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.
Sunday, April 3, 2022
One Woman's Voice
One Woman's Voice:
Biography of Elizabeth Mansfield Irving (1852-1939), elocutionist, patriot, women's rights pioneer
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This is a story of a woman who wanted to be an elocutionist, on the cusp of the nation's Centennial (1876), when women were not permitted to speak on important topics of the day. A gifted reader and orator, with a beautiful voice, she went into reading war poetry to reunions and encampments of Civil War veterans. She also inherited an insurance business when her husband got sick and died, becoming one of Toledo (Ohio)'s first women business owners. It's the story of using one's voice when one can, and getting one's voice when one is able. Her life corresponed with the rise of elocutionists as a united group, and the rise of the woman's suffrage movement, which ultimately gave women their voice in the political arena also.
Friday, March 25, 2022
Tunnel Vision
I was on the Pennsylvania Turnpike on a rainy night when we came to one of the tunnels, and the three children in my car all at once started screaming as loud as they could. I have no idea why. The rain of course stopped though the windshield wipers didn't; suddenly I saw something so chilling I'll remember it the rest of my life.
In an oncoming, or westbound, car, greenish if I remember correctly, a man had a gun pointed at the woman driver. Someone else was in the front passenger seat, but knocked out, asleep or dead, and he had pushed himself up between the front seat to get the gun pointed at her head. SHe had a look of abject terror in her eyes but kept the car going straight; she was going highway speed. I could see it clearly but only for a split second. My concern was whether the kids had seen it but they were screaming so loud I kind of doubted they could.
When I was out of the tunnel I looked for a place to pull over and call nine-one-one, but I was shaking and almost couldn't stop when a place came up after a few miles. Still shaking, I got out of the car in the rain and put a jacket over my head and the phone so I could make the call. I told the police what I saw. The signs wouldn't tell me which tunnel it was but I figured they could deduce that from my location. All I could say was what I'd seen. I didn't remember much, as it turned out, except that the car was a greenish color. It had all flashed by pretty quickly.
The kids were all somewhat concerned that I'd bolted out of the car in the pouring down rain out in the middle of the turnpike right after we'd gone through a tunnel, so I told them everything was ok and we got started back on the road as soon as we could. Little Jummy was right behind me; he was the one who wasn't mine. We were taking him to live with his grandmother in Philadelphia as his mother had died unexpectedly back in Pittsburgh. Bobby and Jane were mine, 5 and 3 respectively; Bobby and Jimmy were kindergarten buddies. I had left my wife and a smaller baby home. I had somehow been roped into this due to association with a church that Jimmy's mother had attended for a while. Somebody had to deliver this kid to his grandmother. The father apparently was not part of the picture.
The image of what I'd seen disrupted my driving all the way into Philadelphia. It had been dark when it happened, though it was only about six, but when we got into Philadelphia it was still raining and I had a lot of trouble finding that grandmother's house even though I had GPS and all the modern ways of doing it. It just seemed like a very scary world where a guy can hijack a car right in the middle of a tunnel on a cold and rainy night, and get away with it. I somehow figured that woman would end up dead one way or the other.
The grandmother was very nice to us and insisted we stay for the night. She put all the children, plus one she had named Chloe, on one huge bed that was hers, while she insisted on sleeping in another, and put me on the living room couch but insisted on making tea first. I didn't want to burden her with the cold facts of what I'd seen and what made it such a disturbing journey. Instead we talked about Jimmy and what he'd need growing up.
She admitted she'd made mistakes bringing up her daughter, Jimmy's mother, who had had a rough life before she had just apparently committed suicide by jumping off the Warhol Bridge in Pittsburgh. This had happened in the middle of the night and poor Jimmy had been found the following day afraid and left an orphan. Poor kid, no wonder he had nightmares and even now he was babbling to his grandma about his aunt and some guy with a gun. I thought of the situation in the tunnel once again wondering if he'd seen it and thought, if the kid had seen that it would trigger all kinds of unpleasant nightmares. Grandma was soothing to him and assured him that everything would be ok.
