

Ten-minute Tales

by Dennis Goodwin

A collection of read-aloud true short stories of notable people and events, arranged by the month of the person's birthday or the event's anniversary. Some are famous; some not so famous. All are colorful slices of history.

Copyright 2017 All rights reserved

Other Books by the author:

More Ten-minute Tales

Out of the West

Brass Bands and Snake Oil Stands

Fate, Flukes & Fame in Country & Bluegrass Legends

Lives & Times

Dedication

To my wife and best friend, Joan, who

has valiantly put up with my severe

writing addiction for over 40 years

dennisgoodwin1947@gmail.com

January

Jan. 8 Elvis Presley was born (1935)

Jan. 8 Famous Burlesque entertainer, Gypsy Rose Lee's birthday (1911) story: Origin of Burlesque

Jan. 15 Martin Luther King was born (1929) story: making of the "I Have a Dream" speech

Jan. 19 Dolly Parton was born (1946)

Jan. 19 Julia Bulette (beloved "soiled dove" of Virginia City was found murdered) (1867)

Jan. 23 "Greenbrier Ghost" (Zona Heaster) died (only "ghost" to testify in a murder trial) (1897)

Jan. 27 Thomas L. Kane was born (he single-handedly prevented a bloody conflict between the Mormons and the U. S. government in 1858) (1822)

February

Feb. 9 The Beatles first performed on the Ed Sullivan show (1964)

Feb. 17 Apache Chief Geronimo died (1909)

Feb. 26 Buffalo Bill Cody was born (1846)

Feb. 26 Johnny Cash was born (1932)

March

March 6 Battle of the Alamo final assault (1836) story: Davy Crockett

March 10 James Clyman begins a stirring expedition up the Missouri River (1823)

March 10 Baylis John Fletcher sets out on an eventful cattle drive on the Chisolm Trail (1879)

March 18 Charlie Pride was born (1938)

April

April 3 Jesse James was shot by Robert Ford (1882) story: Jesse James

April 4 First "modern" circus (London 1786) story: early circuses

April 8 Amelia Earhart set an altitude record in an autogiro - an type of early helicopter (1931) story: Amelia Earhart

April 14 Loretta Lynn was born (1932)

April 24 Annie Oakley joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West show (1885) story: Annie Oakley

May

May 1 Calamity Jane was born (1852)

May 5 Fayette Lodowick's birthday - he had the best-known early traveling tent show (1818) story: early tent shows

May 5 First recorded circus parade (Purdy, Welch & McComber circus in 1837) story: origin of circus parades

May 9 Belle Boyd was born (Confederate spy who helped save Stonewall Jackson) (1844)

May 19 John Bidwell and 68 others set off to become the first emigrant group to reach California, only knowing that "California lay to the West") (1841)

May 28 Tony Pastor, often called the "Father of Vaudeville," was born (1832) story: vaudeville's wild and crazy acts

June

June 9 First Beadle's Dime Novel published (1860) story: Dime Novels

June 20 Story, first published in installments, of "Mountain Charlie's" life (a woman who dressed in male attire to find her husband's murderer) (1882)

June 25 Crazy Horse participates in the Battle of the Little Big Horn (1876)

June 25 Custer's "last stand" (1876) story: George Armstrong Custer

July

July 1 Joseph "The Yellow Kid" Weil was born (one of the world's greatest conmen) (1875)

July 2 Ella Watson ("Cattle Kate") was born \- she became famous...after her hanging! (1860)

July 5 P. T. Barnum was born (1810) story: Barnum and his American Museum

July 14 Billy the Kid was killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett (1881) story: Billy the Kid

July 17 Opening of Disneyland (1955) story: Origin of Disneyland

July 20 First moon landing (1969) story: The nearly tragic accident on the Moon that could easily have trapped Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin

July 26 Black Bart held his first stagecoach robbery (1875)

July 30 Young Johnny Ringo witnesses the accidental death of his father...which may have led to his legendary alcoholic,

evil-tempered conduct (1864) story: Johnny Ringo

August

Aug. 4 The first Chautauqua (1874) (a show that combined religion, culture, political speeches and craziness) story: Birth of Chautauqua

Aug. 6 Susie King Taylor was born (first black army nurse) (1848)

Aug. 6 Emma LeConte finishes her diary about the burning of Columbia during the Civil War (1865)

Aug. 14 Doc Holliday was born (1851)

September

Sept. 4 Little Rock Nine teenagers face national guard blockade (1957) story: Elizabeth Eckford, the fractured flower of the 1957 civil-rights milestone

Sept. 8 Patsy Cline was born (1932)

Sept. 11 The first live play broadcast on television (1928) story: early television shows

Sept. 16 Sarah Walden was born (wrote a fascinating diary of her treacherous journey across the Oregon Trail) (1828)

Sept. 17 The last big traveling medicine show (Hadacol) - closed down after a show in Dallas, Texas in 1952) story: Medicine shows

Sept. 17 Hank Williams was born (1923)

Sept. 25 Sarah Wister begins a colorful journal about her life during the Revolutionary War (1777)

October

Oct. 6 The first full-length talking Movie (The Jazz Singer - 1927) story: early "talkies"

Oct. 8 Russian "Night Witches" The female bomb squadron was formed (fearless Russian female bombers who flew dilapidated biplanes during World War II) (1941)

Oct. 8 Mary Rockwood Powers completes a terrifying westward journey with a "fanatical" husband (1856)

Oct. 16 John Brown's Raid (1859)

Oct. 19 Western Missionary, John Dunbar, begins his fascinating life in a Grand Pawnee village (1834)

Oct. 22 Abigail Scott Duniway was born. (legendary suffragist of the Northwest) (1834)

Oct. 25 Minnie Pearl (Sarah Ophelia Colley) was born (1912)

Oct. 26 The Gunfight at the OK Corral: (1881) story: Wyatt Earp

November

Nov. 2 The one and only flight of Howard Hughs' 320-ft wingspan "Spruce Goose" (1947)

Nov. 2 First commercial radio broadcast (station KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1920) story: early radio

Nov. 14 Newspaper reporter Nellie Bly sets out on a 'round-the-world voyage (1889)

Nov. 14 First claim filed for Nevada's wild & crazy White Pine Silver Rush (1867)

Nov. 28 First Grand Ole Opry broadcast (1925) story: early Grand Ole Opry performers

Nov. 30 Last of the ill-fated Mormon handcart expedition survivors arrive in Salt Lake City (1856)

December

Dec. 15  Sitting Bull was killed in a skirmish (1890) story: Sitting Bull

Dec. 16 Republic of Fredonia established (a crazy attempt to establish a new nation within Mexico in 1826)

Dec. 18 Charlotte Parkhurst died, and the West learned their beloved old cussin,' chewin' stagecoach driver, "Cock-eyed Charlie," was actually "Charlotte" (1879)

Dec. 24 Christopher "Kit" Carson was born (1809)

The Four-dollar Future

A Paltry Investment that Would Buy

Rock & Roll Immortality For Elvis Presley

When most people invest in their future, they have to dig deep into their pockets. Doctors usually spend years paying off their medical school loans. And businessmen often lay out thousands of dollars of "seed money" to start up their dream business. Elvis Aaron Presley, by comparison, got off pretty cheaply. He managed to purchase a glittering future that would turn many successful doctors and businessmen bright green with envy. And he bought it for only four bucks.

Elvis happened upon this super-deal in the summer of 1953, at 706 Union Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee. A sign in the little Sun Records studio there advertised its sideline, the "Memphis Recording Service." The sign read: "We record anything - anywhere - anytime." As the words beckoned him, the youngster debated whether to shell out his hard-earned money.

Oh...why not. After all, when he was a kid he had won second place, singing in a talent contest at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show. And some of his fellow high school students had praised his performance in the school's variety show. Of course there was also Miss Marmann, his high school music teacher. She had given him a "C" and told him he "couldn't sing." But what the heck - it was only four bucks. As the eighteen-year-old Crown Electric truck driver plunked down the four dollar fee, he had no inkling of what it would eventually buy him.

He just thought that a record might make a good gift for his mother, Gladys. For his "four dollar debut," he chose the Ink Spots' "My Happiness" and backed it with a country song "That's When Your Heartaches Begin." After he had finished and played it back, Elvis was disappointed with the way he sounded. But knowing how mothers are, he thought she would probably like it. Anyway it was no big deal. After all, he had only recorded it on a whim, and he would probably never stop by Sun Records again.

Fortunately, someone else in the studio wasn't disappointed with the sound of the little record. The office manager, Marion Keisker, admired Elvis's singing and jotted down Presley's address, a neighbor's phone number, and the comment: "Elvis Presley. Good ballad singer. Hold." That "good ballad singer" was once again lured by the enticing sign a few months later. This time, not only did Keisker admire his talent, but studio owner, Sam Phillips, promised to contact him for some studio work. It was beginning to look as if Miss Marmann might have been mistaken.

True to his promise, Sam Phillips called Elvis in for a trial recording session in April of 1954. Elvis gave it his best shot with a newly written tune, "Without You," but it simply didn't click. Phillips, though, was again impressed with his voice and suggested Elvis experiment with other types of material. As Presley ran through gospel, country, rhythm and blues, and popular ballads, Phillips detected his raw potential. He suggested Elvis begin rehearsing with other musicians. Phillips contacted two members of "Doug Poindexter's Starlight Wranglers," a local band that had recently cut a record at Sun Studio. During the next three months, guitarist, Scotty Moore, and Bass player, Bill Black, rehearsed with Elvis in Scotty's house. Then on. July 5th, Phillips called them into the studio for a recording session.

It was during that session, as many books and documentary films have noted, that "The King" was truly born. As with his preceding session, Elvis didn't sparkle with the first few songs he tried. It wasn't until the tired trio took a break, that rock & roll lightning struck. Elvis began fooling around with an up tempo version of a blues song, "That's All Right."

Suddenly, the "fooling around" turned a little more serious as Bill Black began to furnish a bass accompaniment. Then Scotty added some lead guitar licks. As they jammed with the unusual selection, something sparked across Sam Phillips' memory. He had previously believed that the heart-felt rhythm and blues of the black community could have wide-spread commercial appeal. But he knew the racial tensions of the times would never allow that. Now, right in front of him, he saw someone who could tap into the raw emotion of the lively black music and who was, of all things - white.

During the session, they recorded "I Love You Because," a fast-tempo "Blue Moon of Kentucky," and the song that would soon make musical waves across the South, "That's All Right." Those waves would begin two days later when Memphis disc jockey, Dewey Phillips, played the new tune on his Red Hot and Blue program. Before the needle left the record, the lights on his phone lines began to flash. His listening audience wasn't exactly sure what they had. just heard, but they knew they wanted more.

It wouldn't be long before the whole nation "wanted more." But there was a problem - this new "white black" music didn't fit into any existing category. No one knew quite how to market it. At first Elvis was billed as a country singer, with titles like the King of Western Bop and the Hillbilly Cat. He found some success on country radio programs like the Louisiana Hayride. But many country fans felt he had strayed too far from mainstream country music. According to recollections, after his legendary cool reception on the Grand Ole Opry in October of 1954, the show's talent booker, Jim Denny, suggested Elvis "take up truck driving again."

As rock and roll history is acutely aware - he didn't. Under the guidance of the now-controversial Colonel Tom Parker - a former carnival huckster who had once managed "dancing chickens" \- Elvis was soon transformed into a living legend. From the youthful energy of "Heartbreak Hotel," "Hound Dog," and "Don't Be Cruel," to the mature sounds of "Suspicious Minds," "In the Ghetto," and "An American Trilogy," he paved a one-of-a-kind highway to superstardom.

His tumultuous journey would lead him from a two-room shack in Tupelo, Mississippi to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. His voice would eventually be pressed into over a billion records. His image would become the third most reproduced in the world...right behind Jesus and Mickey Mouse. Even Miss Marmann would have to agree, that's not a bad four dollar's worth.

From British Blondes to Shimmy Shakers

Burlesque, the "Embarrassing Stepchild" of Show Business

The first glow of Burlesque's spotlight glimmered in 1869, when an English entertainer named Lydia Thompson brought a troupe called the "British Blondes" to New York City. In the days when a man's heart would soar at the glimpse of a lady's ankle, nobody was quite prepared for what was to come. Suddenly the audience was treated to a view of ladies in short skirts and tights! Even though Lydia was a colorful character, she was pretty tame compared to many burlesque queens who would follow in her footsteps. In fact, before her trip to the United States, she had become the toast of the cultured British aristocracy. A Spanish dancer named Perea Nina had recently performed in England. Perea was so talented that she stirred the admiration of the public, who had previously given praise only to English dancers.

Journalists questioned whether any British dancer could match Perea's graceful style. The issue became quite a heated topic, since dance was an important diversion for the English elite. Then, out of the shadows, stepped dancer Lydia Thompson. She had been studying Perea's style and challenged her to a "dancing duel." During the well-publicized event, the audience agreed that Lydia had indeed out-stepped her Spanish rival. One reporter declared she had "vindicated the honor of her country." Overnight, Lydia became a national celebrity.

Sailing high on her fame, she assembled a dance troupe she christened the British Blondes and soon set sail for America. Following their New York premier, the Blondes toured the country to raving fans who often lined up for blocks in front of the theaters. "The propriety of visiting the Blondes," one reporter observed, "is a question which each individual must decide for himself." Then he added, "The number of individuals who have decided this question, by the way, is something astonishing."

Although the British Blondes gave what would be considered today as a rather watered-down performance, the press had a field day. As the audience cheered and applauded, the critics sharpened their pencils and their tongues. Not only did the Blondes' physical appearance offend the moral taste of the critics, but they weren't wild about the Blondes' theatrical abilities. During their opening number, their singing and dancing was loosely based on a play titled "Ixion, Ex-King of Thessaly." Apparently it was a little too loose an adaptation for one newspaper critic. He wrote that the production resembled an "Irish Stew." "One minute they are dancing a cancan," he complained, "and the next, singing a psalm tune."

Ironically, the critic's raves, as is so often the case, simply helped sell more tickets. Their wrath had already been stirred up by the American showing of a European play called "The Black Crook." The play had opened at New York City's Niblo's Garden on September 12, 1866. Not only did the performance shock the public with "Amazon parades of ladies in tights," but the musical drama had introduced a shocking new dance - the cancan.

The critics' wrath was quickly transferred to the British Blondes. The public, however, flocked to see this new "Irish stew" form of entertainment - just as they had swarmed to see the Black Crook. Nobody was quite sure just what type of show it was, but the combination of singing, dancing and blondes in tights pulled in the audiences - and the audiences' money. The best description of the new entertainment hybrid was likely that of a "female minstrel show," since it combined a little bit of everything.

Success inevitably breeds imitation and it wasn't long before there were blondes around every corner. The fad unleashed what author Irving Zeidman described as a "hodgepodge of every theatrical oddity, bolstered and buttressed by fat blondes." Nearly every show title included the name "blonde" and since the ideal female of those days was indeed a bit on the portly side, his observation was probably pretty accurate.

Although Lydia Thompson introduced the entertainment that was used as a model for this new type of show, the burlesque show itself was actually the brainchild of a showman named Michael Leavitt. He had been a great fan of P. T. Barnum and like Barnum, he had toured the world to locate exotic attractions he could display back in the states. During a trip to Europe, he was impressed by a European tent show called Rentz's Circus. Leavitt also enjoyed Lydia's female minstrel show concept. He decided to work with the format and began to mix elements of the variety show in with it. He incorporated the opening of the minstrel show, which was primarily a conglomeration of songs, gags and chorus numbers.

For the second section, he borrowed the "olio" concept from both the variety and minstrel shows. During this part, the diversity of the performances was almost unlimited. Gymnastic feats and trained dogs and monkeys were stuck in among baggy-pants comedians and showgirls. The third and final segment - the afterpiece, was modeled from the minstrel show's "walk-around." During this part, the entire company gathered for a grand finale. Leavitt retained the half-circle arrangement of the minstrel show. The "end men" however, like all the performers, were women.

Leavitt named the first example of his new concoction, "Mme. Rentz's Female Minstrels," after the European circus he had admired. His instincts were perfect. The show went over so well that he soon began to search for more talent. While recruiting performers, he discovered a showgirl named Mabel Santley. She was so popular that Leavitt soon renamed the program the Rentz-Santley Show. Mabel Santley's affect on the male audience members was legendary. In one southern city, two men in the same stage box were competing for her favor. During the show, one of the men left the theater and returned with a bouquet for the new love of his life. The other fellow, not to be outdone, sent an usher out for a huge basket of flowers.

In retaliation, the first man once again left the theater and this time returned with a gorgeous crown of roses. Finally, his rival cast caution to the wind. He removed his diamond solitaire ring, fastened it to his boutonniere and pitched it on the stage at Mabel Santley's feet. As this war of the roses progressed, it eventually exploded into a fight that sent both of them sailing over the stage box and onto the stage. There, they continued their brawl in front of the entire audience. Later, when Miss Santley asked a stagehand why they had fought, she learned that she had been the object of their passionate combat. "Each one swore," he informed her, "that you looked at him and smiled."

The innocent days of Burlesque, however, were not to stay. Through the following decades, smiles and coy winks transformed into rowdy bumps and grinds. Police were routinely stationed inside the theaters to guard against potential problems. Candy butchers would hawk pornographic literature and pictures along with their nickel boxes of chocolates. In addition, the dancers grew more and more daring, sometimes removing everything, to the delight of their rowdy fans. As vaudeville and variety grew more popular, the original form of burlesque faded into history. Sadly for those who had poured their energy and hopes into trying to upgrade the shows, the death of burlesque was not even properly mourned. Many held the opinion expressed by one critic, that burlesque had emerged from nowhere and "wound up in the same place."
The Birth of the Dream

The Origin of Martin Luther King Jr.'s

Legendary "I Have a Dream" Speech

A hot summer sun can bake the attention out of even the most engrossed crowd. Add a full day of songs and speeches and you've got the makings of a late-afternoon stupor. On that August 28th day, back in 1963, the sun was in high gear. It had not only driven streams of perspiration down the faces of the Washington D. C. gathering, but had driven many to the shade trees and others to the reflecting pool to cool their burning feet.

No, after four o'clock in the afternoon, following an 87-degree high-humidity day, was not exactly the prime time to stir the souls of the onlookers. That, however, is what the smartly dressed speaker desperately hoped he could do. After all, he had worked on the final version of his speech until four in the morning. And between meetings with fellow speakers and civil rights leaders, Martin Luther King Jr. continued to cross out and substitute words on the prepared text, striving to polish it to near perfection.

Finally, the time was near. His close friend, Gospel singer, Mahalia Jackson, had imbued the protestors with her inimitable spirit as she belted out "I Been 'Buked and I Been Scorned," and followed it up with a soulful rendition of "How I Got Over." Then Rabbi Joachim Prinz from the American Jewish Congress spoke briefly about his time as a rabbi in Berlin under Hitler. Like the majority of German people, he asserted, America had become a nation of silent onlookers, when it came to racial injustice.

