In November of 1970, Linnman went to the coastal town of Florence, Oregon, where the carcass of a forty-five-foot sperm whale had washed up on the beach. Nobody could figure out how to move it, so the State Highway Division decided to blow it up. Linnman was on the scene with good humor and an alliterative take: “The sand dunes there were covered with spectators and landlubber newsmen, shortly to become land-blubber newsmen, when the blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds.”