In the morning the kids and I got packed up and ready to go on the long haul back to Pittsburgh. I didn't look forward to those tunnels but there was no easy way around; you pretty much had to shoot right through them day or night, rain or not. The grandmother got a call from her other daughter who was apparently stranded somewhere out in the boondocks of Pennsylvania, no car, no money, no nothing but a horrible story which I didn't hear because I heard only the grandmother's voice. The grandmother agreed to send her bus fare to get her back to Philly as soon as she could. After she hung up she told me she was already keeping that daughter's child, Chloe, and that was the girl, about four, who entertained her cousin Jimmy and my two, and of course they'd all had a pretty good time though Jimmy had one of his nightmares. Grandmother didn't tell Chloe what had gone bad with her mother - how much can children take?
It rained again all the way home and I practically shut my eyes in the tunnels hoping not to see anything as bad as what I'd already seen. The grandmother agreed to stay in touch as people in the church all wanted to know if she would be ok with Jimmy and if she needed anything. She was a pretty tough lady and would probably be fine, but Jimmy appeared to be somewhat damaged by the chain of events. It turns out it was his father in his aunt's car, holding the gun, and that his mother didn't just jump off the Warhol bridge. The father had just stolen the car, though, and didn't actually hurt Chloe's mother; he wrecked it out in Ohio somewhere the following day in a crash that involved a semi and a police car. By the time I heard this though I was back home safe and sound, with the baby sleeping in the main bed, and my wife worried that I would roll over on her. I now had nightmares too, but it was always the same one, what I'd seen in the tunnel, and I never did find out exactly what Jimmy had seen.
In an oncoming, or westbound, car, greenish if I remember correctly, a man had a gun pointed at the woman driver. Someone else was in the front passenger seat, but knocked out, asleep or dead, and he had pushed himself up between the front seat to get the gun pointed at her head. SHe had a look of abject terror in her eyes but kept the car going straight; she was going highway speed. I could see it clearly but only for a split second. My concern was whether the kids had seen it but they were screaming so loud I kind of doubted they could.
When I was out of the tunnel I looked for a place to pull over and call nine-one-one, but I was shaking and almost couldn't stop when a place came up after a few miles. Still shaking, I got out of the car in the rain and put a jacket over my head and the phone so I could make the call. I told the police what I saw. The signs wouldn't tell me which tunnel it was but I figured they could deduce that from my location. All I could say was what I'd seen. I didn't remember much, as it turned out, except that the car was a greenish color. It had all flashed by pretty quickly.
The kids were all somewhat concerned that I'd bolted out of the car in the pouring down rain out in the middle of the turnpike right after we'd gone through a tunnel, so I told them everything was ok and we got started back on the road as soon as we could. Little Jummy was right behind me; he was the one who wasn't mine. We were taking him to live with his grandmother in Philadelphia as his mother had died unexpectedly back in Pittsburgh. Bobby and Jane were mine, 5 and 3 respectively; Bobby and Jimmy were kindergarten buddies. I had left my wife and a smaller baby home. I had somehow been roped into this due to association with a church that Jimmy's mother had attended for a while. Somebody had to deliver this kid to his grandmother. The father apparently was not part of the picture.
The image of what I'd seen disrupted my driving all the way into Philadelphia. It had been dark when it happened, though it was only about six, but when we got into Philadelphia it was still raining and I had a lot of trouble finding that grandmother's house even though I had GPS and all the modern ways of doing it. It just seemed like a very scary world where a guy can hijack a car right in the middle of a tunnel on a cold and rainy night, and get away with it. I somehow figured that woman would end up dead one way or the other.
The grandmother was very nice to us and insisted we stay for the night. She put all the children, plus one she had named Chloe, on one huge bed that was hers, while she insisted on sleeping in another, and put me on the living room couch but insisted on making tea first. I didn't want to burden her with the cold facts of what I'd seen and what made it such a disturbing journey. Instead we talked about Jimmy and what he'd need growing up.