Then, the sweltering crowd saw Martin Luther King Jr. working his way through the notables on stage to take his place behind the podium. As he read the prepared script, he clearly emphasized each point. He was, in fact, a finely tuned speaking machine and had done nothing wrong. Unfortunately, as both he and the assemblage realized, he also hadn't done anything exceptionally right. He knew in his heart that although he had connected with the minds of the onlookers, he hadn't yet hooked their hearts. Nearing the end, he encouraged the participants to go back to their states and spread the message of racial equality. Then, as he paused a second, a voice rang out from the crowd below. "Tell 'em about the dream, Martin."

Still following his script, he continued, "Go back to the slums and ghettoes of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed." Then, as suddenly as before, the voice arose again. "Tell 'em about the dream." Obviously aware that shouting up to a nationally known speaker wasn't exactly proper etiquette, the owner of that voice, Mahalia Jackson, hoped her friendship with Doctor King would allow her to take the liberty. Throughout the trying times of his life, he had often called her on the phone, saying "Mahalia, I'm having a rough day, Sing for me." As she provided him with a private concert, tears often rolled down his face.

Although he continued with his planned speech, he instantly recognized her voice and knew exactly what she was referring to. Several times during the previous months, Mahalia had witnessed King's sermons stirring the crowds when he talked about the dream he had for the country - of blacks and whites living together in harmony. Like Martin, Mahalia had realized that his speech had not yet reached the emotional intensity he was capable of producing.

Still, though, he stuck to the comfort of his original message. "Let us not wallow in the valley of despair," King continued, "I say to you today, my friends..." But then it happened. During an unusually long pause, his whole demeanor transformed. Laying his script down, he grabbed the podium and leaned forward. As he did, one of his long-time advisors and friends, Clarence Jones, whispered to someone standing beside him on stage, "These people don't know it but they're about to go to church."

"And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow," he crooned in his newly enhanced preacher voice, "I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream." As he continued, a new intensity molded his features. He no longer found his words on a paper, but seemed to be picking them out of the air. He was, in fact, selecting them from a mental life-script that reached back through previous speeches as well as personal experiences and beliefs that had shaped his exceptional life. As he stood before about a quarter million onlookers and millions more watching him on television, he had cast off the safety wires and ventured out on the tightrope without a net. He was winging it.

As he did, all three major television networks sent his live image and voice across the airwaves to millions who had never heard him speak. One of those was President John Kennedy. As King's soaring rhetoric poured out of a television in the White House, Kennedy was riveted to the screen. "He's damned good," he commented, "Damned Good!" Like Kennedy, viewers across the nation - black and white, recognized a quality in Dr. King that somehow reached across racial and social divides. He acknowledged the historic mistreatment of blacks but didn't incite the crowd with inflammatory rhetoric. "America has given the Negro people a bad check," he declared, then added, "We've come to cash that check."

"I have a dream," he affirmed, "that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." As the viewers on the National Mall and in front of their televisions, took in his powerfully delivered words, many felt he was indeed speaking to and for them. Suddenly the exhaustion from the blazing sun and the long stream of speeches, lifted as a sea of faces focused on their new passionate spokesman. "I've never seen him speak the way I saw him on that day," Clarence Jones would recall, "It was as if some cosmic transcendental force came down and occupied his body."

As King ended his impromptu verbal journey with the words of an old Gospel song, "Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty, "I'm free at last," it was clear that the civil rights movement had a new voice. "Doctor King had the power, the ability and the capacity," U. S. Representative, John Lewis, would later summarize, "to transform those steps on the Lincoln Memorial into a monumental area that will forever be recognized."

The exhausted but energized participants would take more home with them than snapshots and souvenirs of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. They also carried back to Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana and the "slums and ghettos of our northern cities," a cherished memory. That memory far overshadowed the traffic problems of getting to the demonstration, as well as the blazing sun that beat them down once they were there. For the rest of their lives, they could tell envious children and wide-eyed grandchildren that they were there when the dream was born. Its birth, as Clarence Jones once put it, was prompted by, "one of the world's greatest gospel singers shouting out to one of the world's greatest Baptist ministers."
A Very Special Coat

Dolly Parton's Patchwork Coat That

Turned From Rags to "Solid Gold"

The gleaming silver needle plunged beneath the surface, reappeared, then dived again into the colorful cloth. As it left behind a straight row of tidy stitches, a small bright-eyed audience of one, smiled with delight. After all, the needle - and the loving hand that guided it - was stitching together the most colorful patchwork coat she had ever seen...just for her.

That "audience," young Dolly Parton, knew this was a very special coat. She was one of twelve children, and her mother seldom had the time to devote so much effort to one child. And not only was she tailoring it to fit her perfectly, but she was fashioning it to suit her colorful personality.

Since their family was dirt poor, the neighbors often donated leftover portions of cloth for her mother to piece together into quilts and clothing. Usually she would match the colors as closely as possible so it wouldn't be obvious they were made from scraps. Not with this project, however. She wanted to create a coat to match her daughter's bold and cheerful disposition.

She stitched together the brightest-colored pieces she could find. As she worked, she told young Dolly about a story from the Bible. This coat, her mother explained, would be a sign that she was loved and special...just like the coat of many colors that was given to Joseph. Dolly loved the story, and just couldn't wait to see the admiring faces of her school-mates when she showed them her beautiful new "coat of many colors." Unfortunately, as her classic song would later tell millions of fans, admiration was not exactly what she saw in the faces of her classmates.

"See my new coat?" she asked one of her young friends, as she proudly wore it to school for the first time.

"New," he snickered, "It looks like a bunch of rags!"

One after another, the other children also laughed at her beautiful new prize. As she swallowed the hurt and walked despondently to her seat, Dolly remembered the classroom turning into "a whole room of mocking faces."

Still, she was not going to let the other children ruin her pleasure over her mother's loving gift. When the teacher entered, she noticed Dolly was being ridiculed. Quietly, she asked her if she might want to put her coat in the cloakroom. The defiant young Dolly, however, wore the coat the entire day. When she left the classroom, she proudly walked out, sporting the multicolored garment like a flag of courage.

Her song about the incident, "Coat of Many Colors," has become Dolly's signature song. It remains her personal favorite and has helped alleviate some of the pain she felt. The fact that it was a solid-gold best seller has also helped ease that pain.

"It's amazing," she reflected in her autobiography, "how healing money can be."

That healing process would continue throughout her career. She would chart over twenty-five Number-one hit songs, and would be selected by the Country Music Association as the Female Vocalist of the Year for 1975 and '76, and Entertainer of the Year for 1978.

Dolly knew from an early age, that music could be the magic carpet that could carry her away from the poverty that surrounded her. She began writing songs before she even started school. Dolly would beg her mother to write down the words, since she hadn't yet learned to write.

Her uncle, Bill Owens, bought her a guitar when she was eight. Owens also spurred her musical career along by booking her on a Knoxville radio station at the age of ten. The show was hosted by a well-known Knoxville disc jockey, Cass Walker. When Walker heard Dolly sing, he couldn't believe his ears. Neither, in fact, could the other employees in the radio studio.

"Announcers and other people from all over the building came in," Owens remembered, "from upstairs and everywhere, just to hear this new talent. She was an instant hit, and Cass hired Dolly on the spot."

That was all it took - Dolly caught the country music bug. She wrote one song after another and practiced singing and playing the guitar whenever she could. She began co-writing songs with her uncle and even cut a record called "Puppy Love" shortly after her radio audition. It wasn't very successful, but it gave her another goal - to preserve more of her songs on records.

She had a lot of warm memories tied up with her family and friends around her Sevierville, Tennessee home. But the bite of that country music bug was too strong to ignore. Her uncle Bill had also caught it, and moved his family to Nashville so he could help Dolly work her way into Music City.

Dolly didn't drag her heels. She graduated from high school on a Friday and caught the Nashville bus on Saturday. In fact, she didn't even wait around long enough to do her laundry. She just packed up her dirty clothes and took them with her. She had more important things to think about than dirty laundry.

Unfortunately, Nashville was not in quite as big a hurry to meet Dolly Parton. She lived with her uncle's family for a few months and then got her own apartment. As she bounced around town, trying to get a foothold in the Nashville scene, she just couldn't seem to find an open door.

"There were some hungry days back then, I tell you," she remembered. "I had hotdog relish and mustard in my refrigerator, but that's all I had to eat for about three weeks, at one time."

Finally, to make up for her "mustard and relish" days, fate let Dolly draw two lucky cards in the same year. In 1967, she recorded her first hit song, "Dumb Blonde" and also joined Porter Wagoner's television show. During the next few years, she began to write and perform a steady stream of classic songs including "Tennessee Mountain Home," "Love is Like a Butterfly," "I Will Always Love You," Applejack" and of course "Coat of Many Colors,"

Her mother was right; Dolly is special. Other country music legends have left us with fascinating stories of their climb from "rags to riches." Dolly, however, even managed to turn the rags into riches.

The Queen of the Comstock

Julia Bulette, the Beloved Soiled Dove of Virginia City,

is Brutally Murdered and Universally Mourned

The Virginia City miners not only had taken real soap-and-water baths and picked out their best shirts for the big event but also had cleaned and dressed up their Nevada town. As the red, white and blue bunting fluttered in the July wind and the spirited brass band warmed up, everyone was more than ready to celebrate Independence Day.

At the center of the festivities was a parade, and one of the most celebrated components of that parade was the freshly washed fire truck of Engine Company No. 1. Not only did the vehicle sparkle and shine but so too did the woman riding atop it - Miss Julia Bulette, one of the booming silver-mining town's most treasured citizens. The firemen had made the slim, dark-eyed beauty an honorary member of their company as well as the queen of the July Fourth parade. And when the horse-pulled fire truck rolled down the street, Julia sat pretty and proud, wearing a fireman's hat and embracing a brass fire trumpet filled with fresh-cut roses. The firemen marching behind her were equally proud.

That particular Independence Day parade might have occurred as early as 1861, though accounts vary as to the year, as well as to exactly when Julia Bulette first arrived in Virginia City. Everyone agrees, however, on the date of a much sadder occurrence in town - Julia's demise. In the early morning of January 19, 1867, somebody beat her and smothered her in bed and then made off with most of her furs, jewelry and fine clothes.

The news of Julia Bulette's death spread like a raging prairie fire after her body was discovered later that morning. Many of the hardened miners of Virginia City mourned her with free-flowing tears. Never again would they see their beloved "Queen of the Comstock" sitting high atop Engine Company No. 1's truck. The women in the largely male community also mourned her, or at the very least were disturbed by the brutality of her death. Julia, after all, was no valued schoolmarm or esteemed minister's wife; she was a prostitute by trade, and by all accounts, quite a popular one.

The Comstock Lode silver strike in 1859 gave birth to Virginia City, and shortly after that, Julia Bulette drifted in from the west coast. Unlike most of the other soiled doves who fluttered into that rowdy place, Julia didn't have a hard-crust personality. She was warm, compassionate and even relatively well read and sophisticated. As she settled into Virginia City life, even the proper ladies of the town came to respect her kind-hearted manner and generosity to worthy causes.

First among those causes was the town's fire department. Julia donated freely to help the struggling department maintain state-of-the-art equipment. Her assistance apparently didn't stop with donations. At times, she would work the brakes of the handcart engines as the firemen battled the flames. Since Virginia City was primarily made up of wooden buildings perched on a wind-swept mountainside, soaring sparks from wood-burning stoves kept the fire department - and Miss Julia - quite busy.

Between her respectable volunteer responsibilities, Julie quietly plied her trade in a wood-frame house on D Street, where the soiled doves nested. Nestled in among the mahogany furniture, Brussels carpets and lace curtains, a customer could partake in his favorite alcoholic beverage as he enjoyed the company of his accommodating hostess. He would be her sole customer for the night and was expected to dig a little deeper into his pocket than with some of her other less-exclusive neighbors. But nobody seemed to mind. Apparently the "Queen of the Comstock" was worth it.

On the evening of July 18, 1867, Julia dressed to take in a performance at Piper's Opera House. According to reports, she was told that although she had always been allowed to sit in the main section of the theater, a town ordinance had changed. She must now be seated in a special viewing box reserved for the red-light ladies of the town. The curtains of that section were kept tightly closed to keep them out of the view of the "proper ladies" of the town. When Julia refused, she was promptly escorted outside.

Shaking off her indignation, Julia decided to visit her neighbor and friend, Gertrude Holmes, for an evening meal and some pleasant conversation. Leaving Gertrude's company a little after 11 o'clock that evening, Julia told her she was going to meet a miner friend at her house. Those would be the last words her friends would ever hear from her.

At about 11:30 the next morning, Gertrude stopped by with breakfast for the two of them. To her horror, she discovered Julia had been brutally beaten and strangled. In addition, the killer seemed to have stolen many of her belongings. Soon Gertrude would be joined in her grief by most of Virginia City's citizenry. The mines, mills and even the saloons closed out of respect.

The next day, a cold snowy Monday, a crowd turned out for her funeral in the firehouse. Although the religious leaders held firm with a town regulation that no prostitute should be buried in their cemetery, her admirers found a peaceful spot on a nearby hill overlooking the town. They arranged for a formal Catholic funeral and placed Julia in a silver-handled casket carried by a black-plumed, glass-walled hearse. Some sixty firemen led the procession to her grave, followed by the Nevada Militia band. To the accompaniment of the band's funeral dirges, sixteen carriages, packed with mourners, rolled behind the hearse. Trailing after them, thousands of dejected miners and storekeepers trudged through the gusty snow to Julia's final resting place.

After several men solemnly put in place a wooden plank bearing the painted name "Julia," the procession shuffled back down the hill. The men of Engine Company No. 1 filled the frigid air with mournful song as they broke into a heart-rending version of "The Girl I Left Behind." The town they returned to was draped in black for the first time since President Abraham Lincoln's assassination. Even the bars remained closed during the sorrowful day.

Authorities had no leads in the Bulette murder case for nearly three months. Then one of Julia's old friends, Martha Camp, reported to the police that she had been surprised in her sleep by a man with a weapon in his hand. When she screamed, the intruder had run from her room, but not before she saw his face. The police promptly arrested the man she saw - a French baker named John Millian.

While the suspect was in jail, a resident of nearby Gold Hill reported that she had recently purchased a dress from Millian that he told her he was selling for a widow whose husband had died in a mining accident. When the police showed the dress to Sam Rosener, a local dry goods merchant, he recognized it as one he had sold to the late Julia Bulette. The authorities then discovered a trunk that Millian had stored at the bakery. When they popped the lid open, they saw most of the rest of the Julia's belongings. That, of course, would soon signal the end of Millian at the end of a rope - as the saddened Virginia City citizens revenged their beloved Queen of the Comstock.

A "Spirited Witness"

How the Second-hand Testimony of the Greenbriar Ghost

Helped a Jury Convict a West Virginia Murderer

Mary Jane Heaster had prayed for this moment for the past four weeks. Night after night, she fervently pleaded for her daughter to return from the grave and tell her exactly what had happened. Despite her desperate yearning, she wasn't prepared for the startling vision she would encounter. On a chilly 1897 February evening, shortly after she drifted off to sleep, she awoke to find her daughter, Zona, at the foot of her bed. Zona wasn't just standing there, Mary Jane would later report, she was hovering.

Zona told her mother a tragic tale about her new husband's ongoing abuse and his fury when he learned she had not cooked any meat for his dinner. According to her vivid depiction, Trout, her husband of only three months, didn't care that she had laid out a tasty assortment of fresh fruits, breads and jellies. Zona said he flew into a violent rage, attacked her and broke her neck. For the next three nights, she continued her visits to her mother's bedside, always describing the incident the same way. Finally, to confirm her assertion, as she turned and floated out of Mary Jane's bedroom, Zona turned her head around completely backward and maintained a sad and eerie gaze.

The bizarre report of those late-night visitations would spread from neighbor to neighbor across Greenbrier County, West Virginia. Eventually the account even found its way into the court records of one of the most infamous and uncanny criminal trials in United States history. Not only would the trial stand out for its gruesome content, but it's the only time a murderer was convicted by the testimony of a ghost.

The young lady who would allegedly assume that ghostly shape, Elva Zona Heaster, was born in Greenbrier County around 1873. Her early life remains a mystery, but in October of 1896, she met a thirty-five-year-old drifter who had moved to the Greenbrier area to work as a blacksmith. Despite his ungainly name of Erasmus Stribbling Trout Shue, he caught young Zona's attention. In fact, the handsome well-muscled blacksmith apparently swept her off her feet. Within weeks, she took the vow to become Mrs. Shue.

Zona's mother, Mary Jane, took an instant dislike to the stranger, telling her friends she felt he was hiding something behind his smiling amiable manner. Unfortunately, that hidden something would soon materialize. In the late morning of January 23rd, 1897, he was working at his shop when he asked an eleven-year-old neighbor boy, Andrew Jones, to see if Zona needed anything from the store. Trout told him he would be shopping later and wondered if his wife needed something.

When Zona didn't answer his knock, Andrew furtively entered the house and found her collapsed at the foot of the stairs. Realizing something was dreadfully wrong, he ran home to tell his mother. She quickly contacted the town's local doctor and coroner, George Knapp. As she did, Andrew ran back to the blacksmith's shop to inform Trout of the tragedy. By the time Doctor Knapp arrived at the Shue house, Trout had returned home and carried Zona upstairs. Not only had he laid her out on their bed, but had washed her off, clothed her in a high-necked dress with a stiff collar, and placed a veil over her face.

Doctor Knapp later said that as he tried to examine Zona's body, Trout cradled her head in his arms and sobbed hysterically. In deference to Trout's intense grief, and with no reason to suspect him of wrongdoing, Knapp abbreviated his usual inspection of the body. Following a cursory examination, he proclaimed the cause of Zona's death to be an "everlasting faint." This descriptive, but almost humorous diagnosis, was sometimes given in the 1800's to death by heart attack. This event, the doctor reasoned, had likely caused Zona to tumble down the stairs to her death.

Shue stayed close to his deceased bride - especially her neck, as she was transported in an open casket to her parents' mountain farm on Saturday. The next day, during Zona's wake, several neighbors noted that one second he was sobbing uncontrollably and the next, maniacally chasing everyone away from the coffin. He propped up Zona's head with a pillow on one side and a rolled cloth on the other, explaining this would "make her rest easier." He then tied a large scarf around her neck, tearfully telling onlookers that it had been her favorite. His suspicious behavior set tongues wagging in the community, but he successfully managed to keep people away from her body until she was buried on Monday.

Convinced he had gotten away with the grisly murder, Trout settled back into his blacksmith routine, summoning up his mourning face when appropriate. Meanwhile, his still-fuming mother-in-law was busy summoning up his wife. After her daughter's ghostly visits, Mary Jane was convinced that her visions of Zona were more than just nightmares. Acutely aware that Greenbrier's prosecuting attorney, John Alfred Preston, would think she was crazy, Mrs. Heaster worked up her nerve to present him with this new information.

After spending most of the afternoon listening to her, Preston finally agreed to look into the case. As he began to question neighbors and friends, he realized that many of them shared Mrs. Heaster's suspicions about her daughter's husband. Several told Preston about Trout's peculiar behavior at the wake. While the prosecuting attorney continued his inquiry, he became more and more convinced of Trout's guilt. The discovery of a broken neck during a second autopsy following an exhumation of her body, cemented his suspicions.

