My latest book also deals with ancestors, in this case my great grandfather and his sister. Will and Belle were 4th and 1st in a family of six surviving children, with Belle's older sister dying on the windswept prairie of southeastern Nebraska before Belle was born. Another child died after Will was born; they were living on a farm in central Wisconsin when that happened.
Belle and Will ended up in Council Bluffs, Iowa, working for a bank that her husband had bought controlling interest in. Council Bluffs was a thriving town up until 1893, when, after the Chicago Columbian Exhibition, there was a severe crash and then three-year depression. The crash most strongly affected the Dakota Territories, because the railroads had extended partway into the Dakotas, and the railroads were the first to crash. Settling the Dakotas was contingent on railroads being able to serve the market, and now they not only stopped what they were building, but the ones that were there shut down. People had to give up and move back out of the Dakotas.
In addition, winters were brutal, and the price they could get for their wheat crashed. It was not a winning proposition.
The banks in Council Bluffs were affected, even though the Dakotas were up the river a ways. Money dried up and there was a depression for three years, 1893-1896.
The First National Bank, where Belle's husband was president and Will worked, suffered with the other banks. But it had another problem - one teller was actively working against the president. He managed to make it so that her husband had to sell out at a huge loss. The buyer was a local guy, involved in another bank, who was widely disliked. It was generally considered a terrible thing to have to sell out at a loss to a local rich man who, nevertheless, was very unpopular.
His selling out had a lot of lasting consequences. The husband was dead within a few years, heartbroken probably as his life work and hopes for a prosperous future were all dashed. His father, who had come to live with him and Belle, had also died. Belle was left alone with their two sons in Council Bluffs, and had to make it on her own. She had no one to turn to, though her brother Will was still in town. She took to writing for a living.
The local newspaper sent her out on assignments, namely writing sketches of famous worthy people who passed through Council Bluffs regularly. They were just getting used to the idea that if you came right through at Council Bluffs/Omaha, and kept right on going, you would eventually make it all the way out to California, if you weren't set upon by angry Sioux or terrible weather. Since Council Bluffs/Omaha was the last civilization for something like 500 miles - if you could call Denver civilization - people got good and stocked up before they set off across the prairie and so they would often lay over in Council Bluffs or Omaha until they were good and ready to go any farther. Of course, this being the Wild old West, sometimes they would get good and drunk or shoot up some bar before they had a chance to leave also. Things happened. It was a lively river town, and one could do a shrewd business if one could sell alcohol, or guns, or some other kind of useful supplies.
Things weren't that great for writers, though. At least the newspapers paid good money for content, and that's because people actually used them; they read them; they wanted to know what was happening in the area. It was a different time then, than the ones we have now. They hadn't even really mastered cars yet.
The Transmississippian Exhibition was in 1897 in Omaha, and the depression had lifted. But all those years of hard times, of banks going under, had taken a toll ont he people of Council Bluffs and Omaha. It was not as grand and smashing as the World Columbian Exhibition in Chicago had been, back in 1893. The world did not come out one step farther from Chicago, and out across the Mississippi and out to the Missouri, to see the new center of the world. On the contrary, Omaha-Council Bluffs had already proved that just beyond them, it was pretty wild and unsettled, and that the high northern plains would get settled and farmed much more slowly than, say, Indiana and Illinois. They just weren't ready to be the center of the world out in Nebraska yet. And they may never be ready. Even today, the wind howls, and it gets mighty cold, and the tribes are still mad that they got run out of their buffalo-hunting country, not only that, but they got totally cleaned out of buffalo. Transmississippi, my foot, some people would say. No wonder nobody's heard of that exhibition today. It's all gone in the dust, just like all those herds of buffalo.
Wednesday, May 11, 2022
A true mountain tale
I was coming back to my home in the mountains one night with my little girl and a puppy, when we saw a truck stopped above on the switchback turn - he was stuck, and he was outside digging out around the tires. He had taken that huge truck around a sharp switchback, but the road was a little icy and at some point he'd drifted back until the back of the large wagon he was hauling was up against the cliff that started at the edge of the road. He wasn't going anywhere. Somebody was already out there helping him.
