Running on Fumes

I think most young boys went through a phase where they paged through the Guiness Book of World Records every year. (Or maybe I was just a dorkier kid than I choose to remember…) Anyway, if you were a fan of the Guiness Book, then the McCrary twins (AKA the McGuire twins) are ingrained in your memory.

Not their names, necessarily, but their image for sure. The site of two bearded fellows, both gigantic, both riding on motorcycles with checkered pants and cowboy hats… It’s a picture that has been branded into the cultural psyche (the proof of which may best be exemplified by the McCrary twins making a cameo on the Simpsons – a threshold of sorts in pop culture.) Billed as the heaviest twins in the world, the brothers’ interesting lives included stints at carnivals, motorcycle promotions and even professional wrestling.

Now for the sad news: The McCrary brothers are dead.

Actually, they have been for a while. I discovered the news, or it discovered me, in an odd way. While testing the new Pirelli Angel ST tires this past week, we stopped for a photo shoot in Hendersonville, North Carolina. After doing our photo run, we walked up to the largest headstone in the graveyard of the nearby Crab Creek Baptist Church. Surrounded by a score of McCrarys in the family plot, the largest stone is a shared memorial for the twin brothers

They rest side by side. Benny on the left, 727 lbs, lived to the age of 54 before his heart failed. Billy on the right, 747 lbs, died young at age 32 from injuries sustained in a motorcycling stunt in 1979.