During an ensuing jury trial, on June 22nd 1897, Preston tried his best to compensate for the lack of an eyewitness. He meticulously introduced every piece of circumstantial evidence he could muster and interrogated each of the neighbors in turn. But when he questioned Zona's mother, he didn't even mention her visions. The jury, he feared, might think Mary Jane Heaster's sorrow had pushed her outside the boundaries of sanity.

Shue's defense attorney, Henry Gilmer, also felt the jurors would think Mrs. Hester was emotionally disturbed if she talked about the late-night visitations by her deceased daughter. Therefore, he couldn't wait to discredit her testimony by eliciting these wild ravings.

"I have heard," he baited her during cross-examination, "that you had some dream or vision which led to this post mortem examination." To his dismay, rather than the rolling eyes and snickers he expected from the rural jury members, he saw only fascinated wide-eyed expressions. As the testimony continued, Gilmer repeatedly tried to depict Mrs. Heaster's visions of Zona as wild dreams.

"Are you not considerably superstitious?" he queried.

"No sir, I'm not," she countered. "I was never that way before, and am not now."

After several more unsuccessful attempts to rattle her, the frustrated attorney finally abandoned his line of questioning. Then, a sinking realization hit him. Since he had introduced the subject of Mrs. Heaster's visions, Zona's second-hand testimony was now an official part of the court records and could be taken into consideration by the jury. A little over an hour after they left the courtroom, his worst fear materialized. Upon returning, the foreman delivered a guilty verdict that would lead to a life sentence in West Virginia's Moundsville penitentiary. Apparently the prosecution did have an eye-witness after all. And to the chagrin of the defense team, she couldn't even be cross-examined.

A Solitary Savior

When James Buchanan Decides to Replace Brigham Young

With a New Governor, He Nearly Ignites a Senseless Bloodbath.

One Man, Thomas Kane, Single-handedly Prevents Disaster

"Destruction stares us in the face whichever way we turn," the Mormon soldier wrote. "They that have not the Holy Ghost the comforter in them, are beginning to tremble." As John Pulsipher scribed these words in his 1857 journal, he foresaw the potential extermination of his friends and family. He knew the bullets of federal soldiers outnumbered those of his Mormon comrades. But as he listened to his leader's speech, he realized that although Brigham Young was aware of the danger, he seemed ready and willing to face it.

Young had been adamant in his condemnation. "It is all I can do to hold back from killing those infernal scoundrels out yonder at Bridger," he declared, "sent by Government to destroy this people." "President Buchanan has violated his oath of office in sending that army against us, as peaceable citizens as are in the union. I need a breeching as strong as that of Dutch harness to enable me to hold back from killing every devil of that army..."

The journal of twenty-nine-year-old John Pulsipher would provide an inside account of a very strange incident in our nation's early history. As Pulsipher digested the words of his revered leader, he took comfort from Young's confidence in the strength of their resistance. The month before, Pulsipher and his fellow Latter-day Saints had received some disturbing news. Two Mormon messengers returned from the States with the mail and an ominous warning. "They say the people are terribly wicked," Pulsipher noted, "have no peace there and are determined to make war on us."

The roots of this perceived assault were tangled in a mass of misunderstanding as well as justified paranoia. It was true that Mormon hatred still simmered in the States. The public's aversion toward their practice of polygamy and the group's adoption of the title, "The Chosen People," helped to fuel the anti-Mormon sentiment. But the federal troops heading toward Salt Lake City in the summer of 1857 were not planning to exterminate the Latter-day Saints. Nevertheless, the Mormon's mistaken perception of their motive very nearly touched off a war that would have surely painted the Utah desert red with blood.

The spark that ignited this explosive drama was struck in the spring of 1857. Federal officials complained that Utah Territory's current governor, Brigham Young, was too dictatorial. Rumors had also spread that he was intent on turning the territory into an independent state. In response, newly elected president, James Buchanan, decided to install Georgia Governor, Alfred Cumming, as the territory's new governor. Buchanan felt that Cumming, along with several other new civil officers, would provide more federal control there.

Not only did Buchanan fail to inform the adjourned congress of this plan, he made no attempt to tell Brigham Young that he would be replaced. He hoped to implement his scheme before the Mormons were fully aware of what was happening. To back up the authority of his new appointee, Buchanan ordered a military escort of twenty-five hundred troops. When the word arrived in Salt Lake City that a massive federal force was headed in their direction, the sect's members naturally reflected upon their troubled history.

Almost from the beginning, the Latter-day Saints had faced hatred from their neighbors. Originating in 1830 in Fayette, New York, the unwelcome sect had tried and failed to settle in New York, Ohio, Missouri and Illinois. As they sought refuge, persecution followed them. Their homesteads were often burned, and their members were tarred-and-feathered, whipped or even murdered. And now, after fleeing to the barren western desert, it seemed they were still being stalked. This new assault, they concluded, would be the government's final act of hatred - their total annihilation.

Unfortunately, the actions of the approaching army did nothing to rectify their faulty assumption. As the newly appointed territorial officials and their supporting troops headed west in mid-July, their purpose remained shrouded in secrecy. When news of their march reached Brigham Young on July 24, he immediately activated his militia - still known as the "Nauvoo Legion" from their stay in Nauvoo, Illinois. The mixture of the federal government's secrecy and the Mormon's paranoia, set the stage for a bloody confrontation.

Fortunately, along with his implementation of the Nauvoo Legion, Young made another move. He sent a message to Thomas Kane, an old friend from Philadelphia. Kane, a lawyer and humanitarian, empathized with the sect's struggle against their relentless persecution. When Thomas Kane received Young's message, he enthusiastically accepted the challenge. Well known in high places, Kane's first stop was President Buchanan's office. The president welcomed Kane's intervention but said he would not be able to officially sponsor his trip. In a follow-up letter to Kane, he wrote, "Your only reward must be a consciousness that you are doing your duty."

Buchanan, in fact, didn't even realize the gravity of the situation. "You express a strong conviction, in which however, I do not participate," he noted in the letter, "that a large portion of the Mormons labor under a mistake as to the intentions of the federal government towards them." Over time, however, that "mistake" had transformed into a burning resolve by the Nauvoo Legion to repel the federal invaders at all costs. By early October, the army had reached the Green River Valley, heading toward the Mormon outpost of Fort Bridger. Hundreds of members of the Nauvoo Legion had fortified themselves along Echo Canyon, west of Fort Bridger about 65-miles east of Salt Lake City. They had even burned Bridger to prevent the federal army from using it as a fortress.

Fortunately, just as more bloodshed was primed to erupt, a fierce mid-October blizzard raged through the valley. Snow and sleet blasted the countryside as temperatures dropped to 16° below zero. Although many of the federal soldiers were eager to press on, their senior officer, Colonel Alexander, decided they would over-winter near the burned-out ruins of Fort Bridger. Young relayed a message that they would not be molested there. This timely delay in the confrontation would give Thomas Kane a chance to work his diplomatic wonders. That chance, however, seemed exceedingly slim.

Kane had left New York on January 5, 1858 for his improbable mission. Since the Overland Trail was impassable in the winter, he traveled by steamship to Panama where he boarded the railroad across the isthmus. He continued by sea to Los Angeles. From there he traveled on horseback with a Mormon escort, to Salt Lake City. The exhausted Kane finally reached his destination on February twenty-fifth. Following a dangerous string of diplomatic meetings, tirelessly shuttling back and forth between the sworn enemies, he finally succeeded in quelling the boiling tensions. On June 19, Kane arrived in Washington to inform President Buchanan that the encounter was officially over. Philadelphia's Germantown Telegraph would call Kane's mission, "one of the most romantic, dangerous and successful expeditions on record."

Although Kane would not be that well remembered by history, his energy and persistence had snuffed out a fast-burning fuse. Without his intervention, the volatile mixture of the bubbling hatred of the federal soldiers and the desperate paranoia of the Later-day Saints would have surely exploded and surged across the Utah desert. The death of thousands who faced, as John Pulsipher put it, "destruction...whichever way we turn," had been prevented by Thomas Kane, a solitary savior.

A Bonnie Little Beginning

The Routine Recording Session of "My Bonnie"  
That Lit the Slow-Burning Fuse of Beatlemania

The setting was a small Hamburg, Germany recording studio. The date was 1960. The raw excitement of the event deeply stirred the striving young rock musicians as their golden future flashed before them and... Yes, what an exciting way that would have been to depict the event. Unfortunately, in truth, nobody there had a clue that anything unusual had happened. After the group backed singer, Tony Sheridan, on several songs, they simply strolled out of the studio. There was no wild applause. There were no crazed teenage girls. And not one photographer recorded the moment.

In fact, the musicians didn't even use the real name of their group. It sounded too much like "peedles," the German slang word for a particular portion of the male anatomy. No, nothing about the recording session or the subsequently released single, "My Bonnie" by Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers, seemed the least bit out of the ordinary. Before history was through with "My Bonnie," however, the record would help spawn a popular music group very much "out of the ordinary." Established American rockabilly stars would watch the group's meteoric rise with gaping mouths. Not only would they eventually sell over a hundred million singles as well as a hundred million albums, their songs would chronicle the times of the youth culture they themselves helped to create.

It would take quite a few months for the little record to work its way into music history. Finally, in November of 1961, a Liverpool man named Raymond Jones contacted the manager of a local record shop called the North End Music Store. Jones wanted to obtain a copy of a German release he particularly liked, titled "My Bonnie." The manager was unaware of the record and had a tough time tracking it down. Once he did, he decided to locate the group that had prompted his customer's enthusiasm.

He was amazed to learn they were playing a lunch-time gig in a local club on Mathew Street called The Cavern. According to later accounts, he was surprised not only to find they were not a German group, but that they were already quite popular among the Cavern customers. As that store manager, Brian Epstein, watched the Beatles entertain the Cavern lunch crowd, he knew he was witnessing something special. He could not have guessed, in his wildest dreams, how special.

Epstein kept the slow-burning fuse lit. Soon after the meeting, he signed on as their manager and set about trying to interest record companies. He soon found that not everyone shared his enthusiasm about the group. One after another, the recording companies turned down his new find. With a statement that was not destined to be framed in the "Hall of Fame of Farsighted Record Executives," one Decca official declared firmly, "Groups with guitars are on the way out." Finally Epstein and the boys found an attentive ear at EMI Records, the English branch of Capitol Records. Producer George Martin, like Epstein, recognized the group's potential. Martin then arranged for a provisional contract to make demos for EMI's Parlophone Records.

Martin sat in on their debut recording session at EMI's Abbey Road studio. He soon learned that he had not only signed up a group of talented musicians, but an excellent song-writing team as well. During that initial session, they recorded both "Love Me Do" and "P. S. I Love You." Finally, the fuse had reached the magic stick of Beatlemania dynamite.

The ingredients of that magic dynamite had been stirred and blended since 1957. That summer, an amateur Liverpool skiffle group known as the Quarrymen was playing at a church picnic in the Liverpool suburb of Woolton. Skiffle was a unique British combination of folk, rhythm and blues, and jazz. An aspiring young rock musician went to see the band at the picnic and was impressed with what he saw. After a while, he began chatting with its leader, John Lennon. They soon discovered a mutual interest in the musical styles of Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, and Little Richard. Before long, Lennon asked the young musician, Paul McCartney, to work with him in the music field.

By the end of the year they had recruited a school mate of McCartney's - fifteen-year-old George Harrison. Then Stuart Sutcliffe, an art school friend of Lennon's, became their bass player. Sutcliffe reportedly couldn't play a note. But he had recently sold a painting for a good sum, and the group needed the money to upgrade their equipment.

Later, a young drummer named Pete Best filled out their musical line-up. Best's mother owned a club called the Casbah, a site where the Quarrymen regularly played. In the spring of 1961, following a gig in Hamburg, Sutcliffe decided to leave the group to become a full-time painter. Sadly, he would die a short time later from a brain hemorrhage.

The final shift would come with the dismissal of Pete Best. His good looks added to the group's popularity with their female clientele. Unfortunately, his ability on the drums didn't quite match his looks. The girls who frequented the Cavern, however, weren't as musically concerned. They protested the firing of their handsome hero by attacking the group, leaving George Harrison with a black eye. Fortunately for the physical health of the remaining members, the girls eventually accepted Best's replacement, the lovable easy-going Ringo Starr.

As the group's membership shuffled around, so did their name. They switched from the Quarrymen in 1959 and began to bill themselves as "Johnny and the Moondogs." Later they selected the name of the "Silver Beetles" and eventually, in the summer of 1960, settled on simply "The Beatles."

Once the magic of the Beatles began, there was no stopping it. Their legend has filled volumes of books and reels of documentary films. From the high-energy youthful sounds of "I Want to Hold Your Hand," "I Saw Her Standing There," and "Twist and Shout" to the mature high-emotion renderings of "Yesterday," "Nowhere Man," and "Eleanor Rigby," they never stopped to rest on their ever-expanding reputation. It is truly magical that such an explosive legend could have been ignited by such a "Bonnie little beginning."

A Vow of Vengeance

The Pledge of Revenge that Transformed

the Name Geronimo into an Ageless Battle Cry

Geronimo spoke with the calmness of retrospection as he shared his memories of one of the rare contented periods of his life. During a 1905 interview with biographer, S. M. Barrett, he recalled growing up in the 1830's and 40's in No-Doyohn Canyon, Mexico. "I was very happy," he said. "I could go wherever I wanted and do whatever I liked." One thing he definitely liked doing was spending time with a young lady named Alope. "She was a slender, delicate girl," he fondly reflected. "We had been lovers for a long time."

Eventually, he related, his tribal council granted him the privilege of asking Alope's father for her hand. "He asked many ponies for her," the elderly Geronimo recalled, noting that her father likely wanted to keep her with him since she was a very dutiful daughter. "I made no reply," he continued, "but in a few days, appeared before his wigwam with the herd of ponies and took with me, Alope." As their family grew by three children, life for the young Apache warrior, it appeared, would be filled with peace and joy. Appearances, unfortunately, were dreadfully deceiving. Within a few short years, his peaceful world would be destroyed.

That destruction came in the form of a barbaric attack upon his camp by a company of 400 Mexican soldiers from Sanora. Resources vary as to the exact date, but agree it was in the 1850's. They attacked the camp while the men were trading in the nearby town of Janos. The origins of the bloody massacre were set in motion in 1835, when, in an attempt to clear the Apache from their area, the Mexican state of Sonora began to offer a bounty for their scalps. Sadly, that reward wasn't limited to the scalps of warriors, but to those of women and children as well. A vicious mix of hatred and greed would lead to a mass slaughter which included the young brave's wife, Alope, his mother and all three of his children.

At the time of the attack, he was not yet known as Geronimo, but by his earlier birth name of Goyohkla. His new name was bestowed years later as a result of Mexican soldiers' responses to his attacks. When Goyohkla fearlessly lunged toward them in battle, they often cried out for Saint Jerome, the patron saint of the Mexican army. As they screamed his name, Jerome, or "Geronimo" in Spanish, their attacker would forever be known by that name. Eventually, his name would become synonymous with ferocious courage. Throughout the decades to follow, one battle cry has echoed across fields of battle all over the world...Geronimo!

During the interview, he remembered the dark hours after he discovered the tragic massacre. "I silently turned away and stood by the river," he told his interviewer, "How long I stood there, I do not know." He recalled that later that evening, he somehow summoned the energy to attend a war council. During the meeting, his tribal chief, Mangas Coloradas, decided that they should return to their home territory since they were vastly outnumbered. As Geronimo related the sad incident during his interview, he told of numbly plodding along for miles. "I did not pray," he glumly reflected, "nor did I resolve to do anything in particular, for I had no purpose left."

Once he reached the camp, he burned all of his family's property to destroy anything that would remind him of his former life. "None had lost as I had," he would later observe, "for I had lost all." The flames would spark a vow of vengeance that ignited a raging reign of terror throughout the southwest. Geronimo found courage to fight without fear when a spirit voice told him, "No gun can ever kill you, and I will guide your arrows."

Strengthened by this conviction, his intense sorrow continued to spawn the violent raging storms that would form his legacy. The next decade erupted with Geronimo's raids on Mexican and U. S. forces as well as on wagon trains and settlements. He served as the Chiricahua Apache's shaman or medicine man as well as their war leader and his visions often guided their actions.

Although never a chief, he often spoke for his Nedhai band, since the chief, Geronimo's brother-in-law, had a speech impediment. Geronimo's speech, however, was clear and to the point. "All of the Indians," he declared, "agreed not to be friendly with the white man anymore." That unfriendliness would turn to all-out war as Geronimo and his warriors swooped down on surrounding camps and settlements. Like the attack he was avenging, his brutal raids bred fear and hatred among the survivors.

Geronimo would join with several famous war chiefs, including Cochise, Loco and Victoria, to broaden his campaign of vengeance. Throughout the years ahead, they spread a trail of blood across both sides of the Mexican border. That trail, however, was also soaked with Indian blood as the resistance from U. S. forces grew stronger. Eventually, after witnessing many comrades fall to the soldiers' guns, he surrendered and tried to settle into farming life on Southern New Mexico's Mescalero Apache reservation. As might be expected, after his life of unfettered adventure, quietly hoeing rows of corn simply couldn't compete. Intermittently, he would break free of reservation life to continue his raiding.

Needless to say, this didn't set well with the surrounding citizens. Pressured by their complaints following his escape from the reservation and retreat into the Sierra Madre mountains, the government sent troops to retrieve him. As Geronimo traveled deeper into his mountain sanctuary and continued his raids, nearly 5,000 U. S. and 3,000 Mexican soldiers unsuccessfully searched for him. In the summer of 1886, his refuge was finally discovered by government-paid Apache scouts who convinced him to surrender. As he reluctantly traded freedom for a life of confinement, Geronimo left a legacy of raging terror - the kind that could only result from a life powered by a Vow of Vengeance.
A Festival-free Fourth

The Lack of Planning for a Fourth of July Event that

Planted the Seeds of Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show

William F. Cody's North Platte, Nebraska friends had little trouble bringing him up to speed on their preparations for celebrating the upcoming 1882 Fourth of July holiday. In fact, they could summarize what they had done with one word - "nothing." Cody, who had just moved to North Platte, was dumbstruck. As he complained about their laziness, they all agreed he was right. It simply wasn't patriotic not to do anything. They further agreed that their newly arrived critic, already known for his theatrical abilities, would be the ideal organizer. And so, with their festival-free Fourth, they helped give birth to a rowdy and riveting performance that would eventually bring the wild and woolly West to millions of wide-eyed city slickers.

Once Cody accepted his organizational role, his new neighbors began to toss out suggestions. One of them said the town's fenced-in race track might be a good location for the celebration. Another recalled that M. C. Keefe had a small buffalo herd they might use. As they stoked Cody's imagination, they could almost see the creative embers flickering in his mind. By the time the meeting's mandatory tobacco smoke and alcohol haze had dissipated, the basic ingredients of the celebration were laid out. They would commemorate the holiday at the race track with a buffalo exhibition, a sharp-shooting contest and various riding and roping competitions. When the little planning group adjourned, they had no idea they had just created the framework for an extravaganza that would one day captivate politicians, princes and popes.

