In the American city of Elkhart in northern Indiana, there is a very unusual and somewhat eerie monument. At the intersection of Riverside Drive and Lexington Avenue is a large cement block with countless teeth embedded in it. From a distance, the lump looks quite normal - it even serves to separate the sidewalk and the roadway.
Nevertheless, if you do not know about this curious sight and get a better look at it, you can be horrified to see hundreds of human teeth. You might think that this is the result of the work of some sophisticated serial killer or even a real mystic (just think, teeth grow from cement!), But in reality everything is much more prosaic.
The author of this piece is local dentist Joseph Stamp, who lived in Elkhart from 1890 to 1978 and practiced dentistry for six decades. During this time, he managed to remove hundreds of sick teeth to his fellow countrymen. Surprisingly, the physician did not discard the removed canines, incisors, molars, and premolars of the patients, but carefully placed them in a barrel filled with disinfectant.
It's hard to say with certainty why Stump did this. According to Susan Howard, the granddaughter of the dentist, her grandfather was an incredibly frugal person and almost never threw out anything in his life. Probably, the American thought that even pulled out teeth could be used, and, apparently, he was right.
One day, in the fifties of the last century, during repair work in the house, a man ran out of rubble, and the dentist poured cement over his collection of human teeth. The result is a very solid block. When Joseph died, someone pulled a boulder from his site and threw it on a central street. At first, the townspeople thought that such a work should be removed from sight, but no one bothered to do this, and the block remained lying near the road. Over time, the inhabitants of Elkhart began to claim that the cement statue was lying here on purpose, serving as a memory of a man who was a professional in his field and set a very democratic fee for his dental services.
Some even tried to find gold teeth in the block, but to no avail.