At its Mighty Atom museum celebration November 6, 2021, the Boyertown Museum of Historic Vehicles unveiled a newly restored 1938 Dodge truck which drew particular attention from attendees. While the museum features vehicles of greater vintage, this truck retained a special connection to long-time area residents who may remember it from Zerns Farmers Market, Gilbertsville.
The truck had belonged to the Mighty Atom, the world’s strongest man. For decades, the 5’ 4” Mighty Atom – born Joseph Greenstein in 1893 — performed feats of strength such as bending iron bars and horseshoes before a generation of awestruck Zerns patrons. From the back of his Dodge truck, the Mighty Atom peddled his homeopathic soaps, laxatives, creams, etc.
However, the truck has another connection to local lore. For decades after the Mighty Atom’s 1977 death, the vehicle sat in the front yard of Larry Farman’s rambler in East Coventry Township, South Pottstown. If readers do not recognize the name, they may perhaps know Larry by another, “Slim the Hammer Man”. Slim passed away November 29, 2021; he was 87. Slim’s story revolves around his remarkable friendship with the Mighty Atom.
Larry “Slim” Farman grew up in Norristown and later moved to the Pottstown area. He hardened his muscles as a stone cutter at Gil Quarries, East Norriton. Slim married his sweetheart, Shirley Stetler, a girl from Stowe. On date night the pair usually went to Zerns.
The Mighty Atom and Slim first met during a Mighty Atom performance in 1955 at Zerns A tall, lanky youth in the audience took up the Mighty Atom’s challenge to bend a steel spike, as he had. With sheer force of will Slim bent the spike, then demonstrated before the Mighty Atom his own unique ability to lift from a horizontal position a 30-inch, twelve-pound sledgehammer. It was a feat of strength not even the Mighty Atom could perform.
From then on, Slim visited Joe Greenstein at every opportunity to learn his secret. “You don’t use your body,” Farman asked Joe regarding his abilities. “You use your mind?”
“Yes.”
“Then teach me.”
“I can’t, Slim. I can’t teach you what you already know.”
At Joe’s behest, Farman changed his dietary regimen, quit smoking and drinking, and began strength training. The Mighty Atom served as Slim’s spiritual guide, mentor, and eventually, his best friend. Under Joe’s tutelage, Slim progressed from twelve to twenty-six pounds of weight with either arm at the same time. With a handle of 31 inches length, Slim was sustaining 1,612-inch pounds of pressure on his hands and wrists, an incredible achievement.
Slim, the protégé, became a phenomenal strongman and undisputed world champion of leverage lifting. He and Joe were inseparable. They performed their acts of strength to crowds throughout the country. Their run together culminated in a 1976 event when Slim and the Mighty Atom, at age 83, mesmerized 18,000 fans at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
Following Joe Greenstein’s death in 1977 Slim took up the mantle of preserving the Mighty Atom’s legacy. With almost a century’s worth of Mighty Atom memorabilia, Slim turned his garage into a museum he affectionately called his Dungeon. He also kept the 1938 Dodge truck Joe used at Zerns.
Under the auspices of the late Dr. Elliot Menkowitz, Bill Thrush, and others, the truck was recovered from Slim’s front yard and restored. For the first time in over 40 years, it debuted publicly at the Boyertown Museum of Historic Vehicles celebration. In an appropriate tribute to both men, the Museum held a strongman show with feats of strength first popularized by the Mighty Atom and Slim.
The story of the Mighty Atom and Slim the Hammer Man can be read in a 1979 biography entitled “The Mighty Atom. The Life & Times of Joseph L. Greenstein Biography of a Superhuman” (Viking Press) written by their friend, Ed Spielman. Conversations with Slim in 2018 and examples of his leveraging feats can be found on YouTube.