Cody set about transforming the floating cloud of ideas into smoking guns, lurching horses and dusty cowboys and cowgirls. Using his significant skills of persuasion, he talked local business leaders into putting up prize money for contests. Then, printing five thousand handbills, he spread the word that bronco busters, bull ropers and sharp-shooters could add to their bankrolls by participating in the event. He had hoped for a few high-spirited entrants. He got hundreds! As the gutsy riders and straining broncos and steers brought screaming crowds to their feet, something was obvious. This celebration, which Cody would dub the Old Glory Blowout, was destined to become much more than a one-time occurrence.

Years before the Blowout, Cody's youthful energy began to simmer. Like the restless broncos in his later events, young William F. Cody yearned for unfettered freedom. Following the untimely death of his father in 1857, he left his comfortable home life at eleven or twelve, to head west. He signed on as a cattle driver and teamster with the Russell, Majors and Waddell freight company and headed back and forth across the Great Plains. According to his memoirs, which most historian agree were likely a tad embellished, after a couple years with the freight company, he worked a number of colorful jobs. These included stints as a prospector during the Pike's Peak Gold Rush in 1859 and later as a Pony Express rider.

Despite a little historical fuzziness about this period of his life, he would soon step clearly into history books written about both the Old West and early entertainment. Eventually, his real-life western adventures would find their way to stages and arenas across the country. Unlike many city-bred performers who merely portrayed cowboys and frontiersmen in front of audiences, Cody was the real deal.

Throughout his show business career, he followed the call of his beloved western prairies as well as the call of the crowds. That career was built upon his real-life reputation. One of his early jobs involved hunting buffalo to feed the workers on the Kansas Pacific Railroad. He was such a successful shot that he soon gained the nickname of Buffalo Bill. There was, however, another fellow, William Comstock, who also used that name. According to accounts, Cody won an eight-hour shooting match with Comstock to determine who deserved the title, Buffalo Bill. That name would soon spread across the country when dime-novel writer, Ned Buntline, used it for one of his heroes, loosely based on Cody's exploits. His 1869 dime novel, Buffalo Bill, the King of the Border Men, would be the first of a long string of literary fact-fiction that portrayed Buffalo Bill as a larger-than-life Western legend.

Encouraged by the success of his dime novels, Buntline wrote a play based on the character. Cody attended one of the performances and complimented him on the show. One thing that would make the show even better, Buntline suggested, was for Buffalo Bill to actually play himself in the production. After Cody initially refused because he didn't feel he could act, Buntline eventually convinced him to join up with him. Cody's performance in the play, although it drew cheers from the audiences, didn't particularly impress all the theatrical critics of the day. After noting that Cody "stood tall and straight as an arrow," one critic added that he was "ridiculous as an actor."

Ridiculous or not, Cody would spend the next decade performing in traveling shows that slowly molded him into a seasoned entertainer. By the time he put together the Old Glory Blowout, Buffalo Bill knew that his audiences wanted a rough-edged slice of the early west that was vanishing before their eyes. His later Wild West shows paraded a fascinating cast of characters across much of the world, playing for such luminaries as Queen Victoria and Pope Leo XIII. As Sioux warriors who had actually fought at the Little Bighorn, swept down to reenact the event, the wide-eyed crowd was transfixed. When Annie Oakley took aim at the slightly quivering cigarette in her husband's mouth, they held their breath. And when the Wild West band fired up the Star Spangled Banner, decades before it became our national anthem, dust-coated cowboys dutifully removed their hats to cover their hearts. That festival-free Fourth, it seems, set fire to a nearly endless string of wild-western fireworks.

Lucky Limitations

The Fortunate Lack of Sophistication That

Launched the Legendary "Johnny Cash Sound"

A country musician's voice stamps a signature as unique as an artist's brush stroke. As the listener scans the radio dial, that one-of-a-kind sound halts his search like a police-siren. In fact, in some cases he doesn't even need to hear the singer's voice. A few notes of the instrumental backup music can do the same trick.

Every avid Johnny Cash fan, for instance, can recognize one of his songs after only the first few powerful notes. The simple unaccompanied guitar lead-in sets the atmosphere for his forceful delivery. "I Walk The Line" or "Folsom Prison Blues" just wouldn't sound the same without that unique, almost hauntingly simple back up, played firmly on the base strings.

So how did this legendary innovation develop? Was it the result of intensive research? Did they experiment with a myriad of sounds until they found the perfect one? Well no...not exactly. It came about because it was the only thing Luther, their novice electric guitar player, knew how to play. When Johnny auditioned for the now-legendary Sun Records label in Memphis, he and his two friends, Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant, were just getting started in the music business. Since Luther was not exactly a guitar wizard, he primarily relied on an elementary single-note picking style. Oddly enough, it didn't sound bad - especially when Sam Phillips added Sun Record's "slapback" echo.

This sparse back-up accompaniment would definitely not have worked for a more highly polished voice. But for Johnny's strong but almost off-key delivery, it was ideal. By the time they had finished - through a lack of equipment...and experience, they had unknowingly created what would become known as the legendary Johnny Cash Sound.

That sound would lead Johnny down a pathway that would see him elected to both the Country Music and the Rock and Roll halls of fame. He would crossover not only into popular music, but would become part of the sixties folk music resurgence. In 1969, he would win all five of the Country Music Award categories he was nominated for, including "Male Vocalist of the year" and "Entertainer of the Year."

The first song to start Johnny rolling along that pathway was recorded during that original Sun Records session. "Hey Porter" was first published as a poem in the Stars and Stripes newspaper while Johnny was in the Air Force in Germany. With the addition of Johnny's quivering baritone-bass, Luther's single-string back up, and Sun's slapback echo, the hard-driving train song became the prototype for the new Johnny Cash Sound.

It didn't take long for country music fans to add the unique sound to their radio requests and jukebox selections. "Hey Porter" zoomed up the charts and earned Johnny and the Tennessee Two an invitation to the Louisiana Hayride. Within a few short years, America's radios and jukeboxes would be filled with Johnny's classic hits like "I Walk the Line," "Folsom Prison Blues," "Ring of Fire," "Five Feet High and Rising" and the "The Orange Blossom Special." Johnny's pathway, it appeared, would lead him past a glittering string of nonstop golden moments.

Unfortunately, not only would those golden moments stop, but they would soon come crashing in around him. As the years flashed by, he churned out one Top-ten hit after another. The clamoring fans and flickering city lights flashed past his eyes like a dizzying kaleidoscope. During this frantic touring schedule, he became trapped in the "upper-downer" cycle, using barbiturates to get to sleep, and amphetamines to wake up. And when Johnny did something, he didn't just do it half-way. He began to add drunken binges to his desperate pill addiction. Needless to say, he was not always considered to be the most professional entertainer on the market. He became famous for "redecorating" his hotel room during a drunken rampage. He began to miss concert dates. When he did show up, the show's managers often wished he hadn't.

During a 1965 appearance on the Grand Ole Opry, for instance, he had trouble removing a microphone from its stand. In a drunken haze, he dragged the stand along the edge of the stage while over fifty smashed footlights showered the audience with broken glass. When he walked off, Opry manager, Ott Devine, firmly informed him, "We can't use you on the Opry anymore, John."

By 1967, at only thirty-five years old, he had plunged so deeply into a drug and alcohol-induced depression that he pulled off the highway near Chattanooga, Tennessee and walked aimlessly into Nickajack cave. As he sat in the chilled darkness, he made the sullen decision that he would die there. Suddenly though, he felt a warmth and a presence that called him back out into the light.

When he emerged from the cave, he continued on a path toward that light. With the combination of his religious convictions and the calming influence of his wife-to-be, June Carter, he was able to conquer his drug and alcohol addictions. As a testimony to his tremendous drive - even during his darkest days, he continued to create many of the solid-gold hits that have assured him of such a legendary status in country music history.

This drive has not only been the fuel for his success as an entertainer. It has spurred him on to support the causes of the oppressed "underdogs" that he symbolizes with his black stage outfits. That drive has often taken him into controversial areas where other country performers were reticent to go. When he recorded "The Ballad of Ira Hayes," for example, many radio stations shied away from broadcasting the hard-hitting ballad about our mistreatment of the American Indian. Bitterly disappointed with their response, Johnny took out a full-page advertisement in Billboard magazine, asking the hesitant Disc Jockeys: "Where are your guts?"

That's one question - through his early days when he and his novice band marched staunchly into Sun Records, throughout his life-and-death battle with drugs and alcohol and during his resolute advocacy of social causes - that very likely...no one has ever asked Johnny Cash.
A Legendary Loss

How Davy Crockett's Tennessee Defeat

Sent Him Into the Texas History Books

"I told the people of my district that I would serve them as faithfully as I had done," a disappointed Davy Crockett informed the gaggle of newspaper reporters. The well-known frontiersman and politician had just returned to his western Tennessee home after losing his bid for reelection to a representative seat in the United States congress. The newsmen who gathered around him during that 1835 address were likely prepared to hear a typical concession speech. They expected to record humble congratulations to his opponent and a heartfelt thanks to those who voted for him. But as their freshly sharpened pencils hovered above their notepads, that typical concession speech never came. Crockett's blue-eyes riveted the reporters as he continued to relay his message to the citizens of his home state. "You may all go to hell," he declared, "and I will go to Texas."

True to his word, Crockett soon prepared for his southern trek. Texas at that time, was the Mexican state of Tejas, and offered the promise of a new start. In an attempt to populate the area with Americans, the U. S. government began offering 4,600-acre land grants to homesteaders who would develop their property. That seemed like an ideal proposition to the less-than-flourishing Crockett, who had spent more of his life in debt than out of it. After bidding heartfelt goodbyes to his family and friends, on the first of November, 1835, he headed into history along with several of his neighbors. Later reflecting on his parting, Crockett's youngest daughter, Matilda, said he was dressed in a hunting suit and wore a coonskin cap. "He seemed very confident the morning he went away," she noted, "that he would soon have us all to join him in Texas."

Stopping briefly in Little Rock, Arkansas, Crockett addressed a crowd of hundreds on the subjects of Washington politics and the ongoing fight for self-rule in Texas. After arriving in Nacogdoches, Texas, in January of 1836, he took an oath along with sixty-five others to enroll as official volunteers in the Texas War of Independence. In early February, Crockett and a few men rode to San Antonio de Bexar, the capitol of Texas, and camped just outside town. As Davy Crockett entered the settlement the next day and shook hands with Colonels James Bowie and William Travis, he sealed his fate.

Years before, the beginnings of his destiny sprouted from his backcountry roots. Born August 17, 1786, David Crockett grew up with a deep love of the outdoors. His father John unsuccessfully tried his hand as a farmer, storekeeper and a mill operator. Despite his lack of business ability, John would instill in Davy, a useful knowledge of hunting and wilderness survival. He taught him how to shoot a rifle when he was eight-years-old.

When Davy was thirteen, his father enrolled him in school. Regrettably, this didn't go particularly well. The class bully began to push him around. One day after school, Davy lay in wait for him and, as he would later reflect in a biography, "set on him like a wildcat." Worried that the school-master would punish him for beating the kid so badly, Davy began playing hooky. His strategy turned out to be a little flawed. When his father learned about his absence from school, he grabbed a stick and headed toward his son to administer his own discipline. Davy, once again emulating a wildcat, loped across the yard to disappear into the countryside. He wouldn't return for nearly three years.

Just before his sixteenth birthday, Davy came home to an emotional reunion. In fact, he stayed around to help his father work off several debts. Along with mending family ties, Davy fell in love with a young lady named Mary Finley. In 1806, they began married life together on a rented farm in Virginia with a fifteen-dollar loan, two cows and a couple calves. Like many others of his time, though, the sedate farming life simply couldn't compete with the call of the new frontier. He eventually uprooted his family and moved to western Tennessee. Sadly, two years after their move, Mary fell ill and died in the spring of 1815. The following year, Davy married again, choosing a widow named Elizabeth Patton who already had two children. As they added three more of their own, the Crockett household soon became a bustling little establishment.

Despite his love of family, Crockett could never resist the call of excitement. He developed his reputation as an adventurer while serving as a scout during the Creek War and later as a lieutenant colonel with the Fifty-seventh Regiment of the Tennessee Militia. Davy launched his political career in 1817, with a county commissioner job in Lawrence County, Tennessee. During the 1820's and early '30's, he advanced to state and later to federal represent- ative positions.

During this period, he also gained a reputation as a folksy politician who could tell tall tales with the best of them. To add to his growing legendary status, a popular play titled The Lion of the West toured the country. The play featured a fictitious Kentucky congressman named Colonel Nimrod Wildfire. The country-bred adventurer-politician in a coonskin cap was clearly, but loosely, based on Crockett's life.

As large as his legend grew during his lifetime, it increased after his death. His legendary loss of the Tennessee representative seat had ushered him into immortality. At the age of 49, he would help ensure the vivid image of the battle at San Antonio de Bexar's Catholic mission, the Alamo, would never disappear. When Davy Crockett and his comrades hoisted a massive striped flag with a large white star surrounded by the word "Texas," they shouted three heartfelt cheers. Their response to General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna and his massive legion of Mexican troops, was met with a sobering image that sadly foretold their destiny - the solemn raising of a blood red banner.

Mountain Man University

Mountain Man, James Clyman, Enrolls in "Classes"

Taught by Charging Grizzlies, Murderous

Indians and Sub-zero Windstorms

The gleaming silver needle plunged beneath the crimson-coated skin, reappeared, then dived again into the dangling remains of Jedediah Smith's ear. The needle's steel-nerved operator, James Clyman, set his jaw and continued the grim task of stitching his captain's head back together with a needle and thread from his supply pack. There had been no time for second thoughts. He knew Smith wouldn't last long unless he could contain the flow of blood from the gaping wounds the marauding grizzly bear had inflicted.

Stitch by agonizing stitch, James Clyman pieced together the mangled portions of Smith's ravaged head. When Clyman had seen the grizzly's teeth clamp firmly on Jedediah's head, it looked like the end of the expedition for his friend and captain. But James Clyman was in the process of becoming a "mountain man." And in the mountains there was no room for the faint of heart. Because of his unfaltering response, his captain would live to tell about the near-death attack. Clyman's account of the harrowing incident in an 1823 entry in his journal was a classic piece of frontier understatement. "This gave us a lisson," he reflected with more spirit than spelling ability, "on the character of the grissly Baare which we did not forget."

This would be only one of many "lissons" the wilderness would teach him during the next few years. Before his term at Mountain Man University would end, his subjects would include not only the character of the grizzly bear, but classes in bloodthirsty Indians, blinding sub-zero blizzards and treacherous mountain passes. Clyman would enroll in this school of mountain life in 1823. During a visit to St. Louis, he heard stories about a daring expedition the previous year taken by William Henry Ashley and a band of explorers.

Ashley had recruited a small crew by placing an advertisement in the St. Louis Missouri Gazette. The notice addressed "Enterprising Young Men" and stated that "The subscriber wishes to engage one hundred men to ascend the river Missouri to its source, there to be employed for one, two or three years." Unfortunately, the engagement was destined to last a considerably shorter amount of time. One of the trading barges sank not long after they left port, taking with it thousands of dollars of valuable equipment and Ashley's hopes for a successful first expedition.

Ashley knew that a successful explorer needed to have a rugged perseverance. He couldn't simply give up. After all, he had tossed away a distinguished life of culture to follow his mountain dreams. He had previously established himself in St. Louis society as a surveyor and real-estate speculator. In addition, Ashley had made his mark in the military. He had advanced to the position of brigadier general of the state militia. As Missouri organized into a state in 1821, he became lieutenant governor and the presiding officer of the legislature. His social and political success, however, could not compete with the prospects of making a fortune in the fur trade of the undeveloped West. Along with his real estate partner, Andrew Henry, Ashley walked away from the cultivated life to become a mountain man.

When Ashley met James Clyman, he recognized he was a step above most of the potential trappers he had encountered. Clyman could cypher and enjoyed reading Shakespeare, Byron and the Bible. Ashley offered him a position for a dollar a day to help recruit men for his trapping brigade. He also agreed that Clyman would join the expedition. Ashley's offer came at an ideal time. Clyman's efforts at farming in Indiana and surveying in Illinois hadn't filled him with the excitement he was hungry for. Plows and survey tools simply weren't the things rough-cut frontier memories were made from. But ascending the Missouri through uncharted territory, hostile Indians and treacherous mountain passes - yes, those were definitely the ingredients for a colorful batch of mountain memories.

As Clyman set out on his recruiting task, he knew just where to find men tough enough to weather the hazards the mountains would dish out. He would write in his journal that he prowled around the "grog shops and other sinks of degradation." By the spring of 1823, his collection of future mountain men was prepared to make another expedition. Ashley hoped this second expedition would get off to a smoother start. The trip began with a little frontier flourish. As the expedition departed in March of 1823, they fired a small canon called a swivel, which was answered by a shout from the shore.

Despite Ashley's hopes, the new expedition soon encountered disaster. In June, as they traveled through the Arikara Indian villages, they were viciously attacked. Before the brief but bloody massacre ended, a dozen of Ashley's men lay dead and eleven were wounded. Still more were missing. One of these was James Clyman. During the battle, he had escaped by leaping into the river.

Clyman swam furiously toward the far bank and discarded his rifle and pistols to stay afloat. When he reached the shore, he turned to find three Indians swimming after him. Clyman would later write that he "concluded to take to the open Prairie and run for life." He ran for nearly an hour until he found a hiding place in a cluster of tall reeds. Once he was certain he had dodged his pursuers, he made his way toward a distant ridge. Before heading down river to join the remainder of the expedition, he stopped to exhibit his frontier spirit. He would write that he showed himself to the Indians and mockingly "made a low bow with both my hands."

Despite this show of bravery, Clyman privately had second thoughts about continuing the expedition. "Before meeting with this defeat," he would add to the day's journal entry, "I think few men had stronger ideas of their bravery and disregard of fear than I had..." But that incident had been more than he had contracted for. The attack, he admitted, had "somewhat cooled my courage."

Clyman's courage apparently warmed again. He stayed with Ashley's group and continued to overcome one challenge after another. Ashley had decided to abandon the river route and try an overland path toward the mountains. In the fall of 1823, he split the group into two parties. They launched their expeditions from Fort Kiowa in present-day South Dakota. Andrew Henry and his men headed toward the Yellowstone outpost. Along the way, two of the men were killed by Mandan Indians. Once Henry's party reached the Yellowstone outpost, his luck didn't improve much. Most of their horses had been stolen and the Indians weren't bringing furs into the post as he had expected. Although Henry eventually came down the Missouri River with a relatively good catch, the bloodshed and hardship involved turn him away from the mountain life forever.

Clyman, however, continued to lead the rugged life of a mountain man for several more years. In 1824, he would help discover the "South Pass," which would later become the main crossing point of the Central Rockies. The next year, he participated in the first annual fur-trapper's rendezvous on the Green River. During the following years, he and William Sublette explored the great Salt Lake region. As he trudged across barren mountain tops and trekked through rugged forests, he would eventually use every skill he had learned in Mountain Man University.
Chisolm Trail Tales

Baylis John Fletcher Begs and Pleads Permission From

His Aunt to Join an 1879 Chisolm Trail Cattle Drive

"Alligator!" cried Manual the Mexican cook. With the shrill alert, Joe Felder snapped out of his peaceful nap on the Guadalupe riverbank and leapt to his feet. As he did, his flailing limbs slipped on the mud and propelled him down the bank into the swirling water. He thrashed to the surface, rising within inches of the deadly beast.

