Norman Tousley

 In 1926, Norman Tousley became the youngest man in

Arkham's long history to serve as City Fire Chief. The strapping, boyishly featured son of poor Irish-French immigrant parents had moved up in the ranks of the fire department, studying nights at Miskatonic University to earn his Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry.  Everyone, especially his young Mormon wife Mathilda expected great things from this handsome overachiever.

 That is, until the crash of '29 wiped out the fortunes of virtually everyone in Arkham who had made investments in the wildly speculative and unregulated stock market. By 1931, Norman, his wife and three children were forced to move from their dignified west-side Georgian abode to a small apartment above the town hardware store on Main Street.

 As the Depression gripped a disillusioned and devastated nation, men were forced to work for vastly reduced salaries or simply in exchange for small food rations.  Those that were lucky enough to get work, that is.  The Arkham city budget could no longer cover the expenses of a fully manned fire brigade, and many of the men were laid off and forced to find work in other towns.

 The dry summer of that year contributed to the greater public grief. Brush fires were sparking up all over the outskirts of town; usually caused by hobos and out-of-work drifters using makeshift campfires to heat up their meager suppers. Norman found himself overworked, understaffed and virtually penniless. These were bad times indeed.

 Then one day, a man by the name of Robert Shizer arrived in Arkham. Norman spotted him loitering outside the fire hall one afternoon while he was polishing his engine.  Tousley, shirtless and dusty from his exertions, affably offered the fellow a glass of cold lemonade.  The stranger accepted, and while the two of them relaxed under the welcome shade of the spotless fire truck,  Shizer introduced himself as a traveling Los Angelan photographer for Life magazine doing "a pictorial study of the heartland ".

 The man drained his glass, and pulled out a camper's flask from his hip pocket. With a wink, he poured Tousley a sizable measure of vodka into his lemonade glass.  Norman was not an experienced tippler, as the Volstead Act had been passed before he reached legal age. What's more, he made it a policy to never drink on duty. Still, it was a hot day and his shift was nearly over. Besides, he didn't want to offend the stranger, who had expressed such admiration for his physique (which Norman was privately rather proud of) and made an exception. By mid-afternoon, he had made nearly a dozen such exceptions, and found himself stinking drunk. He vaguely remembered the man helping him to the alley behind Main Street, where he slept off most of his inebriation before stumbling upstairs to bed.

 The next morning, as he tried to shake off the remains of his cruel hangover, he found a small fortune in cash in his pants pocket. Even more curious was the peculiar matter of his missing socks and undershorts.

 The photographs did not surface until a couple of years later, when Norman's memory of the encounter had in fact all but vanished.

 The first batch of "novelty postcards" had been strategically inked over by the local Postmistress, but in the ensuing public uproar, more explicit nudes were discovered, and Tousley was forced into mortified seclusion.

 On the eve of his seventh wedding anniversary, Norman received a telephone call from the Mayor, and he was forced to resign as Fire Chief.

Two months later, formal charges of moral turpitude were filed against the disgraced ex-Chief, and after a short, humiliating hearing, he was fined two hundred dollars.

Tousley moved his family to Boston later that year (1933) and never returned to Arkham. 

 A  Perhaps Norman got the last laugh, though...

a month after his exile, a fire broke out on the top floor of a downtown butcher shop. It spread quickly to the surrounding rooftops, and within fourteen hours the courthouse, the Presbyterian church and City Hall had been completely gutted. The fire could have been contained, witnesses say, had the new Chief (who happened to be the  Mayor's son-in-law) not accidentally locked his keys inside the city's only fire truck...