Wanting to get my daughter, my puppy and me home, I considered taking the long way, which meant going back down to the highway a few miles, down through a nearby tiny town, and then out another gravel road maybe about ten miles until it got to the valley where my house is. That gravel road is also full of treacherous switchbacks, and would also be icy on this cold winter night, but the real problem is it's isolated - you go off the road out there, nobody might come by for days, because nobody has any need for that road outside of hunting season. So I hesitated and decided to see if I could help the guy.
He had a huge semi-trailer kind of truck but the bed he was carrying was actually empty. Usually people are bringing heavy equipment over the ridge I live on the other side of - bulldozers, things like that to do some kind of project or building or something. Why he would move anything over that ridge on a winter night was beyond me - it seemed to me that maybe he was trying to sneak over there, doing it on a snowy night and all - but I never found out. I asked him if I could help him as he seemed to be pouring sand or something under the large wheels of the bed. But he just mumbled in response, and, worse, I got the slight impression that he was drunk. You'd have to be drunk, I thought, to bring a semi like this over this ridge on this cold night.
At that point I gave up and decided to go the long way around. It was a remote road, full of switcyhbacks and dangerous, but at least I'd make it home. The problem as I saw it was this: most of the people that could pull him out were on my side, the town side, but couldn't reach him, because he was blocking the turn. They'd have to get past him just to put a chain on him and start pulling him out, and they couldn't get past him because he was blocking the whole switchback. If there was some mountain road you could take to get through the forest and up to the ridge around him, and then come back down, you could do it, but I didn't know of any such road or maybe I would have considered taking it myself. I couldn't get around him, and I didn't want to wait until he figured out how to get himself out of that jam.
Fortunately my neighbor was a car or two behind me - by now there were about five of us waiting on him - and she rolled down her window and we talked. I told her I didn't trust his ability to get out of that jam so there was nothing for it but to go back down and go the long way around. She agreed to follow me. It would be safer if there were two of us going gingerly over those mountain switchbacks. And sure enough it was. She followed behind me, or rather her son did, as he was driving, and slowly we did that ten miles of mountain gravel and came back down into our own valley where some of the roads were real slippery but we knew the way and could get home one way or the other.
Now this did not answer the question of how that guy got up there in the first place, or how they ever got him out. It turns out one of our other neighbors went and got a fire truck and pulled him out from above him, on the ridge side of the switchback. That's what I noticed, I said, you could only get at him to pull him out if you were above him, so only someone from our remote isolated valley could have done it. But this guy did it. He took a fire truck up that ridge, and a chain, and used it, and yanked him out. I was impressed. But I knew it must have taken him half the night. Any of those other people in the other cars would have had to either sit there a few hours, or turn around and go back to town. There was no getting around him until he got his truck yanked out of that slippery patch.
People are more resilient than you think. Even in his drunk and confused state, if he was in fact drunk, he had friends, and he must have been able to contact that neighbor to get him to go pull the fire truck out of the bay. Of course he'd been carrying sand, and other things that he might have needed in that situation. And what was more remarkable to me was that the guy who pulled him out had the time, and was able to just go grab a fire truck and do it. Maybe he wasn't supposed to do it, because it wasn't an official call or because that's not what fire trucks are for, but he did it anyway. That's because on a cold, snowy night in a remote valley, if somebody needs help to get out of a jam, you go and help him. People rise to meet the needs of their neighbors and help each other out.
The truck driver, as it turned out, had been on one of the local fire departments at some point, and that I think helped. They knew him. It didn't matter if it was bad judgment to take that truck up that mountain in the first place, we're all guilty of bad judgment once in a while. Look at me for example. But on that night, I apparently did the right thing. The neighbor told me later that it was her birthday - she and her son had gone to town to celebrate. Well, I led her home over that back route, being myself more concerned with the little girl and the puppy's safety, but you never get out of winter without at least one of these stories. And this winter, this was mine.