His comrades heaved a rope his way as he screamed for help. Miraculously, the monster didn't turn on him as Joe tugged himself free and scurried away. Finally, after trotting a safe distance, he turned to view the hazardous scene. To his dismay, he was surrounded not by worried faces, but by his fellow trail-hands doubled up with laughter. When he eyed the vicious "gator," he saw instead, a large bobbing log.

Before he had leaned back against the bank-side tree for a nap, Joe and the others had actually seen an alligator in the water. So Manual the cook, known for his practical joking, decided that tossing a log in the water by Joe and yelling "Alligator!" would be the ideal way to wake him. Joe apparently didn't share that viewpoint. "His disgust was profound," wrote one of his trail-mates, "when he discovered that he was escaping only from a rotten log."

Despite the "profound disgust," incidents like these helped break the tiring monotony of a trail ride. The young man who wrote about the gator attack, was nineteen at the time. Baylis John Fletcher would later recall his trail memories in a small book titled, Up The Trail in '79. Fortunately for us, he vividly retained the colorful images of his ride up the Chisholm Trail from Victoria, Texas.

In the spring of 1879, Baylis heard that his Liberty Hill, Texas neighbor, Tom Snyder, was recruiting cowpunchers. Filled with excitement, young Baylis ran to ask his aunt for permission. Aunt Ellen, however, had raised him after the death of his mother, and had no intention of letting him take such a dangerous journey. She related tales of Indian attacks, drownings and other trail hazards. He countered with the tools of the trade so readily accessible to teenagers of any era - begging and pleading. Eventually he got his wish.

"I was still a youth, but above fryin' size," Fletcher would write, "when I took the trail fever." Fryin' size or not, on March 10, 1879, Baylis saddled up and headed out - along with Thomas Snyder, a foreman, a cook and seven other cowpunchers. Their first stop was John Green's ranch on Coleto Creek, just south of Victoria, Texas. Snyder had paid Green ten thousand dollars for all the cattle on the ranch with a V Fleur-de-lis L brand. The first job would be to round up those animals.

On the way to the ranch, a local youth rode along with them for a while. Baylis decided the boy must have formed his vision of cowboys from reading dime novels. "He aired his lungs," he wrote, "by cussing everything from his cow pony to the minister we met in the road." Thomas Snyder finally became disgusted with the young man's language. He told him he would have to leave if he couldn't control his swearing. The astonished youth trailed along in silence for several minutes. Finally he asked, "Mister, is you a Christian?" When Snyder replied that he was, the wide-eyed boy queried, "And a cow driver?" Amazed with Mr. Snyder's positive response to both questions, he galloped off, shouting, "That's awful damn strange!"

After the disillusioned youth left them, they continued toward Victoria, reaching John Green's ranch in a couple days. Snyder hired a guide who organized a Grand Roundup to sort the animals by brand. Two other outfits joined, each looking for different brands. Once they had assembled the range cattle, the combined herd held from eight to ten thousand animals.

Baylis joined the first shift of night-watch. As evening approached, he noticed a long line of thunderhead clouds. "We're going to have a wet norther," one of his seasoned comrades informed him. That prediction was soon played out by flashes of lightning mingled with distant rolls of thunder. "A cold north wind brought a blinding rain, mingled with hail," Baylis reported, "and swept furiously across the prairie."

Baylis called out to the nearest cowpuncher, asking if the nervous cattle would stampede. "No, not as long as the lightning flashes," he responded. The entire manpower of all three outfits joined the struggle to keep the frightened cattle from drifting too far. With all hands in the saddle throughout the night, they managed to contain them. As the sun rose, one of the men originally scheduled for the second shift, grinned and told the first-shift hands they were "relieved for the night."

Over the next few days, the three groups cut out most of the cattle with the brands they were seeking. Once their cattle were cut out of the herd, Baylis and his comrades gave them a "road brand" to further mark them. Finally, on the tenth of April, they completed the roundup. That night they celebrated their upcoming departure with a "grand stag dance." Baylis said Mexican guitarists played while "festive cowboys danced waltzes in the warm embrace of another wearing spurs, leather leggings, and broad-brimmed sombreros."

Early the next morning, likely in a less "festive" mood, the cowboys rounded up the herd and headed north. On the second day, as they drove the cattle through the streets of Victoria, a lady feared that the animals might break through her picket fence and destroy the roses. As a precaution, she ran toward them, frantically waving them away with her bonnet. The lead cows spooked and charged back into the herd. Within seconds the peaceful trail drive mutated into a potential town-wrecking stampede. Baylis said their quick-thinking foreman, George Arnett, "galloped about, giving orders to save the City of Roses from a disaster."

Arnett shouted instructions to let the cattle have room and to give way to them at all street crossings. As the excited beasts ran freely through the streets, they spread out over a half-dozen blocks. Arnett's plan worked perfectly. They became tired and confused and gradually calmed down. Victoria, Texas had narrowly escaped a disaster. And Baylis Fletcher had just savored a rich slice of the adventure he had begged for.

Sometimes, though, the adventure wasn't quite as wild as Baylis had imagined. They crossed the Red River and entered "the Nation," as the Indian Territory was often called. In the Nation, there were no laws regarding the carrying of firearms. Everybody who had a pistol, polished it up and strapped it on. "We marched on now," Baylis declared," armed to the teeth for savage foes and wild animals." To their dismay, they learned that the savvy game animals stayed clear of the Chisholm Trail and its regular bands of hopeful pistol-packers. After shooting at a handful of rodents and rattlesnakes, Baylis wrote, "we soon grew tired of such sport and returned our guns to the wagon." Nonetheless, his trail adventure was definitely worth his begging and pleading with his aunt. It may have just been another piece of business to move a product closer to the consumers for the heads of the cattle drive. But for young Baylis, it was a juicy slice of adventure packed with vivid Chisholm Trail tales.
Mid-inning Melodies

When Charlie Pride Introduced His

"Peculiar" Choice in Music

The word had spread at the Helena, Montana semi-pro baseball game that the pitcher would sing for the fans. Charlie Pride knew what type of music the crowd would expect from him - the blues of course. After all, he was black, and he was from the Mississippi Delta country. That Delta area had already produced a host of traditional blues and modern rhythm-and-blues singers. Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, B.B. King and Sam Cooke had all picked that Mississippi Delta cotton.

The baseball fans knew they were in for a mid-inning treat as Charlie tossed down his glove, grabbed his guitar and ambled toward the microphone. Apparently the team had discovered his talent when they heard his soulful blues songs in the dressing room after a loss. Or maybe they had overheard his heartfelt black up-beat rhythm at the end of a winning game.

As Charlie Pride stood there on the verge of his first step into music history, his favorite music was already surging through his mind. That music, however, wasn't bubbling with the soulful sounds of the Delta blues his family and friends had always encouraged him to sing. It was instead, powered by - of all things - the fiddles, yodel, and steel guitars of the traditionally white country music.

Throughout his youth, everyone had told him that his taste in music wasn't exactly the most appropriate choice for a young black Mississippi Delta boy. The music of the area, after all, was a strong source of pride for the black community. Also, there wasn't a great deal of appreciation among his friends for country music. In fact, they usually couldn't turn past it fast enough when their radio dials picked it up. It wasn't that Charlie disliked the blues, but as he listened to the family's Philco radio on Saturday nights, he just couldn't get enough of the Grand Ole Opry songs of Roy Acuff, Hank Williams and Ernest Tubb. Before long he started singing along with them.

"Why you singin' this music?" his sister would scold him, "It ain't gonna get you nowhere." And she definitely wasn't alone in her feelings. Whenever young Charlie sang, the reaction was about the same - an instant approving smile for his pure rich voice, immediately followed by an arched eyebrow for the type of music he sang. But he just couldn't help it. He was hooked on it.

The audience at the baseball game was likely filled with the same "arched eyebrows" when the pure country sound came pouring out of his mouth. But like his friends and family, they eventually shook their heads in resignation, and slowly began to appreciate Charlie's peculiar musical offering. After all, even though he didn't look quite right doing it, he could sure sing a good country song.

Those mid-inning songs began to attract a local following and before long he also began singing in nearby clubs and bars. Although Charlie enjoyed the attention, he had no intention of turning to music as his primary career. He had spent too many years working his way up through the minor leagues for that. No, his future was definitely going to be in baseball!

Not only was he an adept pitcher and fielder, but also he had a good batting average. In fact, he seemed to have everything he needed, except maybe...luck. An elbow injury had sidelined him when a Saint Louis Cardinals scout once came to watch Charlie's game. Then, in 1961, when he tried out for the California Angels, he had overworked his arm prior to the game and wasn't able to pitch. The next year, just before he was scheduled for a New York Mets tryout, he broke his ankle. No, luck was simply not one of his baseball strengths.

As the path to his baseball dreams followed one dead-end road after another, the map to his musical future was beginning to unfold. In 1963, Red Sovine and Red Foley were scheduled to perform in nearby Great Falls, Montana. The disc jockey who emceed the concert promised Charlie he would signal him to come backstage so he could meet them and possibly get a chance to let them hear his singing.

As Charlie sat in the audience waiting expectantly, that signal never came. This musical tryout seemed to be following the same dead-end path as his baseball tryouts. Tired of unmet opportunities, Charlie finally worked up the nerve to walk backstage and introduce himself to the two Reds. His boldness paid off. Not only were they impressed with his ability, but they also urged him to try his luck in Nashville. Although Pride was still baseball bound, he finally followed their advice a few months later. After bouncing around Nashville with little success, he eventually found a home at RCA. His first single, "Snakes Crawl at Night," was released in 1965.

RCA knew that not everyone would be delighted about the concept of a black country music star. They felt, however, that once people heard his voice they would accept him. So they issued his first record to radio stations, without the usual photograph and biographical data. Their plan worked. By the time the listeners learned he wasn't the typical white country singer, "Snakes Crawl at Night" had broken into the Top Ten.

That was all Charlie needed. The good fortune that had avoided him throughout his baseball tryouts, settled over his musical career like a golden blanket. The timing was perfect. Not only was the spirit of the sixties loosening the racial barriers, but Nashville was turning away from the rough nasal singing, toward the smoother Nashville Sound.

Throughout the late sixties, seventies and into the eighties, he showered the country music scene with thirty-six Number-one hits. His classic songs like "Kiss an Angel Good Morning," "Is Anybody Going to San Antone," "Mississippi Cotton Delta Town" and "She's Just an Old Love Turned Memory" showed him he had chosen the right musical path after all.

The awards heaped on him by his fans and fellow performers also confirmed that choice. The Country Music Association selected him as "Male Vocalist of the Year" four years running, and in 1971 named him "Entertainer of the Year." His sister had apparently been mistaken - his peculiar choice in music was definitely gonna get him somewhere.
The Jayhawker Stalker

The Relentless Quest of Vengeance that

Led Jesse James Down a Path of Infamy

Nobody wants to lose a war. Most combatants, though, can eventually shake off the bitterness of warfare and begin the long process of forgiveness. Jesse James, however, was not most people. Even though the battlefields would eventually fall silent, the Civil War continued to rage inside Jesse's head with the same fiery passion that had ignited it. In the wake of several traditional Union and Confederate battles in Missouri, local militia groups had grown out of the swirling hatred left behind. Across the state, Rebel sympathizers known as Bushwhackers, clashed with Union-leaning guerrilla groups called Jayhawkers. The lawless Bushwhackers seemed to be the ideal companions for Jesse and his older bother, Frank.

Frank joined a pro-Confederate guerrilla band near the family's Clay County, Missouri farm. On a calm summer evening in 1863, that farmhouse suddenly erupted with the oaths of Union soldiers searching for Frank and his militia band. While the soldiers horse-whipped Jesse and tortured his stepfather in a failed attempt to learn Frank's location, a thunderous rage ripped through Jesse's mind. Through the years, it would transform into a justification for revenge on banks, trains and stagecoaches run by the despised Union-backing Jayhawkers. As Jesse relentlessly hunted down the northern militia men and their businesses, he would become a life-long Jayhawker Stalker.

Not long after the 1863 attack, Frank is thought to have joined the infamous Quantrill's Raiders pro-slavery guerrilla band. Most historians feel he was involved in the massacre of some two hundred abolitionists in Lawrence, Kansas. In the spring of 1864, he joined a confederate-leaning group headed by Fletch Taylor, that traveled through Clay County, Missouri, where Jesse joined them. Unfortunately for Taylor, the position of leading a militia group often didn't turn out to be a long-term occupation. That summer, he nearly died from a gunshot to the chest.

Despite the resulting breakup of Taylor's bunch, Jesse and Frank had no interest in leaving their exciting lives of covert warfare for the tedious existence of dirt farming. They soon joined another group led by "Bloody" Bill Anderson. True to form, Bloody Bill's career also didn't lead to a relaxed retirement and a gold watch, but a fatal gunshot not long after the James Brothers joined.

Like the tumultuous times that seethed around them, Jesse and Frank burned hot and wild as they continued to move through more Rebel gangs. Then, in the winter of 1869, their sites suddenly turned from guerrilla warfare to a more lucrative method of revenge - bank robbery. Drawing on their simmering hatred of all things northern, they teamed up with a motley group of ex-Confederate soldiers and ordinary thieves, to target a bank owned by former Jayhawker militia officers. That institution, Liberty, Missouri's Clay County Savings Association, provided the setting for the nation's first daytime bank robbery.

Like young predators with their first taste of blood, the James brothers were instantly hooked on the criminal life. As they racked up a string of bank, stagecoach and train robberies, they attracted the attention of the nation's newspapers. Some papers focused on the hapless cashiers and innocent bystanders who fell to their gunfire, but many - especially Missouri newspapers, began to portray them as heroes fighting for the southern cause. Most of their neighbors were willing to believe the stories, since Clay County and its surroundings had been settled primarily by southern migrants and was known as "Little Dixie."

Jesse thrived on the media attention and even left press releases at the scene of his crimes. In these hand-written narratives, he usually ranted about the Union "robber barons" whose banks and trains they pursued. As Jesse's supporters perused their morning papers for news of his latest escapades, they were often treated to colorful letters to the editor from their folk hero. One editor in particular, John Newman Edwards of the Kansas City Times, happily printed his hero's proclamations. "We are not thieves," Jesse wrote in one of that paper's issues, "we are bold robbers." Comparing himself to Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte and others he considered to be bold robbers, he said he was proud of the title.

As Jesse and the gang roamed the Midwest and South, the nation's papers would have no shortage of news about their readers' bandit heroes. Their headlines screamed about the holdups, while the articles beneath them often portrayed the gang as Robin Hoods, stealing from the northern crooks and distributing their bounty to poor deserving southerners. There was, however, a slight problem with that depiction...it wasn't exactly true. In fact, there is no record of a penny of their bounty ever being distributed anywhere other than into the waiting pockets of Jesse and the rest of the gang members.

Most circulation-hungry editors and reporters were in no way inhibited by a mere lack of fact. For one thing, they knew the bogus stories would play into the lingering bitterness of many of their readers. One editorialist in 1882, explained his readers' fascination with the often-bloody escapades of Jesse's gang by noting that "there is a dash of tiger blood in the veins of all men." Their fascination for information about the gang's activities, he explained, "is always keener if there be a dash of sin in the deed to spice the enjoyment of its contemplation."

From the winter of 1869 through the spring of 1882, Jesse and his gang provided more than twenty "sinful deeds" for readers to contemplate. Jesse's own tiger blood finally stopped pulsing through his veins on April 3, 1882 as Robert Ford, one of his newly recruited gang members, killed him for the reward. History will never know if that blood would have pulsed so strongly if that violent bunch of Union-backing guerillas hadn't horse-whipped young Jesse James and helped transform him into a life-long Jayhawker Stalker.

The Greatest "Mud Show' on Earth

The Circus - Long Before the Big Top

The air was as crystal clear as the young boy's dreams, that 1870 morning in McGregor, Iowa. While the five brothers breathed in its sweet grassy fragrance, they gazed down from a lush green hillside and dreamed the dreams of thousands before them - of joining the circus. The men below them scurried around, unloading the circus supplies. As they did, the boys imagined the wild animals and daring performers who would soon be putting them to use. The best part was, they would be right there to see it and feel it and smell it. They had tickets!

Their father, a German harness-maker, had agreed to do some repair work for the circus strong man. In trade for his work, he had received free passes for the whole family. Their father, August Rungeling, had no inkling that those passes would someday open a gate for his sons into the colorful world of the flying trapeze and screaming crowds. That gate would lead them, with their Americanized name of the "Ringling Brothers," away from that quiet little Iowa hillside and down a path that would eventually lead to the "Greatest Show on Earth."

It would be years, however, before the brothers would answer the call of their early dream. After all, circus life was not exactly the most accepted method of making a living in those days. So Al, the oldest brother, left home to join a carriage company and take up the family business of harness-making. But while he worked away on the leather harnesses, his childhood memories worked away on his dreams. Finally the images of acrobats and clowns became more vivid than those of carriage horses and harnesses. When old Doc Morrison's circus came through Delvan, Wisconsin, Al joined as an acrobat and juggler. During Morrison's stay, he taught young Al more than juggling and acrobatic stunts. He included other tricks of the poor circus performer's trade...like how to get out of a hotel room without paying the bill.

While Al Ringling was soaking up the knowledge and glamour of the circus trade, his brothers had followed different paths. Otto was learning geography while both Alf and Charles were studying music. John, the youngest brother, was taking up the acting and minstrelsy trade. They too, however, were haunted by the still-smoldering fever they had contracted on that Iowa hillside. At Al's invitation, they joined him in 1882 to rekindle their early circus dreams. Their first show - the "Ringling Brothers' Classic and Comic Opera Company," was a financial and artistic disaster. Filled with youthful enthusiasm, they forged on. The year after their first show failed, they ran into an old down-and-out circus pioneer named "Yankee" Robinson.

From the start, the Ringling brothers instinctively had a way with words that could greatly embellish the magnitude of their performance. "Behold the old hero of the arena, coming Tuesday, May 20, 1884," they printed in their first handbill. "Old Yankee Robinson and Ringling Bros. Double show!! The largest and most elegantly conducted and perfectly equipped arenic exposition ever witnessed." Robinson had been on the road for years and used his experience to advise the eager young circus owners. He signed on as their manager. During a speech at their 1884 opening performance at Sauk City, Iowa, he told the spectators that his union with the Ringling brothers made his journey through life complete.

"If I could have my dying wish gratified," he told them, "it would be that my name should remain associated with that of the Ringling Brothers. For I can tell you, the Ringling Brothers are the future showmen of America." Sadly, that same year, Robinson died during the tour. Unfortunately, it would be Barnum and Bailey, not Yankee Robinson, that history would associate with the "future showmen of America." Years before the Ringling Brothers name would stand beside those of Barnum and Bailey's, our country's back roads were traveled by early circus pioneers.

One of those ground-breakers, John Robinson, began life on the road at an early age. When a small show named Blanchard's Circus came through young John's hometown of New Bedford, Massachusetts, his traveling blood began to stir. It had stirred once before and he had signed up with a whaling ship bound for a three-year trek on the Bering Sea. Unfortunately, the sea had also stirred soon after the ship left New Bedford. A vicious storm drove them back to port. After the incident, John decided he might not be cut out to sail the seven seas, and set out to find a little less turbulent form of transportation.