She admitted she'd made mistakes bringing up her daughter, Jimmy's mother, who had had a rough life before she had just apparently committed suicide by jumping off the Warhol Bridge in Pittsburgh. This had happened in the middle of the night and poor Jimmy had been found the following day afraid and left an orphan. Poor kid, no wonder he had nightmares and even now he was babbling to his grandma about his aunt and some guy with a gun. I thought of the situation in the tunnel once again wondering if he'd seen it and thought, if the kid had seen that it would trigger all kinds of unpleasant nightmares. Grandma was soothing to him and assured him that everything would be ok.
In the morning the kids and I got packed up and ready to go on the long haul back to Pittsburgh. I didn't look forward to those tunnels but there was no easy way around; you pretty much had to shoot right through them day or night, rain or not. The grandmother got a call from her other daughter who was apparently stranded somewhere out in the boondocks of Pennsylvania, no car, no money, no nothing but a horrible story which I didn't hear because I heard only the grandmother's voice. The grandmother agreed to send her bus fare to get her back to Philly as soon as she could. After she hung up she told me she was already keeping that daughter's child, Chloe, and that was the girl, about four, who entertained her cousin Jimmy and my two, and of course they'd all had a pretty good time though Jimmy had one of his nightmares. Grandmother didn't tell Chloe what had gone bad with her mother - how much can children take?
It rained again all the way home and I practically shut my eyes in the tunnels hoping not to see anything as bad as what I'd already seen. The grandmother agreed to stay in touch as people in the church all wanted to know if she would be ok with Jimmy and if she needed anything. She was a pretty tough lady and would probably be fine, but Jimmy appeared to be somewhat damaged by the chain of events. It turns out it was his father in his aunt's car, holding the gun, and that his mother didn't just jump off the Warhol bridge. The father had just stolen the car, though, and didn't actually hurt Chloe's mother; he wrecked it out in Ohio somewhere the following day in a crash that involved a semi and a police car. By the time I heard this though I was back home safe and sound, with the baby sleeping in the main bed, and my wife worried that I would roll over on her. I now had nightmares too, but it was always the same one, what I'd seen in the tunnel, and I never did find out exactly what Jimmy had seen.
Wednesday, March 16, 2022
Amateur Night
It's St. Patrick's Day at Murphy's Pub, in a small town in Colorado. Because Murphy's has a shamrock on its sign and is easily identifiable as the Irish place, it's crowded, and is selling a lot of alcohol.
Jerry O'Brian is Irish and is a regular at Murphy's Pub. He doesn't like St. Patrick's Day, which he calls "Amateur Night," because there are too many non-drinkers at the bar and too many of them are drunk. He himself holds his alcohol - he can drink whiskey all night and not do anything rash or violent, but these people, one or two beers and they start yelling or punching each other like they'd been holding it in all year.
One of these so-called amateurs is named Jake, and he has been hitting on Rose, another regular at the bar. Jerry, like many guys at the bar, is somewhat protective of Rose if only because she's a regular. They've all hit on her too at some point or another and who knows who she has actually ever gone home with, not Jerry for sure. But Jerry gets in Jake's face at one point because he's being too forward with Rose. He tells Jake to bug off and go find someone else. Jake takes a swing at Jerry. But he's so drunk he ends up falling on the floor, the swing missing Jerry by a country mile.
Now people rush in to keep the two separated. They make moves to get Jake out of there; he's the guilty party. Jerry watches Jake with a hardened eye - it's hard to tell whether he is memorizing his features so as to pound him later, or whether he simply doesn't believe anyone would be stupid enough to take such a wide swing at him.
Rick the bartender has played the biggest role in trying to get a fallen Jake out of the bar, tossed out onto the curb and told not to come back tonight. He hasn't gotten very far because the bar is so crowded. With a man on the floor everyone has to jostle around to get their drinks and take them to their tables. One guy, Scott, actually spills his scotch onto Rick while Rick is dragging Jake across the floor.