Wanting to get my daughter, my puppy and me home, I considered taking the long way, which meant going back down to the highway a few miles, down through a nearby tiny town, and then out another gravel road maybe about ten miles until it got to the valley where my house is. That gravel road is also full of treacherous switchbacks, and would also be icy on this cold winter night, but the real problem is it's isolated - you go off the road out there, nobody might come by for days, because nobody has any need for that road outside of hunting season. So I hesitated and decided to see if I could help the guy.
He had a huge semi-trailer kind of truck but the bed he was carrying was actually empty. Usually people are bringing heavy equipment over the ridge I live on the other side of - bulldozers, things like that to do some kind of project or building or something. Why he would move anything over that ridge on a winter night was beyond me - it seemed to me that maybe he was trying to sneak over there, doing it on a snowy night and all - but I never found out. I asked him if I could help him as he seemed to be pouring sand or something under the large wheels of the bed. But he just mumbled in response, and, worse, I got the slight impression that he was drunk. You'd have to be drunk, I thought, to bring a semi like this over this ridge on this cold night.
At that point I gave up and decided to go the long way around. It was a remote road, full of switcyhbacks and dangerous, but at least I'd make it home. The problem as I saw it was this: most of the people that could pull him out were on my side, the town side, but couldn't reach him, because he was blocking the turn. They'd have to get past him just to put a chain on him and start pulling him out, and they couldn't get past him because he was blocking the whole switchback. If there was some mountain road you could take to get through the forest and up to the ridge around him, and then come back down, you could do it, but I didn't know of any such road or maybe I would have considered taking it myself. I couldn't get around him, and I didn't want to wait until he figured out how to get himself out of that jam.
Fortunately my neighbor was a car or two behind me - by now there were about five of us waiting on him - and she rolled down her window and we talked. I told her I didn't trust his ability to get out of that jam so there was nothing for it but to go back down and go the long way around. She agreed to follow me. It would be safer if there were two of us going gingerly over those mountain switchbacks. And sure enough it was. She followed behind me, or rather her son did, as he was driving, and slowly we did that ten miles of mountain gravel and came back down into our own valley where some of the roads were real slippery but we knew the way and could get home one way or the other.
Now this did not answer the question of how that guy got up there in the first place, or how they ever got him out. It turns out one of our other neighbors went and got a fire truck and pulled him out from above him, on the ridge side of the switchback. That's what I noticed, I said, you could only get at him to pull him out if you were above him, so only someone from our remote isolated valley could have done it. But this guy did it. He took a fire truck up that ridge, and a chain, and used it, and yanked him out. I was impressed. But I knew it must have taken him half the night. Any of those other people in the other cars would have had to either sit there a few hours, or turn around and go back to town. There was no getting around him until he got his truck yanked out of that slippery patch.
People are more resilient than you think. Even in his drunk and confused state, if he was in fact drunk, he had friends, and he must have been able to contact that neighbor to get him to go pull the fire truck out of the bay. Of course he'd been carrying sand, and other things that he might have needed in that situation. And what was more remarkable to me was that the guy who pulled him out had the time, and was able to just go grab a fire truck and do it. Maybe he wasn't supposed to do it, because it wasn't an official call or because that's not what fire trucks are for, but he did it anyway. That's because on a cold, snowy night in a remote valley, if somebody needs help to get out of a jam, you go and help him. People rise to meet the needs of their neighbors and help each other out.
The truck driver, as it turned out, had been on one of the local fire departments at some point, and that I think helped. They knew him. It didn't matter if it was bad judgment to take that truck up that mountain in the first place, we're all guilty of bad judgment once in a while. Look at me for example. But on that night, I apparently did the right thing. The neighbor told me later that it was her birthday - she and her son had gone to town to celebrate. Well, I led her home over that back route, being myself more concerned with the little girl and the puppy's safety, but you never get out of winter without at least one of these stories. And this winter, this was mine.
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