John was convinced he had found it when he saw Blanchard's Circus pull into town. As he watched the small show wheel in and set up, he had no idea that those wheels would start him on a life-long journey. That journey would carry him and eventually three generations of circus owners - all bearing the name "John Robinson," through almost a century of circus history. Robinson, like nearly every other entertainer before or since, rattled around in menial bread-and-butter jobs before striking out to build his own dream. After a year with Blanchard's Circus, he joined Page and McCracken's Circus and spent the next four years working there as a helper.

Equestrian exhibits were the most popular circus acts of the time. Robinson felt that if he was going to make a jump from his menial assistant job to his real dream of performing in the circus ring - it would be on the back of a trained "ring horse." He decided to spend the winter - the circus's off season - learning the art of horsemanship. Unfortunately, something was holding him back...the lack of a horse. The trained ring horses were usually owned by the trick riders, who took them home during the winter. Undaunted, John surveyed the row of draft horses in the ring barn. These lumbering animals were used to pull the heavy circus wagons and were far from sleek show horses. Filled with the exuberance of youth, however, John selected an unlikely "show horse to be." Night after night, they slowly became acquainted by the dim light of a tallow candle. As the weeks of late-night training rolled on, John added two, three and finally four of the draft horses to his midnight act.

Finally, John and his team of trained baggage horses were ready. Ready for what, he wasn't exactly sure, but he knew they were ready. One day as he quietly hoped and watched, fate opened a door for him. A well-known two-horse rider had to cancel his act. This left young John with the perfect opportunity. He didn't hesitate. Walking up to Mr. Rockwell, the circus's owner, he presented himself as a four-horse trick rider. Following the predictable howls of laughter, John gathered his unlikely looking team of newly trained ring horses and performed. The next year, 1818, their circus program advertised, in large letters, a new four-horse trick rider - "John Robinson."

As the circus later entered its golden age, magnificent tents would cover towering silver equipment as thousands of spectators swarmed inside to view three rings of wonder. Yes, the old "mud shows" had indeed grown up. But whether the glistening spangled heroes of the huge extravaganzas knew it or not, the owed a great dept. They owed it to a draft-horse trainer, hotel bill-evaders and five young brothers on an Iowa hillside.
"Lady Lindy"

Amelia Earhart, the First-lady of the Skies

The World War One ace's seasoned hand guided his plane directly toward the two spectators in the clearing. As his plane zeroed in on the potential targets, one of them scrambled out of range. But the other, a plucky twenty-year-old Kansas girl, stood her ground. As she did, a respectful smile likely curled across the pilot's lips to match an impish gleam in his eyes. Eventually, just as she knew he would, the mischievous pilot abruptly pulled up, letting the two young ladies safely enjoy the rest of his bold maneuvers at the 1917 Toronto air show.

"I'm sure he said to himself, 'Watch me make them scamper,'" his pretend target, Amelia Earhart, would later relate. She revealed that she felt surges of both fear and pleasure as the plane swooped toward her at the stunt-flying exhibition. She also said something inside her awakened. "I did not understand it at the time," Amelia reflected, "but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by."

It would be three more years before she would respond to that little plane's invitation to join the daring pioneers of early aviation. At a December air show in Long Beach, California, Amelia's father plunked down ten dollars for his daughter's brief plane ride with veteran pilot, Frank Hawks. Apparently Hawk's plane spoke the same language to Amelia as the little red one had in Canada. "By the time I got two or three hundred feet off the ground," she confirmed, "I knew I had to fly."

Although it took those two planes to prompt her to take flying lessons, her interest dated back to childhood. She and her younger sister, Muriel, were inseparable. Amelia and "Pidge," as she had nicknamed Muriel, were not known for being girlie girls. Rather than playing with dolls and tea sets, the two preferred climbing trees, collecting bugs and toads, and shooting rats with a rifle. Their uncle became a coconspirator in their rough-and-tumble play after enjoying a roller coaster ride at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. To provide Amelia with a similar experience, he helped her construct a ramp reaching from the roof of the family's tool shed down to the ground. Her vehicle for this mini thrill-ride, was a wooden sled. Following her flight, she emerged from the wood of the broken sled, sporting a ripped dress and a bruised lip. Ignoring these minor issues, she turned to her sister and enthused, "Oh Pidge, it's just like flying!"

Despite her enduring closeness with her sister, Amelia's early years included a considerable amount of instability. Her father, Edwin, tried hard to keep his family together and provide a good living. Year by year, though, he unsuccessfully fought the bonds of alcoholism. The family moved around the Midwest, hoping in vain that Edwin would find a permanent job and kick his drinking habit. Although this drifting lifestyle left Amelia with a strong independent streak, it made it difficult for her to form friendships. One of her high school yearbooks featured a picture of her with the caption, "The girl in brown who walks alone."

Once the flying bug bit that solemn little girl in brown, her life took on a singular focus - soaring through the boundless skies. She managed to accumulate most of the fee required for flying lessons. Her mother also chipped in, although she added that it was against her better judgment. With the money in hand, Amelia and her father strode across Kinner Field in Long Beach, California, to meet with celebrated female aviator, Neta Snook. Amelia's request was straight to the point. "I want to fly," she informed the pioneer pilot, "Will you teach me?"

Amelia not only wanted to become a pilot, she planned to look like one as well. First, she had her hair cropped short in the fashion of most female flyers of the day. Then to top off her new look, she purchased a leather flight jacket. Not wanting to appear too much like a novice, she slept in it for three nights to give it a wrinkled and worn look." Six months later, after finished her lessons, Amelia bought a bright yellow second-hand Kinner Airster biplane, which she christened "The Canary."

The next year, Amelia and her Canary would pierce the clouds to create the first of many milestones to come - a woman's altitude record of 14,000 feet. Unfortunately, just as she was thoroughly enjoying her new passion, she was plagued by severe sinus problems reoccurring from an earlier case of the Spanish Flu. Despite a string of operations and prolonged periods of convalescence, she was determined to follow the original siren call of that little red airplane.

As if her medical condition wasn't enough to set her dream back, her family's finances ran low and Amelia was forced to sell the Canary. Then, just when her dream seemed to be dissipating, fate stepped in to rejuvenate it. She was working as a social worker in Boston in the spring of 1928, when a coworker told her she had a phone call. Reluctant to answer, since she was extremely busy, she eventually picked up the telephone. Her interest perked up considerably when the voice on the other end asked, "How would you like to be the first woman to fly the Atlantic?" After determining it was not a prank call, she provided the clear-cut answer of "Yes!"

That call would lead to her first appearance on the national stage. The voice on the other end belonged to Captain Hilton Railey, a pilot and publicity wheeler-dealer. Spurred by Lindbergh's flight the previous year, he was organizing a flight across the Atlantic, using two male pilots and a woman. The highly publicized voyage in a Fokker airplane named Friendship, left Newfoundland in the summer of 1928, arriving at Burry Point, Wales, 20 hours and 40 minutes later. Even though she hadn't taken control of the plane due to severe weather conditions, the press soon dubbed her "Lady Lindy," a derivative of Lindbergh's Lucky Lindy nickname. She told the press that she was actually "just baggage, like a sack of potatoes." "Maybe someday," she smiled and informed reporters, "I'll try it alone."

In the spring of 1932, Amelia not only tried it alone, but succeeded. Setting off from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, she headed for Paris. Due to strong icy winds and mechanical problems, she cut the flight short, landing in a pasture north of Derry, Northern Ireland. Even though it was not her original, destination, it was across the Atlantic nevertheless. "After scaring the cows, in the neighborhood" she would later report, "I pulled up in a farmer's back yard." When that farmer and his friend walked toward her asking if she had flown far, Amelia grinned and replied, "From America."

As she continued to raise bars for aviators, she also raised hopes for hundreds of thousands of young girls. Amelia's likeable Midwestern personality and irrepressible optimism transformed the previously solemn "girl in brown" into an example of the boundless future that might await them. Sadly, as history is well aware, her tragic last flight has overshadowed the happier visions of the plucky girl from Kansas who became known to the world as Lady Lindy. Those visions still fly high though, in the memories of millions of fans and maybe even in the memory of that little red plane that had talked to her.
A Golden Gamble

The High-Stakes Deal that Gave

Loretta Lynn A Handful of Aces

Doyle Wilburn wore his best poker face as his eyes defiantly met Owen Bradley's stare. This was definitely not going to be an easy contest. Bradley was already a legendary Artist & Repertoire man for Decca Records. His golden touch had ignited the careers of Patsy Cline, Brenda Lee, and a host of other "legends in the making."

Yes, this move would be a gamble. And the stakes wouldn't even affect Doyle Wilburn's career. After all, he and his brother Teddy were already firmly established in the Grand Ole Opry as the popular "Wilburn Brothers." He didn't need to take the risk...but somehow, he couldn't shake the image of the dreamy-eyed young "Butcher Holler hillbilly" out of his mind.

He knew that he held one important trump card. Bradley wanted the new song he had just played for him. Brenda Lee had an upcoming recording session and Bradley felt that song, "The Biggest Fool of All" would fit her style. The only problem was, Doyle didn't want Bradley to merely take the song. He also wanted him to offer a singing contract to Loretta Lynn, the young singer on the demonstration record.

Both Doyle and Teddy Wilburn had felt an instant affection for Loretta and her husband, Oliver Vanetta Lynn, or "Mooney," "Doolittle" or "Doo" as Loretta alternately called him. As the excited couple told them about their dreams for her career in country music, the brothers couldn't help but get caught up in their enthusiasm. Unfortunately, Owen Bradley didn't share that enthusiasm. Loretta was talented, he admitted, but she was simply too country for the times. After all, he reminded Doyle, country music had changed. The newer singers like Patsy Cline and Brenda Lee had begun to smooth the rough edges off the traditional hillbilly sounds of singers like Kitty Wells and Molly O'Day.

Doyle's business sense likely told him to settle for the song deal. The song had been written by one of the Wilburn Brother's staff members, so a big hit by Brenda Lee would definitely add to their bank account. But he just couldn't forget the hopeful gleam in Loretta's eyes when he told her he was taking the demo record over to Decca Records.

So, taking a deep breath, he firmly laid his offer on the table. If Bradley wanted the song, he would also have to sign a contract with the demo singer. That was the deal - no contract for Loretta Lynn; no song. Fortunately for the "coal miner's daughter" and her future fans, Doyle Wilburn's gambling instincts were as good as his musical skills. As Bradley reluctantly agreed to the deal, he helped launch a career that would transform a naive country girl into a living legend. She would eventually be selected as the Country Music Association's first female Entertainer of the Year and later inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

The sophisticated glitter of the CMA awards show and the Hall of Fame induction would stand in stark contrast to the dusty little Kentucky holler where her story began. Loretta, however, never attempted to smooth over her rough country upbringing. Instead, she shared her memories of the poverty-blanketed hollow with the same backcountry pronunciation and grammar she had always used. "Every time folks start tryin' to fix up my talkin'," she explained, "it messes up my singin'."

Even before she ran across the Wilburn Brothers, a couple of other people thought there was still room for her pure country style among the new smoother singers. The first was her husband. Oliver Lynn had married Loretta when she was a young teenager and took her far away from her Kentucky family, to Custer, Washington. Loretta fought against a bad case of homesickness by singing around the house.

Oliver was not a country music critic, but he just couldn't help feeling that Loretta had a special quality. So he bought her a guitar and encouraged her to try writing some of her own songs. Loretta remembered picking up a copy of Country Song Roundup magazine to see how lyrics were developed. It wasn't long before she had written a pretty commercial-sounding song titled "I'm a Honky-tonk Girl."

That song led her to the next person who would provide momentum to her fledgling career. Doo had arranged for Loretta to sing around the area and she began to attract a small following. Soon, she started singing on the local radio station. Then, a chance came to enter a talent contest on Buck Owen's area TV show. She worked up the nerve and gave it a try.

The show was seen in Canada, where a lumber tycoon named Norm Burley had tuned in. He enjoyed Loretta's song so much, he contacted her and offered to give her career a boost. "Doo and I were just like a couple of kids," Loretta remembered, "and Norm Burley kind of adopted us. He didn't wear any red suit or black boots, but that man sure looked like Santa Claus to us."

The "present" Burley gave them was a recording contract with a small company called Zero Records. They excitedly drove to Los Angeles to permanently press "Honky-tonk Girl" into a black vinyl piece of country music history. Then they hopped in their old Mercury and headed across the country to promote the record. Eating bologna and cheese sandwiches and sleeping in the car along the way, they headed for one small-town radio tower and then to the next.

"I had one good dress." Loretta remembered. "When we were drivin' I'd wear jeans or something, but when we were comin' to a radio station, I'd hop in the back seat and put on my dress."

In those days, the disc jockeys could select the records they played - and one station after another suddenly began to play "I'm a Honky-tonk Girl." When she arrived, the surprised disc jockeys just couldn't resist the bright-eyed enthusiasm and pure country charm of the new singer in her "one good dress."

Loretta is lucky that she ran into friends like Norm Burley & the Wilburn Brothers. Otherwise, she might never have been able to look back on a list of solid gold classics like "Blue Kentucky Girl," "You Ain't Woman Enough," "Fist City," "One's on the Way," "Coal-Miner's Daughter" and all the rest. And we're definitely lucky that while those friends helped launch her career, they never tried to "fix up her talkin'."
Unflinching Faith

The Steadfast Belief in the Wild West Show

That Shot Annie Oakley Into the History Books

The churning mass of ripples seemed to suck the life out of Buffalo Bill Cody's dreams. As the little ship sank lower and lower, so did the hopes of Cody and a sad-eyed group of western showmen. While they watched the surging waters draw their Wild West show cargo-vessel deep into a watery grave, Cody could see his show-business dreams also swirling into oblivion. "Outfit at bottom of river," he would despondently telegraph his partner and financial backer, Nate Salsbury, "What do you advise?"

"Go to New Orleans, reorganize and open on your date," Salsbury wired back. His unflinching faith in their new venture would not only save the beloved and rowdy Wild West show, it would give birth of the legendary career of the most famous sharp-shooting lady the world would ever know...Annie Oakley. Following his partner's guidance, Buffalo Bill set about rounding up more wagons and props for the unique outdoor spectacular. Eight hectic days later, Cody and his cowboys, Indians, elk, buffalo and all the rest opened for business at the 1884 New Orleans' World's Industrial and Cotton Exposition, right on schedule.

The good luck that would eventually visit them was, unfortunately, very well concealed. The show met with forty-four days of gloomy weather - not a great start for an outdoor show! The spark that eventually lifted the gloom was struck during a visit from some of the Sells Brothers' Circus performers. The circus had wrapped up its tour in New Orleans and several of its entertainers heard about Cody and Salsbury's new exhibition. Among them were a female sharp-shooter and her manager, Annie and Frank Butler. Annie, born Phoebe Ann Mozee, would adopt the show name Annie Oakley, reportedly taken from a neighboring town of Oakley, Ohio.

She and Frank were impressed with the event and inquired about working with the show. Cody thanked them for their interest but told them he already had plenty of shooters, including the then-famous Captain William Bogardus. The next year though, Bogardus left the show and Annie and Frank wasted no time in renewing their request to join. Still skeptical, Cody and Salsbury agreed to include Annie in a show in Louisville the next month on a trial basis. Fifteen minutes into her performance, the trial was over - Annie was hired on the spot.

Contrary to popular depiction, Annie was not a tomboy. She was in fact, quite the young lady, curtseying to the crowd as she left the arena. There was one thing, however, that set her apart from other young ladies. "Little Sure Shot" as her friend Sitting Bull would christen her, was exactly that...one of the surest shots who ever cocked a hammer. The Wild West show audiences' mouths would gape almost in unison as they watched her shoot a dime that Frank tossed into the air 90-feet away. Those gaping mouths would remain open when she hit the thin edge of a playing card at the same distance, then peppered it with five or six holes as it settled to the ground. Then they would snap tight under bulging eyes as Annie shot the ashes off her husband's cigarette - as he smoked it!

Annie's sharp-shooting skills, though, weren't developed to entertain rowdy crowds. They were the result of necessity. Her childhood was steeped in poverty and sorrow. Her mother was widowed twice and unable to support her family of seven children. Sadly, she was forced to put young Annie in the care of the superintendent of the county poor farm. While there, she learned to embroider and sew. In fact, Annie would eventually become nearly as proficient at embroidering as shooting. The next phase of her life would dip into darkness. She was placed with a local couple who were abusive to her both physically and emotionally. In her later writings, Annie never revealed their names, but referred to them as "the wolves."

Finally, Annie managed to run away and return to the poor farm. Then at the age of about thirteen, she rejoined her mother who had remarried for the third time and was in a little better financial shape. Still, times were hard, so young Annie soon found a way to contribute to the family budget. She taught herself how to shoot the family's Kentucky rifle and began to bag game to sell to local shopkeepers. As Annie picked off game with increasing accuracy, the sales mounted up. Eventually, at fifteen, she was able to pay off their entire mortgage. "Oh, how my heart leapt with joy," she would recall in her autobiography, "as I handed the money to mother and told her that I had saved enough to pay if off!"

Her game-shooting ability would also give birth to Annie's matchless career. When the well-known sharp shooter, Frank Butler, planned a performance in a small town near Cincinnati, he placed a notice in the paper seeking local shooters to compete with him. That 1885 Thanksgiving Day contest would forever change both his and Annie's life. As the petite young lady with a rifle and pink sunbonnet introduced herself, Frank reportedly greeted her with a laugh. As Annie's steel-nerved aim hit one target after another, Frank's laughter dissipated. When he missed target number twenty-five and Annie nailed hers, there was no sign of humor left on his face.

Fortunately, his wounded male pride was soon overcome by his attraction to the perky young sharp-shooter. Despite his slightly embarrassing loss, that contest would lead to a happy life-long marriage and partnership. Frank would continue to exhibit his shooting skills from time to time, but he primarily fell into the roll of Annie's manager. He would help to engrave the name of Annie Oakley deep into the annals of the early west and especially Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. That show, though, and Annie's world-wide fame, might never have existed if it weren't for financial backer, Nate Salsbury's "unflinching faith."

A Calamitous Calculation

Fate's Peculiar Blueprint That Built One of The

West's Most Colorful Characters - Calamity Jane

Fate could have easily designed a sophisticated future for the little Missouri girl. Perhaps it could have paved her way to a high-class Eastern college where she could train to become a world-famous physician. Or it could have devised a plan to push her up the business ladder to establish her own successful company. Apparently though, Fate felt there were enough doctors and corporate presidents in the country when it made its "calamitous calculations" to construct Martha Jane Cannary's future.

Rather than dressing her in fine gowns to attend high-toned finishing schools, it would dress her in greasy buckskins to drive obstinate mule trains. It wasn't as if Fate simply ignored her education as she traveled along her unique pathway, it would just steer her toward a bit of a different route. Granted, she would never learn the intricacies of physiology or the complexities of commerce, but as Martha "Calamity" Jane Cannary would proudly point out in her brief autobiography, she achieved success early. Even as a teenager, as many of her contemporaries confirmed, she could outshoot, out-cuss, out-spit and out-drink nearly every man around her.