This is the last straw for Rick, who stops what he's doing and just tells Scott to leave the bar also. "Just leave before I pop you one," he tells Scott, but Scott is also drunk beyond his usual limit, and doesn't take him seriously. Besides, he'd just bought a Scotch and was now eager to drink part of it. He swigs what's left in his glass and looks seriously at Rick. It's like he's trying to figure out if Rick is serious or not.
But Rick is dead serious, and he knows he should never back down from a demand he's made of any customer. If he thinks Scott should leave, Scott should leave, and he'll stare Scott down until he does, and get back-up help if necessary. There are at least four people working the floor, three of them big enough to help him in a pinch. He wants Scott to leave and he's not backing down.
There's an Irish band over in the corner. This is quite unusual for a small town in Colorado, but this bar found the band, and employed them, and they're busy playing lots of Irish music. The fiddler, Seamus, is out front and he knows he needs a lot of elbow room to do his job. He's not happy that people keep spilling drinks so near to their cords and mics and electric equipment. He's somewhat superstitious about losing all the power just because people are so drunk and so crowded they can't hold a drink upright. He's got his eyes on Rose who for some reason got his attention the minute they started playing.
Rose for her part has stayed close to Jerry, thinking that if she stays close to him, he won't pound that Jake guy who is drunk on the floor and being dragged out of the place by Rick. Jerry puts his arm around her and gives her a big wet sloppy kiss. They are old friends if nothing else and it's St. Patrick's Day, maybe they feel it's their way of celebrating to just let go and enjoy the situation. Seamus steams a little as he watches but he's busy fiddling; there isn't much he can do.
The bar has degenerated a little into a fight with lots of pushing and shoving. This started because Scott took a swing at Rick the bartender, and missed and hit some other guy, who then jumped into it like it was his opportunity to let go of a year's built up stress and tension. It was an accident, for God's sake. But this guy doesn't care, and goes swinging at everyone, Scott, Rick, whoever is anywhere near him.
When the police show up he's the guy they're after, because he's already decked three or four guys and he's not afraid to do as much damage as he possibly can. He's all dressed up, but strong underneath all those fancy clothes, and nobody's ever seen him before, like he just popped in out of nowhere with an agenda to beat everyone up. At one point a gun appears, in the hands of some guy that got popped in the jaw, but cooler heads prevail and this is just before the police arrive, so in that situation it's best to keep the gun out of sight and out of the fight. Jerry at some point goes over to deal with the guy with the gun and after that, to explain to the police a little of what happened, and he gets drawn into the argument about who started it all.
This is Seamus' opportunity, and he offers Rose a ride home, which she accepts. The night is over. Too much damage has been done already. The band takes down its equipment and gets ready to go home; it's at least midnight anyway. The police are now swarming the place, having called for backup, so no one is going to have a good time from this time out, unless you count those who have slipped out the back, like Seamus and Rose. It's another one for the books. The management of Murphy's just wants to close the place and have everyone go home. Out on the street, police are patrolling for drunken drivers, who are plentiful, so it's best just to walk home, if you live in the town.
Jerry O'Brian is Irish and is a regular at Murphy's Pub. He doesn't like St. Patrick's Day, which he calls "Amateur Night," because there are too many non-drinkers at the bar and too many of them are drunk. He himself holds his alcohol - he can drink whiskey all night and not do anything rash or violent, but these people, one or two beers and they start yelling or punching each other like they'd been holding it in all year.
One of these so-called amateurs is named Jake, and he has been hitting on Rose, another regular at the bar. Jerry, like many guys at the bar, is somewhat protective of Rose if only because she's a regular. They've all hit on her too at some point or another and who knows who she has actually ever gone home with, not Jerry for sure. But Jerry gets in Jake's face at one point because he's being too forward with Rose. He tells Jake to bug off and go find someone else. Jake takes a swing at Jerry. But he's so drunk he ends up falling on the floor, the swing missing Jerry by a country mile.
