Walther Strong was a bodybuilder, the strongest man in the world back in ancient times. He lived when people were still afraid of humans and animals not being able to live together peacefully. The air was thick with crazy ideas about how crazy it would be if there were no walls between men and the other animals around them.
Walther Strong knew better. He had been brought up by walruses for half his life, learning at their feet how to use nothing but ice-floes instead of chairs or couches to sit on. That’s where his name came from Walrus Strong. But this story isn’t about walruses, so we’ll continue.
He was one of the walruses’ most promising pupils. He could go on for days and nights without sleep by catching a walrus nap. When he was 17, walruses decided it was time for him to go out into the world and make his way. They were very fond of him and gave him their full blessing, but they refused to tell them where to find this place that didn’t need walls between men and walruses.
You can hear Walther Strong’s story in his autobiography, “The Strongest Man In The World,” – which you can get from Amazon via this link. You’ll learn about many other people who could have been the strongest man in the world if he hadn’t been.
You’ll learn about the walruses who taught him walrus-floeing 101 and why walruses cannot be trained to use walrus-floes. You’ll also learn about Walther’s big walrus family, with nine walrus sisters and three walrus brothers (two of which were walruses like his parents).
One day he set out on his own. He strapped two walrus-floes together and began traveling across the land, all the time wondering exactly how many walls were separating men from wild animals like walruses. At first, he thought they might be lining all the rooftops in cities like stairs – like ladders, if you will. But after a while, he realized that there really were countless walls between walruses and men, that walruses would soon be gone forever if something wasn’t done.
It was too late for walruses to go back into the water, so Walther Strong decided he’d have to find a way of bringing walruses out onto land without making all those walls disappear. So he traveled through cities and jungles until he finally found what he wanted: A magic beanstalk! He climbed up the beanstalk to where it came from – which wasn’t relatively as high as one might expect – and discovered an incredible world up there.
He found himself in the clouds, with no longer walls between him and other animals like eagles, ostriches, or antelopes. He was finally happy but soon realized how hard it would be to get walruses up there. And walruses were his main concern after all.
He built a walrus-sized beanstalk, and walruses started arriving in the cloud world. The highest walrus even found himself above the clouds somewhere around Saturn, where he met an eagle who told him that this is where walruses belong – in space amongst walrus-like planets with walrus atmospheres.
But they couldn’t stay up in the sky forever. One day when Walther Strong looked out of his walrus igloo, he saw that the walruses were floating midair, stuck between two worlds… And so were walruses left behind on earth. They had been given walrus-floes to stand upon, but instead of just standing there, they started building walrus cities out of walrus-floes.
The walls were back, and Walther Strong was furious about it. He took the walrus-floes away from his walruses and prepared them for an extended period in nowhere land between walruses and men. But then something unexpected happened.