That unique destiny was unfortunately, molded from sorrow. As her family trekked from Missouri to Virginia City, Montana in 1865, they would encounter tragedy lurking in place of the free and healthy life they had envisioned. The year after their arrival, Jane's mother, who had been taking in laundry from the miners, would die from what was called "Washtub Pneumonia." The following year, Jane would also lose her father. Being the oldest child, the tough teenager didn't hesitate to step into the role of head of the family. Never the dainty little flower, young Jane was already an expert rider and shooter and as she later bragged, had thoroughly mastered the arts of cussing and drinking whiskey. No, Fate could not have picked a more ideal candidate for the position.

Most historians agree that Jane substantially enhanced her adventures for posterity. There is agreement, however, in a number of areas. For one thing, Jane felt right at home in the company of men. In fact, while working as a scout at Fort Fetterman, she began to dress like a man. "I donned the uniform of a soldier," she later related, "It was a bit awkward at first, but I soon got to be perfectly at home in men's clothes." This practice allowed her to assume the traditionally male jobs of driving mules, fighting Indians and the other rough-and-tumble occupations she enjoyed. Her hard-drinking and tobacco-chewing also helped create her wild-western persona. She would reportedly summarize her philosophy of life with the statement that she would "never go to bed with a nickel in my pocket...or sober."

Another area of historical agreement is that she was a Pony Express rider for a brief spell. In the spring of 1876, she arrived at Deadwood, South Dakota Territory. The stories of her wild and woolly ways had apparently preceded her, since the Black Hills Pioneer simply reported that "Calamity Jane has arrived." "During the month of June," Calamity would later note, "I acted as a Pony Express rider, carrying the U. S. mail between Deadwood and Custer." As usual, her new duty was not exactly a girly job. The stretch was known as the most dangerous route in the hills. Apparently though, even the holdup men had heard about Jane's shooting skill. "As my reputation as a rider and quick shot was known," she declared, "I was molested very little."

Despite her rough-edged personality traits, Calamity Jane's softer side showed through more than once. During the 1878 small-pox epidemic in Deadwood, when most folks hightailed it out of town, she stayed to take care of the sick. Her medication consisted of Epsom salts, cream of tartar and a good dose of human concern. According to the account of her friend, Dora DeFran, a madam of several Black Hills brothels, when Jane buried those who didn't survive the illness, "she recited the prayer 'Now I lay me down to sleep'."

Following the epidemic, Jane went to Bear Butte Creek with the Seventh Cavalry. During their expedition, they built Fort Meade as well as the town of Sturgis. Following a year of gold prospecting, she signed up as an oxen train driver in the area. Once again, her Western skills became legend. "She could knock a fly off an ox's ear," one admirer wrote, "with a sixteen-foot whip-lash three times out of five."

According to another well-accepted account, Jane was traveling with a pack train when a mule fell to the ground. The driver reportedly kicked it with his heavy boots until Jane protested "don't you kick that mule again!" Unaware of Jane's reputation, the driver reportedly knocked off her hat with his whip. He was, however, quickly educated about her unique qualities as she whipped out her revolver and ordered him to "put that hat where you got it." "Judging by the look in her eyes and the tone of her voice," an onlooker noted, "he promptly obeyed."

Fate's calamitous calculations that would put the Calamity in her life, helped Jane fit in with her rowdy friends. It also, as might be expected, often landed her in a good bit of trouble. In 1901, she appeared at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo to tell tales of her life and sell copies of a biographical booklet she had co-written. During her regular rounds of the local watering holes, she would often request "Give me a shot of booze and slop it over the brim." Her behavior, following all the brim-slopping, resulted in repeated spirited interactions with the law. None other than her famous friend, Buffalo Bill, loaned her traveling money after numerous evenings of drowning her sorrows. "I expect she was no more tired of Buffalo than the Buffalo police were of her," he noted, "for her sorrows seemed to need a good deal of drowning."
Heroes, Hisses and

Jolly Della's Deflating Bosom

When Tent "Rep" Shows Toured the Country

Our early nation's country folk and city slickers alike, were a hard-working lot. They would usually not put down their hoes and plows or business ledgers and mechanic tools for stormy weather, illness or other adversities. There was, however, one thing that could usually tempt them to paddle-lock their businesses and lock their barn doors - a traveling tent show. Through the years, millions of Americans sat on the edge of their seats inside the small tents as the heroes and villains clashed or lovers swore their undying affections. It didn't matter that the plots might have been just a tad far fetched. The little "canvas playhouses" as the tent shows were often called, became incredibly popular. By 1927, the New York Times reported they reached more people than "Broadway and all the rest of the theater industry put together."

The little traveling tent repertoire theaters have supplied many country people with their first theatrical experience. Like so many other early entertainment forms, the origin of the first tent show is a little cloudy. Much of their history has been handed down by word of mouth. We do know that one of the pioneers of the traveling theater was James H. McVicker. As is often the case, his innovation was triggered by misfortune. He was a partner in a theatrical company in Chicago, when a fire destroyed the theater in 1850. Suddenly faced with no place for his troupe to work, he made a logical decision. During the rebuilding of the theater, he took his troupe on the road.

Throughout the years, McVickers' and later traveling tent shows would often supply as much entertainment with impromptu uncontrolled events as with the scripted performances. As upsetting as these incidents were for the actors involved, for the audience, they were often be the stuff that memories were made of. Take for instance, the night Jolly Della Pringle first wore her new beaded gown. In the early days of the theater, most actors had to furnish their own wardrobes. They usually bought inexpensive used outfits, one piece at a time. Not Jolly however. She was well known for her collection of beautiful evening gowns.

That night, she donned a unique outfit adorned with tiny square glass beads. It was a dazzling dress that sparkled and shimmered under the stage lighting. When she put it on and proudly strode onto the stage, Jolly likely felt that nothing could go wrong that night. She was truly dressed for success. Despite her dazzling appearance, there was one small problem. The hour-glass figure was the style of the day. And Jolly didn't exactly fill out the top part of the hourglass. No problem she thought - nothing that a couple of rubber balloons couldn't take care of. So with her new inflated figure and her glistening dress, she walked gracefully on stage.

As the play progressed, however, something was transpiring beneath her shimmering dress that would soon add an unusual touch to Ms. Pringle's performance. The sharp edges of the square glass beads were slowly cutting away at the rubber of one of her balloons. As Jolly walked around the stage, several audience members began to notice that she was beginning to look just a tad lop-sided. As the air continued to leak out, it was becoming apparent that either Jolly had an extremely unusual physical ability, or something was a little less than natural. The audience began to roar with laughter. A true trouper, Jolly waited for her first scheduled exit to make repairs. Then, when she reappeared, once more in a well-balanced state, the audience roared again. Jolly however, continued unruffled, as if a shrinking and expanding bosom was a perfectly natural part of her performance.

Another unexpected incident, which also turned out to be the most memorable part of the play, took place in the Loranger show when they were playing the Midwest. The show's manager, Bess Loranger was a lovable old character in her late sixties, with dyed red hair and a robust love of life. Jim Parsons, one of the members of the troupe remembered her as being "one of the sweetest old girls I have ever known in my life, although her language embarrassed me at times." Despite her "sweetness," old Bess, it seems, did tend to swear like a sailor. In fact, the rumor was out that she also occasionally enjoyed a good cigar.

Another thing about Bess - when something struck her funny during a play, she simply had to laugh. And it wouldn't be a girlish giggle. She would erupt with an earth-shaking guffaw that would shake the back row of the theater. One such eruption occurred when she was playing a character in a play called The Family Upstairs. In the scene, she had just lost an argument with another character, and takes her anger out on her poor son Willie. She was supposed to whirl around and yell, "Willie! You go upstairs and wash your neck, and behind your ears!"

Somehow old Bess's tongue got a little tangled, and as she spun around she shouted instead, "Willie! You go upstairs and wash your behind!" Parsons remembered a split-second of dead silence. And then it happened...Bess's eruption. Her wholehearted guffaws rocked the tent. The more she laughed, the louder the audience roared. The show stopped dead in its tracks for five minutes while everyone pulled themselves together.

Yes, unlike most of today's sedate theatrical performances, not everything was smooth and well-planned in the early actor's world. Writer's often commented on "The music of cracking peanuts," the "buz-buz and hum-hum of small talk," and "incessant spitting of chewing tobacco." As irritating as this was for the poor actors, the play-writers often had an even stronger irritant - the critic. The early critic could be their worst nightmare. The play, Brutus, for instance, was written off by one critic as being a "foolish and presumptuous imitation." And in even more vivid terms, another critic described the play, Eighth of January, as "a detestable heap of rubbish."

Sometimes the critic wasn't satisfied with simply panning the play. He would aim his critique directly at the playwright. One blamed a writer for being a "spotter of pure-white paper." But the award for early America's most venomous critic would likely go to the one who covered a play called The Battle of Eutaw Springs. It was really not such a bad play, he acknowledged, "considering that the author must have had his brains blown out at this same battle!"

The play-writers, producers and actors of the tent shows would soon have more to worry about than sharp-tongued critics. They faced an entertainment competitor they once viewed as a "passing fancy" - motion pictures. After all, how long would the public be satisfied with the flickering pictures and their silly subtitles? But then the silent little characters on the screens decided to start talking. Now the public would have voices to go along with their silver-screen heroes.

The wife of tent-repertoire actor Chick Boyes, remembers the first time she saw this new threat to their livelihood. She was in Chicago with him, during the late twenties. They had decided to visit a theater that had advertised a very unusual treat. As they were watching a typical silent film, suddenly, on the screen, a dog barked. Her husband knew the significance of that solitary little bark. Chick suddenly turned to her with a serious face. "That dog's bark," he said prophetically, "may be the end of us."
Gargoyles, Griffins

and Glistening Glamour

The Winding, Dazzling Circus Parades

Stately Greek Goddesses and Roman Gladiators perched arrogantly on their golden thrones to review Chicago city slickers and Iowa farm boys alike. For decades of American history, they wound their way through cities and towns like magic serpents, hypnotizing wide-eyed spectators into following their "Pied Piper" calliope tails. Surrounded by the sounds and smells of mysterious beasts, the great wagons of the circus parades rolled on rain or shine. Even darkness couldn't stop them as they lit the night with calcium lights and red and green flares.

By the turn-of-the-century, as many as thirty circuses sported parades traveling the nation. They could take an hour to watch and might stretch out for more than a mile. The circus parade, in fact, became nearly as important as the circus itself. Potential customers began to judge the quality of a circus by the size of the parade. During the golden age of circus parades, from the 1870's through the 1920's, these magnificent displays carved a nostalgic notch into history.

And a golden age it was. The route book of an 1892 Ringling Brother's street parade describes the exotic glamour that made the parade such a fond memory for so many people. The pageant was, according to the book, "A winding, dazzling river of silver and gold." The parade wagons were described as "New chariots, gorgeous with gilded lion and serpent, or carved with dolphins and dragons, and griffins and hippo-griffons." There were "tableau cars, four squared with Grecian gods and goddesses or illuminated with golden sea-horses, winged leopards, mermaids and fabulous figures."

Floats were adorned with "medallioned mythical faces, and emblazonry of heroic saints, Peruvian sun gods, centaurs, moon-men, golden calves and Chinese dragon day glories." African "wild beasts," elephants, camels, ponies, clowns and all the rest added to the spectacle as the brass bands filled the air with music. With all of these sights, sounds, and smells streaming down main street, who could resist standing out in the hot sun to take in the "mile of gleam, gold, glint and glistening glamour?"

That glistening glamour would outshine everything around it. On a September morning in Lebanon, Tennessee, for example, the Gil Robinson street parade came marching into town with its horns playing and its lions roaring. A murder trial was in progress in the Lebanon courthouse. As the parade hit town and more and more jurors, witnesses and lawyers stained their eyes and ears to catch the sights and sounds of the spectacle, the judge finally gave in to the magnetic charm of the parade. "It's no use, gentlemen," he relented, "this court can't compete with the circus. The case stands adjourned until nine o'clock tomorrow morning."

Although the street parade grew to become a golden piece of American entertainment history, in its infancy, it was actually more of a quick advertisement than entertainment. In the late eighteenth century, equestrian circus troupes would wear colorful clothes and plumed hats as they marched through the streets. Trumpeters would sometimes ride horseback to attract the attention of the bystanders. By 1825, the circuses began to stop outside of a town where the circus was going to play, and wash off the horses and wagons. The drivers would then put on fancy red clothes and hang banners on their wagons, while a small band would climb aboard one of the wagons as they headed into town. Little by little, the parade was beginning to develop into entertainment in and of itself.

In 1837, the Purdy, Welch, McComber circus brought the parade a step closer to the fabulous spectacle it was destined to become. On the first of May, in Albany, New York, a woodwind band mounted horses while two drummers climbed aboard elephants and headed into town. This is often viewed as the first real circus parade. By the 1850's, the parade was often a separate performance. Rather than simply marching into town, the circus performers would move directly to the show-grounds, set up their tents and then parade later in the day. The wagons were already becoming an important part of the parade. Not only were they needed to carry the equipment, but many of the circus owners were beginning to have wagons designed strictly for use in parades. These wagons were decorated with wooden carvings and scenic paintings. As the carvings became more ornate and the paintings more detailed, the larger shows began to compete for the most outstanding wagons.

As beautiful as the wagons were, the romance and glitter of the circus life shined a little less brightly as the circuses trudged across country from one little town to the next. They would usually set out by about three in the morning in order to arrive on time at the next stop. The caravan slowly creaked its way over the rough roads, piercing the dark of night with flickering lanterns and torches. Not only did the natural obstacles make the journey rough but more than once, the tired troop from a caravan would stand dismally looking across a deep stream after a rival circus had burned the bridge they needed to cross. There are also tragic stories of old wooden bridges that gave way beneath the weight of the huge circus wagons, sending people, animals and equipment into swift currents and deep waters. The wagons were built large and heavy so they would stand up to the tortures of the ruts and potholes of the early roads. They couldn't be too huge, however, or the poor straining horses couldn't pull them.

Then, near the middle of the century, nearly all the size restrictions for the wagons were taken away. In 1856 the Spalding and Rogers circus tried a bold experiment. They moved their entire circus by railroad. This was not the easiest project to undertake, since many of the early railroads used different gauges of tracks. When one train would reach a junction point with another railroad that used a larger or smaller gauge track, the entire circus would have to be unloaded and reloaded onto another train. Talking about the tremendous effort involved, one circus owner said, "You cannot possibly imagine the amount of labor involved. I never took the clothes off my back from the time of loading until we reached Philadelphia, our seventh stop!"

Hard work or not, the circuses continued to use the rails. Since the wagons could now sit high atop the railroad car gliding over steel rails rather than clunking along through potholes and muddy trails, they could grow much larger. In some cases, they were nearly thirty-feet long. The "golden age" of the parades and their magnificent wagons, was right around the corner. For the next fifty years, snarling lions and tigers, spangled ladies on horseback and golden-clad masterpieces rolled past hundreds of thousands of cheering fans.

Unfortunately, as the 1920's rolled around, the cities had grown larger and the circus lots were no longer located in the middle of town. The performers would often have to ride five or ten miles just to get downtown and back. They could not give as good a performance after the exhaustive trek. This and other concerns, like increased traffic, brought an end to the circus parades in the twenties and thirties. But the great wagons, the sights and sounds, and the dreams will never stop. They continue to roll on through America's cities and towns in hundreds of thousands of childhood memories.
Cleopatra of the Secession

Belle Boyd, the Courageous Southern Patriot

Who Changed History with the Wave of a Bonnet

Minutes stretched into hours as the Virginia teenager pressed her ear to a knothole in the closet floor. Even though Belle Boyd's body lie silent and motionless, her mind raced to preserve the scattered fragments of animated conversation. Below her, Union officers freely exchanged battle plans and troop movements in a smoke-filled parlor. As their unseen witness strained to commit the plans to memory, it didn't take her long to grasp the overall purpose of their strategy - to gather near Front Royal, Virginia to wipe out her beloved friend and hero, General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson.

Thousands of troops, she learned, were gathering at the nearby sites of Strasbourg, Harper's Ferry, Winchester and others. Despite her dismay over the potential fate of Stonewall and his troops, Belle was encouraged by one detail. Although the scattered forces were definitely planning to converge on Stonewall and his troops, they had not yet gathered. It might still be possible to let her endangered Confederate friends know that a rapid forward surge would likely catch the Union forces unaware and unprepared.

Quickly grasping the gravity of her situation, young Belle knew that relaying this vital information would be her duty alone. At a time in her life when she should be deciding which bonnet best suited her flashing blue eyes or which of her suitors displayed the best dance steps, fate had cast Belle Boyd into the role of a history changer. Fortunately, the perky southern belle was more than up to the challenge.

When the meeting finally ended at one a.m. on that 1862 May morning, Belle slowly stretched her aching arms and legs and silently made her way to her room. She wrote down every vital piece of information she could remember. "I felt convinced," she would later note in her memoirs, "that to rouse a servant, or make any disturbance at that hour, would excite the suspicions of the Federals by whom I was surrounded." As she stole quietly to the stables, Belle Boyd was about to gallop into Civil War history. After a hectic fifteen-mile ride, she gave Ashby the information, which he passed on to Stonewall Jackson. so he could avoid the potential slaughter.

Belle's indomitable Southern spirit would never soar higher than in late May 1862, a short time after her ride to bring the information to Colonel Ashby. She had been steadily gathering more detailed information about the positioning of the Union troops and was convinced that there was still time for Jackson's troops to surge through Front Royal and thwart the plan to encircle him.

Belle knew the time for action had arrived when her maid breathlessly announced that the Rebels were coming. Belle grabbed some opera glasses and ran to the balcony to scan the countryside for her beloved Confederates. Her heart raced as she saw the advanced guard only about three-quarters of a mile from town. She had previously learned from a friendly Union soldier that his troops planned to set the bridges on fire to prevent the southerners from storming Front Royal.

With this critical information and other up-to-date intelligence, Belle knew she was the vital link to achieving a southern triumph in the area. She approached several men she knew to be southern sympathizers. Thinking one of them might agree to carry the information to Stonewall Jackson, she asked which one would volunteer. As they quickly dropped their eyes toward the ground, Belle soon realized that if the information was going to be relayed, it would be up to her. She recalled their lackluster response with a touch of cynicism. "They all with one accord said, 'No, no. You go'."

Grabbing a white sunbonnet, she headed down the street at a run. "I soon cleared the town and gained the open fields," she would reflect, "which I traversed with unabated speed, hoping to escape observation." She knew, however, that escaping observation would be no easy matter. For one thing, she was wearing a dark blue dress with a white apron. "This contrast of colors, being visible at a great distance," she added with a composed understatement, "made me far more conspicuous that was just then agreeable."

Her concern was soon justified. When the Federal pickets saw the blue-and-white clad teen running toward the southern troops, they immediately commenced firing at her. Following their lead, union infantry also opened fire on her. "Besides the numerous bullets that whistled by my ears," she reflected, "several actually pierced different parts of my clothing, but not one reached my body." As if the northern artillery fire wasn't bad enough, Belle said she was also caught up in crossfire between the two sides, "whose shot and shell flew whistling and hissing over my head."