Now people rush in to keep the two separated. They make moves to get Jake out of there; he's the guilty party. Jerry watches Jake with a hardened eye - it's hard to tell whether he is memorizing his features so as to pound him later, or whether he simply doesn't believe anyone would be stupid enough to take such a wide swing at him.
Rick the bartender has played the biggest role in trying to get a fallen Jake out of the bar, tossed out onto the curb and told not to come back tonight. He hasn't gotten very far because the bar is so crowded. With a man on the floor everyone has to jostle around to get their drinks and take them to their tables. One guy, Scott, actually spills his scotch onto Rick while Rick is dragging Jake across the floor.
This is the last straw for Rick, who stops what he's doing and just tells Scott to leave the bar also. "Just leave before I pop you one," he tells Scott, but Scott is also drunk beyond his usual limit, and doesn't take him seriously. Besides, he'd just bought a Scotch and was now eager to drink part of it. He swigs what's left in his glass and looks seriously at Rick. It's like he's trying to figure out if Rick is serious or not.
But Rick is dead serious, and he knows he should never back down from a demand he's made of any customer. If he thinks Scott should leave, Scott should leave, and he'll stare Scott down until he does, and get back-up help if necessary. There are at least four people working the floor, three of them big enough to help him in a pinch. He wants Scott to leave and he's not backing down.
There's an Irish band over in the corner. This is quite unusual for a small town in Colorado, but this bar found the band, and employed them, and they're busy playing lots of Irish music. The fiddler, Seamus, is out front and he knows he needs a lot of elbow room to do his job. He's not happy that people keep spilling drinks so near to their cords and mics and electric equipment. He's somewhat superstitious about losing all the power just because people are so drunk and so crowded they can't hold a drink upright. He's got his eyes on Rose who for some reason got his attention the minute they started playing.
Rose for her part has stayed close to Jerry, thinking that if she stays close to him, he won't pound that Jake guy who is drunk on the floor and being dragged out of the place by Rick. Jerry puts his arm around her and gives her a big wet sloppy kiss. They are old friends if nothing else and it's St. Patrick's Day, maybe they feel it's their way of celebrating to just let go and enjoy the situation. Seamus steams a little as he watches but he's busy fiddling; there isn't much he can do.
The bar has degenerated a little into a fight with lots of pushing and shoving. This started because Scott took a swing at Rick the bartender, and missed and hit some other guy, who then jumped into it like it was his opportunity to let go of a year's built up stress and tension. It was an accident, for God's sake. But this guy doesn't care, and goes swinging at everyone, Scott, Rick, whoever is anywhere near him.
When the police show up he's the guy they're after, because he's already decked three or four guys and he's not afraid to do as much damage as he possibly can. He's all dressed up, but strong underneath all those fancy clothes, and nobody's ever seen him before, like he just popped in out of nowhere with an agenda to beat everyone up. At one point a gun appears, in the hands of some guy that got popped in the jaw, but cooler heads prevail and this is just before the police arrive, so in that situation it's best to keep the gun out of sight and out of the fight. Jerry at some point goes over to deal with the guy with the gun and after that, to explain to the police a little of what happened, and he gets drawn into the argument about who started it all.
This is Seamus' opportunity, and he offers Rose a ride home, which she accepts. The night is over. Too much damage has been done already. The band takes down its equipment and gets ready to go home; it's at least midnight anyway. The police are now swarming the place, having called for backup, so no one is going to have a good time from this time out, unless you count those who have slipped out the back, like Seamus and Rose. It's another one for the books. The management of Murphy's just wants to close the place and have everyone go home. Out on the street, police are patrolling for drunken drivers, who are plentiful, so it's best just to walk home, if you live in the town.
