grupal said:
Wow, what are the odds?
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I thought it was realistic at least from a first look because he went deep into details down to specific names, locations and timeframes. Even a narcissist like Cole would take some care when lying about things that a simple newspaper clipping, any piece going minimally deeper about the events could prove. It would be a clear cut lie if he had said he had met some really famous person, took part on an important historical event, but telling a tale about some shows they performed for the destitute and mentally unwell without making up any grander details gave it a hint of factibility to me!
 
Fascist Frederick said:
You can take Cole out of the Chandlers, but you can't take the Chandler out of Cole.
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Cole isn't a Chandler, Bob had nothing to do with his genetics, or really any of his upbringing. Considering he was mostly raised by Barb, he turned out surprisingly well.

He comes across as having autism levels similar to Chris, but without the retard factor.
 
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