News from Old Papers

These columns hearken back to other times, something for which I make no apology. We take the present condition of our lives for granted without giving any thought to the way our ancestors lived.  Between the wife and me, there are a few hundred books stacked in various places in our residence. The subject matter is predominantly history, biography, or historical fiction, and we spend a good deal of time within those pages. So it can be said we give thought to our ancestors.

     Fit into a timely perspective, it is accurate to say this was the edge of the western frontier. In May of 1885, the Sheldon newspaper reported, “Several prairie prairie schooners passed through town yesterday bound for the west.” 

     With the influx of people development started, buildings sprung up, and residents wanted services. The editor of The Enderlin Journal in December of 1892 pleaded, “For the Lord’s sake, why doesn’t a barbershop open up?”

     While driving through Ransom County at the present time, it’s hard to conceive of today’s landscape without its web of roads, fields of corn and wheat, and farmsteads alongside shelterbelts. There was that time, though, when none of that existed, and the prairie would have seemed a very different place.

     Old newspapers prove to be a good place to find the first written accounts of history. While doing a little inventory of past stories, the name Charley Retzlaff comes up. A farmer/boxer living outside of Leonard made news as a heavyweight, especially when he met Joe Louis in Chicago boxing ring in 1936. Accounts of that fight tell us that Charley lasted only one minute and twenty-five seconds. He came away with 17.5 % of the gate which amounted to $11,869.67. Besides the battering he took from Louis, he experienced one other indignation. A friend giving him a ride from the Fargo train station had to turn back when five miles away because deep snow blocked the road. Charlie had to walk the rest of the way.

     We read in 1911 news articles about the baseball pitcher Cy Pieh who one-time played for Enderlin.  Interestingly, the nickname “Cy” came from his pitch that seemed to come out of a cyclone. In 1915 the most notable event in his career came while pitching for the New York Yankees in the game where the Red Sox player Babe Ruth hit the first of his 714 homers. Pieh, a spitballer, entered the game in relief in the 9th inning and held the Red Sox scoreless for five innings to earn the win.

     In 1920 this baseball headline spoke, “Freak Triple Play Is Made.” Two college teams, St. Mary’s of Kansas and Chilicocco of Texas, met in a game where the writer reported “… one of the most peculiar plays ever staged on a ball field. The side in the field did not touch the ball after it left the hands of the pitcher.” He described it this way: “A St. Mary’s batter hit the ball into the air toward short with the bases loaded and was declared out as it was an infield fly. The wind carried the sphere toward second as it descended and it hit the runner there, who was called out for being hit by a batted ball. The ball next rolled toward first and the runner there, disgusted at the luck of his teammates, picked up the leather and hurled it out of the park. He was promptly called out by the umpire.”

   In The Sheldon Progress on January 15, 1914, it was reported 283 automobiles and 14 motorcycles were owned by Ransom County citizens. Horses and gasoline engines didn’t always mix, like the time   a young man driving a team pulling an empty hayrack met “one of these chug, chug go-devils, otherwise called a motorcycle. The horses became frightened at the unearthly noise made by the motorcycle, ran away, and were last seen galloping down the railroad track.

    Old newspapers were inclined to use off-beat stories for filler. A mystery story appeared in 1911 called “The Case of Sabrina’s Tombstone” that wondered why the backside of a tombstone inscribed with the name of Sabrina Lee being was used as an inkstone in the office of The Sheldon Progress.  It turns out she was a rich spinster from New York who went home after forgetting to pay the editor for her subscription to the Lisbon paper. As a matter of principle, he sued and the judge awarded him her tombstone after she died. It so happened he had moved to Sheldon to work in the paper, so the stone was sent there. We were left with questions such as where the stone is today and is her final resting place still unmarked.

    Stories from Sheldon’s papers from 1885-1886 paint a clear picture of  the developing frontier. “The timbers for the new bridge across the Maple River came last week… Barbed wire is going off so fast that Karl Rudd ordered his second carload this week… P. Goodman shipped a carload of fine hogs to Fargo yesterday, the first ever from Sheldon… We notice the McCormick machines still keep coming in by freight and express… Farmers are beginning to haul home their binding twine… Two more carloads of lumber for the North Star Elevator arrived here yesterday… Twenty cars of freight passed west yesterday… Train loads of emigrants and movables continue to pass west. 

     Reading these old bits of history stirs the imagination to make pictures of those days in my mind.