Thursday, February 17, 2022
Two guys are friends. Actually one of them is the former lover of the other's girlfriend, but they are friends anyway. They both are in and out of the woman's house, and she doesn't seem to mind or find one's presence a problem for when the other visits. They have fallen into dealing drugs as that's the best way for their vagabond souls to stay in plenty of money and be able to live the life they want. Sometimes they work together, sometimes not. One of the guys has a deal going in this town and is about to get a large chunk of money.
Two kids have come up with the money and hope to get a large drug score with it, and with that they'll turn it around and come into big money, at the same time having plenty for themselves. They are kids, about nineteen. Really, it's the idea of one of the kids, the other is along for the ride. The other, however, owns the car, a small sleek car that does well when he wants it to, over the sand desert, accelerator to the floor. His parents got him this car as a graduation gift. Little did they know there would be a drug deal in it.
The two older kids climb in the back of the car to complete the deal. They are both armed, but so are the kids in the front. The kids in front turn around to see that all the drugs are as they said it would be, and they hand over the money, all tied in piles, in a single small suitcase, plenty of money. We can assume that they collected this cash from earlier deals as kids don't generally go into the bank asking for large piles of cash held together by rubber bands. Anyway the older kids assume that the money's all there, and the deal appears to be ready to go through.
But something happens, and on cue, the two guys in back pull out their guns and kill the two kids in front. Their heads are literally blown up by the guns at close range. It makes a loud sound, two shots close together, and neighbors are alarmed. But the two older boys, the shooters, are out of the car in a flash and running down the street. They have both the money and the drugs.
Some security cameras in the neighborhood catch them running, but nobody can figure out who they were. In the car, along with the two dead boys with severely blown-apart skulls, are some cartridges that can help them track down the weapons, but no luck there either, the weapons are gone with the shooters. There are traces of drugs in the car, but no evidence to show that it was a drug deal, as both the suitcase with the money and the drugs themselves are also gone with the shooter. Neither of the dead boys has a cell phone.
In fact the cell phone of the young boy who seems to have arranged the deal is never found. But it doesn't matter, the older boy who arranged it on his end, is found eight years later, and his cell phone has all that information. He was texting the younger boy, eight years ago, on that day, arranging the deal. His cell phone also has GPS data that show he was at that very spot of the murder. He and his friend are arrested and brought to justice.
You would think they would scrap all the cell phones and start over, rather than leave any evidence at all around their person. Somehow they got away with it for eight years; nobody came to check their cell phones. The other boy, arrested also, in prison for life for murder, didn't seem to have a cell phone at all. It's a wonder, though, that a cell phone can still be in this world, with all that evidence on it, and basically send two kids on their way to a life in prison, if they're lucky. That's not much of a life, but then, they weren't living much of a life anyway.
Two kids have come up with the money and hope to get a large drug score with it, and with that they'll turn it around and come into big money, at the same time having plenty for themselves. They are kids, about nineteen. Really, it's the idea of one of the kids, the other is along for the ride. The other, however, owns the car, a small sleek car that does well when he wants it to, over the sand desert, accelerator to the floor. His parents got him this car as a graduation gift. Little did they know there would be a drug deal in it.
The two older kids climb in the back of the car to complete the deal. They are both armed, but so are the kids in the front. The kids in front turn around to see that all the drugs are as they said it would be, and they hand over the money, all tied in piles, in a single small suitcase, plenty of money. We can assume that they collected this cash from earlier deals as kids don't generally go into the bank asking for large piles of cash held together by rubber bands. Anyway the older kids assume that the money's all there, and the deal appears to be ready to go through.
But something happens, and on cue, the two guys in back pull out their guns and kill the two kids in front. Their heads are literally blown up by the guns at close range. It makes a loud sound, two shots close together, and neighbors are alarmed. But the two older boys, the shooters, are out of the car in a flash and running down the street. They have both the money and the drugs.
