 Ruthie Grace Moulon Origin of the Duck Girl The Ducks Mr. & Mrs. Moulon Henry Moulon Mary Louise Moulon Gary Moody Ruthie's Friends Birthday Bash 2000 Birthday Bash 2001 Articles The ENO Store
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The real origins of Ruthie the Duck Girl remain a
mystery, but can be traced back as early as 1952. Ruthie’s older brother,
Henry says he started Ruthie on her path to local stardom. Henry had told
several people that he was to be a celebrity. When Henry was 10 years old, he
did have pets ducks. He "trained" them to follow him wherever he went.
Henry took credit for being the original Duck Boy, a character that never took
off because Mrs. Moulon, who always put Ruthie’s hair in ringlets and dressed
her in beautiful skirts and dresses, thought Ruthie more photogenic.
In later years, and to this
day, Ruthie claims to have purchased her first duck. But in a Dixie Roto article
from 1955, Mr. Moulon backs Henry’s story while talking about how close Ruthie
and Henry were, "When you see my daughter, you see my son. In fact he even
taught her to train ducks; he trained them himself years ago." But this was
really no trick at all. Ruthie, herself, always gave the secret away when asked
why her ducks follow her around. "Because I raise them from little baby
ducks," she explained. Young ducklings imprint on whoever or whatever they
perceive as mother.
Because Ruthie’s parents did not enroll her in school for whatever reason, Ruthie wound up walking the streets during the day with her ducks. Tourists and locals alike would turn their heads as Ruthie strolled down the street with her ducks following behind.
The Postcards
Ruthie began charging people to take her photograph. Soon, she began selling picture postcards of herself. It was Henry who sent photos of Ruthie off to be printed. Ruthie sold the postcards for twenty-five cents each or three for a dollar. Susan Allen remembers, "she wouldn’t understand that maybe she should sell them five for a dollar, that it wasn’t a bargain to buy [three] for a dollar, but if you bought them for twenty-five cents a piece, you got more for a dollar. And she never could grasp that. So I bought a dollars' worth anyway – in quarters."
Over the years, there have
been at least six different postcards of Ruthie. There was no doubt that by the
late fifties, Ruthie was a local celebrity, often written about in local
newspapers. Writer David Cuthbert explains her fame thus: "Most of these
characters took themselves seriously. It wasn’t like a pose. So maybe that’s
true, that with Ruthie it was something that happened naturally and became this
sort of inadvertent tourist attraction ultimately. No one ever had as high a
profile as Ruthie did."