This Little Engine Could

 

I never had a model train, that is until a year or so ago when I ran across a model engine of an old 4-4-0 steam engine, complete with a large spark-arresting smoke stack, cowcatcher, and large headlamp. About 25,000 of the real thing were manufactured by several different companies, but the few survivors are mostly relegated to displays like the one under roof at Bonanzaville in West Fargo. They probably didn’t have the power to pull very long trains, but that is a question for an old-time railroader to answer. Whatever the length, those engines headed trains made up of grain cars, cattle cars, freight cars, passenger cars, coal cars, flat cars, and whatever kind of configuration the planners dreamed up. We can’t forget the historical appeal of the little red caboose that trailed the whole thing.

     Anecdotes about the 4-4-0 abound. One that caught my eye came from just west of the Missouri River near the little town of Shields. The Milwaukee Railroad built a branch line to service little towns such as McLaughlin, Shields, Selfridge, Mott, and New England. This story came from the Grant County history book: “The first Milwaukee train arrived in Shields in 1910. They had to stop to open and close gates where the railroad went through Charley McLaughlin’s pasture and the Parkin’s lease.” Can anyone imagine a train stopping today to open and close pasture gates? The picture of it shows a chuffing 4-4-0 hooked to its front.

     It must have been an exciting time at Bismarck when a stout railroad bridge first crossed the Missouri River in October of 1882. To demonstrate the bridge’s strength and safety, they parked eight 4-4-0s in the middle of the span. It didn’t collapse. Prior to the completion of the bridge, trains did cross the Missouri, but only on ice. A February 15, 1879 Bismarck Tribune article states, “A party of about twenty of America’s prominent business men, inspired with a greed for fame and a relish for notoriety, jumped aboard Chief Engineer Rosser’s car Wednesday noon and started westward to take the first trip across the Missouri River on a Northern Pacific railroad train.

     The popular television show “Hell on Wheels” centered around the building of the transcontinental railroad that culminated in the meeting of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads on May 10, 1969. At Promontory Summit, Utah, a large celebration came together for the driving of the last rail spike, a golden one. Pictures of the event show two engines, “Jupiter” and “No. 119,” both 4-4-0s, standing head to head. No longer would people heading west need to travel on horseback, stagecoach, or wagon train to get to their destination.

     In another film, “The Great Locomotive Chase,” two of our subject 4-4-0 engines were involved. One called “General” was stolen by Union spies in an attempt to cripple the Confederate rail network during the Civil War. After the heist, the Confederates boarded another engine, “Texas,” and gave chase. Union men had cut the telegraph wires which prevented Confederates from sending warnings ahead. Confederates eventually captured the raiders and quickly executed some as spies while some others were able to flee. Several raiders were the first to be awarded the Medal of Honor by the US Congress for their actions.

     The Northern Pacific undertook a propaganda campaign to entice settlers to come into this heartland because they’d been granted huge tracts of land on which to build their rail lines. Now they needed cash for their construction costs as well as enticing immigrants who would provide customers for future freight income. To estimate the value of this land they sent land examiners to walk the ground and evaluate it. One story taken from the North Dakota History Journal of Spring, 1987 tells us where one examiner on June 5, 1883 arrived and gave this account after reaching Fargo: “We changed cars here taking the train, which was a mixed one, on the Fargo and Southwestern a new road complete as yet only as far as Lisbon with one passenger car and a second class car full of people besides a long line of freight cars… The only station of any account is Sheldon where there are about 25 buildings large and small including a good R.R. station and elevator. The road is still rough and has a very incomplete aspect. We reached Lisbon about 2 P.M. It is a little town of some 250 buildings scattered over a low plain on the west side of the Sheyenne River.” The story is much more detailed, but it illustrates the early days of the railroad in Ransom County. While it does not mention the engine type pulling this train, I will bet it was a 4-4-0.

      No. 684, the engine on display at Bonanzaville in West Fargo,  earned retirement after serving various rail companies in different parts of the country. Built in 1883 by the New York Locomotive Works at a cost of $10,500, it was designed for both passenger and freight service. It worked on main line service until 1928 and was then sold to the Nezperce and Idaho railway. It finally made its way to its final resting spot as a relic of a bygone era with its steam whistles, coal smoke, smells, and sounds of banging when the engine started forward and took up the slack of their hitches.

Chaotic Dynamics

 

With a title like “Chaotic Dynamics,” readers might think I’m trying to act like I’m intelligent. But wait, don’t turn the page yet because the phrase refers to the style of a baseball player, a knuckleball pitcher to be exact, Phil Niekro. He recently died at the age of 81 and over 24 seasons he earned 318 wins and placed 16th place on the list of all-time winningest pitchers.