Some security cameras in the neighborhood catch them running, but nobody can figure out who they were. In the car, along with the two dead boys with severely blown-apart skulls, are some cartridges that can help them track down the weapons, but no luck there either, the weapons are gone with the shooters. There are traces of drugs in the car, but no evidence to show that it was a drug deal, as both the suitcase with the money and the drugs themselves are also gone with the shooter. Neither of the dead boys has a cell phone.
In fact the cell phone of the young boy who seems to have arranged the deal is never found. But it doesn't matter, the older boy who arranged it on his end, is found eight years later, and his cell phone has all that information. He was texting the younger boy, eight years ago, on that day, arranging the deal. His cell phone also has GPS data that show he was at that very spot of the murder. He and his friend are arrested and brought to justice.
You would think they would scrap all the cell phones and start over, rather than leave any evidence at all around their person. Somehow they got away with it for eight years; nobody came to check their cell phones. The other boy, arrested also, in prison for life for murder, didn't seem to have a cell phone at all. It's a wonder, though, that a cell phone can still be in this world, with all that evidence on it, and basically send two kids on their way to a life in prison, if they're lucky. That's not much of a life, but then, they weren't living much of a life anyway.
Sunday, January 16, 2022
I sometimes come across people who I'd like to write about but can't because I'm flying by, and also because basically my book is about someone else.
There is this woman who is kind of parallel to the woman I am writing about. The woman I am writing about, Elizabeth, wqs an elocutionist in Toledo at the turn of the 19th century. She came to Toledo to set up an elocution business (actually she came because she married an insurance agent who had a business there) and she hung on for most of her life until she retired in 1929.
This other woman had to move to Toledo because her husband ran a City Directory project. Her husband's name was Thomas Martin so almost impossible to trace. They moved to Toledo in about 1882, about five years after Elizabeth got there. They moved there from Indianapolis.
But the woman, Lucia Julian Martin, had experience, having run a school for Oratory in Indianapolis. So somehow, when she got to Toledo, she started the Toledo School of Elocution and Oratory. Sounds good, huh? Elizabeth seemed to be involved. They were kind of partners in this enterprise as far as I can tell and both are at some point listed as principal.
Lucia went back to Indianapolis after only three years in Toledo, in about 1885. The City Directory project done, or under way, they didn't have to stay. But Thomas died sometime then in the late 1800's. Maybe he died early or maybe they were both a little older than Elizabeth, who was still only 47 at the turn of the century.
Lucia returned to Toledo in about 1895, but she is listed as a widow. She again gets work at the Toledo School of Elocution and Oratory, a school she probably founded. It changes its name some; at some point it's Elocution and Physical Culture. In any case she is partners with Elizabeth. Elizabeth also is a widow but has two young children. They teach elocution together or at least side by side in the city. Lucia is a little more into the physical culture fad of the age, elocution by knowing how to exercise the body and make lungs stronger.
Lucia eventually moved to Chicago and from there to LA. In LA, in about 1905, she was still teaching elocution, starting her own business again. But she died in November of 1908. In 1909 in LA newspapers lawyers can be found dealing with her estate.
But the best I can figure, she appears to be buried in Toledo. How did they get her back there from LA, or rather, who did? I find no evidence that she had any children, not to mention any who would go to that trouble. It probably had to do with her request. Records of her are lost (or seem to be) - I find no record of where she's from (probably Indiana), when she was born, when she married, etc. The gravesite record is all there is and even it is somewhat incomplete as it calls her Lucia J. What happened to Thomas? Were those lawyers in LA arguing about real money or more likely trying to figure out what to do with old scrapbooks? She seems to be lost to history - google searches come up empty, no information to be had, no idea who she really was.
But she seemed to like Toledo a lot, or at least I can infer that by the way she ended up there. I can't find anything else about the rest of her life, but by apparently being close to Elizabeth, actually a kind of mentor, you could say, since she seemed to start the College and was a bit older than Elizabeth - well, that's her ticket into my book. She won't be forgotten altogether, because she'll be in there.
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