     I always thought it was high entertainment to watch him, or any other knuckleballer, throw those crazy pitches toward the plate where no one knew what path it would take, including the pitcher. Someone called it “chaotic dynamics” when on those days the ball flew dancing in the air to fool the batter (and the catcher, too).  A great catcher and Hall of Famer, Bob Uecker acknowledged he did a lot of chasing. “Catching Niekro’s knuckleball was great. I got to meet a lot of important people. They all sit behind home plate.” He also said, “The way to catch a knuckleball is to wait until it stops rolling and then pick it up.”

     Other players have commented on his pitch. Pete Rose said, “Trying to hit that thing is a miserable way to make a living.” Ernie Banks states, “It comes flying in there dipping and hopping like crazy, and you just can’t hit it.” Yankee all-star Bobby Murcer said “Trying to hit Phil Niekro is like trying to eat Jell-O with chopsticks.”

     A couple of other pitchers recently left us. Hall of Famer Bob Gibson had a reputation for intimidating the batters and was known to throw brushback pitches. Hank Aaron said, “He’d knock down his own grandmother if she dared to challenge him.” Whatever others thought of him, he won 251 games, tallied 3117 strike outs, and was the MVP in two world series.

     Whitey Ford played for the Yankees for all of his 16 years in uniform and won so many awards we won’t list them. Highly competitive, he admitted to “doctoring” the ball occasionally during his later years of pitching. He knew how to throw a spitball and admitted once, “I didn't cheat in 1963 when I won twenty-four games. Well, maybe a little.”

     Other notables died recently including the country music great Charlie Pride. He had the fortitude to continue singing his songs in spite of racial attitudes. When he first started performing, promoters did not circulate pictures of him in order to hide the fact of his skin color. He counted 21 number one hit songs in his career plus a whole bunch of other charted songs. We saw him perform once on stage and came away impressed with his talent, humility, and pride of personal appearance. I kept noticing that sharp crease on his slacks that never disappeared through the years.

     Does anyone remember the name Forrest Fenn and that chest full of gold coins and jewels valued at a million dollars he hid in the mountains and then dared people to find? He lived just long enough to see that someone did find it, but only after four people died from accidents they incurred in the chase. I met him once in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at a convention and thought he was just another face in that crowd, but he sure got the attention of all the treasure hunters.

     Obviously, we can’t list all the notables who have passed in recent memory, but here’s a few more. William Kittredge was a Montana writer and university professor who helped promote to completion one of my favorite movies, “A River Runs Through It.” Until his death he stood mostly alone as a surviving member of great Montana writers. Barry Lopez wrote many works of environmental literature and spent a lot of time studying man’s relationship to animals in the natural world.

     The spy-thriller writer John le Carre died and left a library shelf filled with heady books. As good authors do, he’d take the raw material of life and convert it to well-expressed literature. In his early life, he served as a spy for the British government and therefore knew something about the topic. He walked the walk before talking the talk.

    These little newspaper articles I’ve been writing have been on hold for a few weeks, but other jobs needed attention. I have enough material to publish another book titled “Faint Echoes,” and the draft needed preparation to submit to the printer. It will be available soon. And my Western Writers of America editor in Santa Fe, New Mexico, still sends material for review. One book waits for attention, “Saints, Sinners, and Sovereign Citizens: The Endless War Over the West’s Public Lands.” Remember the government standoff with rancher Clive Bundy who refused to recognize the federal’s government’s ownership of millions of acres of public land? His case is discussed.

     People who enjoy Western books might enjoy “Valdez Is Coming,” by Elmore Leonard. The man named Valdez, a mild-mannered small town constable had been hired for the main purpose of clearing drunks off the street on Saturday night. Considered a pawn by the strongarm rancher who ran community affairs, he tricked Valdez into shooting an innocent man. After realizing what happened, Valdez sought financial help for the dead man’s wife but was met with ridicule, then badly beaten.

     Nobody knew Valdez had once ridden with General Crook and now felt compelled to don his old persona and go after the rancher. “Tell him Valdez is coming” became his slogan, and Valdez set about stripping away the rancher’s defenses until they finally met face to face. The rancher’s orders to his henchmen to kill Valdez fell on deaf ears since everyone had come to respect Valdez. The rancher now stood alone, but did not have the nerve to further threaten Valdez. In some respects, we can apply the phrase “chaotic dynamics” to the story.