A Federal shell exploded within twenty feet of her, sending fragments flying in all directions. "I had, however, just time to throw myself flat upon the ground," she stated, "before the deadly engine burst; and again Providence spared my life." Springing back into action, she faced more heavy fire, yet continued her frenzied race. "I often marvel and even shudder," she remembered, "when I reflect how I cleared the fields and bounded over the fences with the agility of a deer."

When Belle finally neared the leading edge of the Confederate troops, she frantically waved her bonnet to the soldiers to indicate they should charge ahead quickly. She recalled that "the 1st Maryland 'rebel' infantry and Hay's Louisiana Brigade, gave me a loud cheer and, without waiting for further orders, dashed upon the town at a rapid pace."

As Belle scanned the horizon, she could see no more Confederate troops. The horrifying thought occurred to her that the relatively small number of troops she waved on might not be strong enough to counter the Union resistance. "My heart almost ceased to beat within me," she wrote. Overcome by the combination of fatigue and the fear that she had sent the soldiers to their death, she said she "sank to her knees and offered a short but earnest prayer to God."

Fighting against exhaustion and anxiety, Belle struggled to her feet and continued her race when she caught sight of the rest of the troops. "To my unspeakable, indescribable joy," she remembered, "I caught sight of the main body, fast approaching." Amongst the troops, she recognized an old friend, Major Harry Douglas. She breathlessly told him about the union's plan to burn Front Royal's bridges before they could get there. Douglas galloped off to report Belle's information to Stonewall Jackson.

Acting on her information, Stonewall and his men charged toward Front Royal. The Union soldiers had already set a major bridge on fire when the Confederates charged into town. Defying the burning timbers, Jackson's men grabbed and kicked the flaming boards into the water, saving the bridge so their forces could cross and storm the northern troops.

History would record the move as one of Stonewall's major victories in his highly successful campaign in the Shenandoah Valley. As Belle Boyd looked back over her life, her mind often replayed visions of her crazed race across the battlefield. Foremost among those images were likely the cheering Rebel soldiers as she waved them forward with her bonnet. "Their shouts of approbation and triumph rang in my ears for many a day afterwards," she reflected, "and I still hear them not infrequently in my dreams."
"Complete" Ignorance

John Bidwell and His Adventurous Friends Know

Everything About California as They Head Out to the

Glorious Land...Except How to Get There

The patchwork collection of enthusiastic young adventurers stood proud and strong on the brink of history. They were more than ready to take their place as the first overland emigrant party to enter California. As they set out in May of 1841 from Sapling Grove, Missouri, their heads were swimming with images of the glorious land. They knew California was a place of perennial spring and boundless fertility. They knew wild game roamed freely and luscious oranges hung for the picking. And they also knew that neither disease nor disputes among settlers had yet marred the virgin landscape.

Yes, they knew all they needed to know about the golden land. Well, they knew almost all they needed to know. Actually there was one little detail they hadn't quite worked out yet...how to get there. Many years later, their organizer, John Bidwell, would summarize their situation. "Our ignorance of the route," he noted, "was complete. We only knew that California lay west..."

Fortunately for their unbridled enthusiasm, the excited pioneers-to-be were also ignorant of the hardships that lurked ahead on their six-month excursion. Before they would see the free-roaming wild game or taste the luscious oranges, they would see near-starvation and have a potent taste of torturous desert days and frigid mountain nights. The seed of adventure that produced this rigorous journey began to germinate in John Bidwell's mind during his twentieth year. "I conceived a desire," he remembered, "to see the great prairies of the West...." In the spring of 1839, he set out on foot from western Ohio toward Cincinnati. He was fortunate enough to hitch a ride most of the way on a produce wagon. From Cincinnati, he made his way down the Ohio River by steamboat to the Mississippi.

In Missouri, he met a Frenchman named Joseph Roubidoux, who told Bidwell he had been to California and had found it to be an ideal land. He described the countless herds of wild horses, the free-roaming game and the wide-open fertile valleys. Roubidoux also said there was hardly any sign of the fever that had spread across Missouri. He said there had been only one man in California who had ever had a chill. "It was a matter of so much wonderment to the people of Monterey," he added, "that they went eighteen miles into the country to see him shake."

Bidwell rounded up potential emigrants and invited Roubidoux to speak to them. Roubidoux filled the gathering with dreams of the virgin country and endless opportunities, just as he had done with Bidwell. The group members decided to recruit others and meet on May 9th at Sapling Grove "armed and equipped to cross the Rocky Mountains to California."

During the next few months, the size of the group swelled as a positive article about California, written by a Doctor John Marsh, was printed in the area papers. Then it dwindled as another article appeared which told of scorching desert heat and unfriendly attitudes of the native Californians. That letter was gleefully reprinted in area papers by the Platte County merchants. From the beginning, they felt the emigrant movement was "the most unheard of, foolish, wild-goose chase that ever entered into the brain of man..."

When May 9th arrived, Bidwell and a few others excitedly headed for Sapling Grove. On arriving, they found only one wagon ahead of them. Throughout the next few days, one or two wagons pulled in each day. Five days after Bidwell's arrival, the party numbered sixty-nine. As the enthusiastic group members began to quiz each other, a startling realization fell over them - none of the sixty-nine knew which path to take.

Once again, destiny played a winning card for them. One of the last members to arrive said he had passed a company of missionaries who had hired an experienced Rocky Mountaineer to guide them to the Flathead Indian nation. Their destination was Fort Hall in the present-day state of Idaho. The missionary's guide turned out to be the veteran mountain man, Captain Thomas "Broken Hand" Fitzpatrick.

At last the Western Emigration Society was on the move. As they rolled along the yet-unnamed Oregon Trail, they realized how sensible they had been to wait for Fitzpatrick to lead them. In fact, Fitzpatrick's knowledge of the frontier likely saved their lives one night as they camped on the south fork of the Platte River. For days, they had traveled past immense buffalo herds heading toward the Platte for water. As they camped, the ground began to tremble from the buffalo's thundering onrush.

Fitzpatrick instructed them to set up fires a good distance from the wagons to turn the buffalo away from the campsite. The lead buffalo must have room to maneuver, he explained. If not, the pressure of the thousands of animals from behind would prevent them from veering around the wagons. Had they not diverted the herd, Bidwell judged "wagons, animals and emigrants would have been trodden under their feet."

The thundering buffalo herd was not the only taste of danger the Platte River served them. During one scorching afternoon, a heavy rainstorm suddenly broke the stillness. On the tail of the rain, hailstones "as large as a turkey's egg" hammered the wagons. Before the icy volley subsided, it had blanketed the prairie with hail four inches deep. The very next day, nature again turned on them. A menacing waterspout suddenly emerged, sucking water from the Platte. The society members were now becoming seasoned to frontier dangers. They quickly threw themselves against the sides of the wagons to prevent them from overturning. The swirling mass passed within a quarter of a mile. "Had it struck us," Bidwell solemnly recalled, "it would doubtless have demolished us."

As they continued and crossed the Rocky Mountains at the South Pass, a sobering realization must have penetrated their thoughts. Fitzpatrick, the veteran mountaineer who had led them safely through one hazard after another, would soon be turning northwest. After all, the missionaries had hired him to take them to Idaho, not California. The point of separation was Soda Springs in present-day Idaho. A decision had to be made by each group member. Would he or she continue in the safety of Fitzpatrick's group to Fort Hall or follow the original California dream. Thirty-two decided to stick to that dream.

This time, Bidwell and the remaining thirty-one, were not the only ones unaware of the best route. Fitzpatrick himself was not much better informed. He had heard though, that some trappers had trekked west and northwest of Salt Lake looking for beaver. So he suggested that four of the party accompany him to Fort Hall to consult with anyone who might know a logical starting path. The remaining twenty-eight said their thankful goodbyes to Fitzpatrick and the missionaries. They then headed down the west side of Bear River into country that was, as Bidwell put it, "a veritable terra incognita."

Somehow, with scant directions obtained from Fort Hall and the fortunes of Fate, they managed to wander forward through the veritable terra incognita. Eventually, they found the fresh water of the Stanislaus River as well as abundant game and wild grapes. Despite their unfamiliarity with the path, they had become the first emigrant party to reach California. Their courage, stamina and resolve, much like their previous ignorance of the route, had apparently been "complete."

From "Cat Pianos" to "Human Fish"

Vaudeville at its Zaniest

As the curtain parted, the audience cast curious glances at the row of nervous alley cats standing side-by-side in their narrow boxes. The cats responded with their own questioning gazes as they peered out through the screen-covered ends. Then suddenly, like a frantic bell-ringer, a "pianist" stood behind them and began to pull their tails, which dangled down behind the row of cages. Without hesitation, the otherwise ordinary cats were miraculously transformed into a synchronized feline music machine, and began to "meow" out a song in perfect pitch! Hard to believe? Highly implausible? Downright incredible? Well, maybe just a little, but that's all right, it was vaudeville!

The other performers probably chuckled at the audience reaction as the Maestro pulled on the artificial cat tails and secretly did cat imitations. The Cat Piano, like so many other one-of-a-kind acts, has taken its place as a memory of an age of raw, uninhibited entertainment. It was a period when performers laughed at hard times, but took their comedy very seriously.

Throughout the glory years of vaudeville from the 1880s into the 1930s, thousands of acts walked out onto the stage. Some left to the thunderous applause of appreciative audiences. Others ducked tomatoes and hoped the hook wouldn't sweep them away before they finished. Most people remember the big names when they think of vaudeville. Eddie Cantor, Fannie Brice, Al Jolson, Jimmy Durante, Jack Benny, Bob Hope, George Burns and a nearly unending list of entertainment legends cut their teeth in vaudeville theaters. Their stories have been documented in numerous books and movies, and we have all marveled at how many great talents took root in such humble soil.

But what about the "not-so-legendary" acts? What about "egg dancers," "Fluery" or "Blatz, the Human Fish?" They deserve their place in history too. Some of the most innovative acts in vaudeville were created as "afterpieces," meant to be shrunk or stretched to fill the space between the main entertainers. These acts sometimes stretched the outer boundaries of imagination. The Human Fish, for example, was an act performed by man named Blatz. He would completely submerge himself in a tank of water on stage, and begin to slowly eat a banana. When he was through with his snack, he would entertain himself by playing a slide trombone. Following his meal and music, he would read a newspaper and then curl up for a nap. According to his contemporaries, he had no hidden air hose, but could simply hold his breath for an extremely long time. The Human Fish likely didn't have much competition from similar acts.

Then there was Fleury, an old English character who would dance around the stage in a Turkish costume. Near the finale of his act, Fleury would toss up his cape and expose his stomach. On his chest, were painted two eyes and a nose. His navel was painted like a puckered mouth, and as he flexed his stomach muscles, he could make faces at the audience.

Hernandez was a peculiar-looking performer who, judging from the description of his act, might have been a hit in a modern-day rock music video. He painted his face black, dressed in black tights, and wore a wig that came to a point. He played guitar, and as he played he would perform all sorts of strange contortions. When he played a musical run, for example, he would appear to extend his neck nearly a foot, then let it slowly sink back into his shoulders.

Pointed wigs were also used in a dance number appropriately called "A Study in Points." Two men and a woman appeared on stage, and the men had long pointed eyebrows, ear lobes, noses, mustaches, and goatees. Even their collars, lapels, and coat tails had long extended points. To top it off, they wore long pointed shoes. They would perform a dance style called "legmania," which emphasized high kicking and splits. As they made their entrance, the men would gracefully lift their legs completely over the lady, in rhythm to the music.

Dances were a popular type of afterpiece. The "transformation dance" was an eye-catching number that used wires called "strip strings." A lady, for example, might come on stage marching in a full military uniform. Someone behind stage would then pull one of the strings attached to one layer of her uniform, and she would transform into an Irish washerwoman dancing a jig. Then with another pull she was in a short skirt, doing a skipping-rope dance. A dancer named Kitty O'Neill perfected a dance called the Sand Jig, in the late eighteen hundreds. She would walk on stage carrying a cornucopia holding about a pint of sand and sprinkle it near the front of the stage. Then she would dance a jig with shuffles and slides, all on the balls of her feet.

As the dancers became popular, they looked around for other props to add a little variety to their act. For an Egg Dance, the dancer would gingerly dance among about twenty eggs, taking care not to break them. At the end of the bit, he would usually break a couple of eggs to show they were real. A Spade Dance was performed with a piece of hardwood formed to look like an old fashioned spade. The dancer would stand on the blade, hold the handle with both hands, and hop around the stage to the rhythm of the music. For the finale, he or she would usually hop over hurdles, rows of bottles or lighted candles. Golden and Drayton did an old-time rhythm bit called Patting Rabbit Hash. During a rendition of Turkey in the Straw, Golden would accompany the music by patting and slapping his hands on his knees, hips, elbows, shoulders and forearms to create a triple-time rhythm that sounded almost like a snare drum.

Sadly, like so many other forms of our country's early entertainment, vaudeville would one day fade away, to reappear only in the history books. One by one, the tired troopers tucked their baggy pants and fright wigs into their road-worn trunks for the last time. As they did, they stored something else along with them. Packed in among the seltzer bottles and rubber noses, was a raw untamed quality that would not be allowed in the polished well-rehearsed performances that would follow.

Today, traveling theater groups or musicians would cringe at the thought of providing the type of hokey amateurish acts that vaudeville often gave us. When we sit down to watch a touring ballet company or a finely tuned symphony orchestra, we know we will experience a nearly perfect performance. Still, isn't there some lingering child-like part of us that yearns to see the prima donna hop in a water tank and play a trombone, or the maestro suddenly jerk up his shirt and make his navel sing a song?
Ten-penny Tales

Deadwood Dick, Kit Carson Jr., Buffalo Bill and the Rest

Gallop Across the Pages of Beadle & Adams' Dime Novels

"I'd a blamed sight rather see the devil, horns, hoofs, and tail, anytime, than Will," Tom Clark tells his fellow Texas Ranger. Tom's concern is echoed by most Texans. Much of the time "Wild Will" is as sane as any other man - but let him get hold of a bottle of rum and one of his "mad fits" is bound to follow. He will surely set off on a rampage of terror and violence. Will, in his wild state, has charged into war-parties of Indians who "shrunk in horror from his insane, maddened eyes..." No one knows exactly what has caused his terrible insanity. Some believe a mysterious curse has transformed him into an omen of evil - the "Maniac of the Chaparrals."

"I ain't afeard o' nothin' human," Tom Clark informs his friend, "but there wasn't nothin' human about the look Will gi'n me as he went past, his horse's tail hissin' like a whip snake on the migrate."

Eventually though, human or not, Wild Will met his match, just like all the other sinister villains of the Beadle and Adams' dime novels. He didn't bow out of the story, however, until he had firmly raised rows of goose bumps on thousands of wide-eyed readers. Just like the villains who fought Deadwood Dick, Buffalo Bill, Texas Jack and all the rest of the novels' colorful heroes, poor old Wild Will was doomed from the start. He should have realized - a bad guy could never win in a dime novel, no matter how insane his "maddened eyes" were.

As he rode across the pages of Kit Carson, Jr., the Crack Shot of the West, over a hundred years ago, Wild Will stirred up the same dust as the thousands of characters who rode before and after him. That dust was carried on the winds of the imagination of everyone from freckle-faced farm kids to battle-scarred Civil War soldiers. Those winds would start to blow the minute the reader's eager hands turned the first page of the latest Beadle and Adams' dime novel.

In the summer of 1860, the New York based publisher released their first dime novel, Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter. When stacks of Malaeska were replaced by piles of dimes, the message was clear - dime novel # 1 would definitely be followed by further issues. The search was on for more writers. One after another, the succeeding issues reinforced the success of the new venture. People just couldn't seem to buy them fast enough. The first dime novel to feature a Wild West background - number 8 - particularly hit pay dirt. Edward Ellis's Seth Jones, or The Captives of the Frontier was published in the fall of 1860. The use of this kind of double-title was a hallmark of the early dime novels.

Seth Jones was preceded by a clever advertising campaign. Newspaper ads and posters across the country posed the question, "Who is Seth Jones?" A few days later, the novel was released to satisfy the public's curiosity. Apparently that curiosity had been intense, because Seth Jones sold over half a million copies. As Beadle and Adams cast their net to collect writers throughout the years, they often dragged in some pretty fascinating personalities. In addition to professional writers and poets, they pulled in many of the actual characters who had made the Wild West wild. Buffalo Bill Cody - with the help of a ghost writer - added his tales to the mix. His stories, like Deadly-Eye and The Prairie Rover, The Dread Shot Four and My Pards of the Plains, gave plenty of daydream fodder to bored farm boys longing for action-filled lives on the plains.

Since the stories were often written by those who had actually lived the life they wrote about, they were sometimes quite realistic. Often, they painted a more accurate picture of everyday life on the frontier or the plains than the history textbooks of the Eastern scholars. It was, however, common knowledge that the hair-raising tales could often stretch the outer boundaries of fiction. Kit Carson, for instance, in his later years was once shown an illustration of a Beadle and Adams dime novel written about his exploits. He donned his spectacles and surveyed the picture. The illustration depicted him clasping a fainting maiden in one hand while he slayed seven bloodthirsty Indians with the other. "That there may have happened," he quipped, "but I ain't got no recollection of it."

Not only did Buffalo Bill and Kit Carson stride across the pages of the dime novels, but so did many of Beadle's ancestors. The exploits of his grandfather, Benjamin, a Revolutionary War veteran, were thoroughly described, and of course \- thoroughly embellished. In addition, several of Benjamin's children were transformed into dime novel heroes. There were plenty to choose from since Benjamin's three marriages produced twenty-three offspring. The roster of Beadle and Adams' heroes is packed full of colorful characters. As the decades rolled by, the various styles of Beadle and Adams' dime novels introduced the country to such luminaries as Billy Bowlegs, Mohawk Nat, Dick Darling, Big Foot Wallace and a nearly endless cast of one-of-a-kind characters.

One of most durable of these was Deadwood Dick. Dick was the subject of a series of thirty-three novels. Apparently convinced that the reading public was tired of Dick's exploits, the author, Edward L. Wheeler, let him die in the thirty-third issue. Dick's popularity, however, didn't perish along with him. In response to complaints by fans, Beadle and Adams simply resurrected the character in the form of Deadwood Dick Jr., who ran for another ninety-seven issues.

Along his busy path, Deadwood Dick not only found western adventure, but unlike most cowboy heroes, he finally got the girl. In Deadwood Dick's Doom; or, Calamity Jane's Last Adventure, he ended his adventure by marrying Calamity Jane. As the two rode off into the sunset, Edward Wheeler spoke for his prospective reading audience. "Dick and the poor, sore-hearted but brave and true Calamity were married," Wheeler informed us, "and the author joins in the wishes of his readers that they may 'live long and prosper'..."

The heroes weren't the only things repeated throughout the years. In order to cut down on expenses, the cover illustrations sometimes served double-duty as well. Since there were hundreds of issues, the readers likely didn't recognize the same cover-picture with a little touching up. For example, the illustration of Buffalo Bill in Dime Library # 1000, was originally that of a bearded stage driver in Dime Library # 361. To transform the stage driver's face into Buffalo Bill's, he was simply given a partial shave.

Despite an occasional cost-cutting trick, the dime novels continued to give their readers a full measure of entertainment. From the Civil War soldiers who traded them back and forth until they disintegrated, to the hundreds of thousands of armchair pioneers and cowboys, the readers remained avid disciples of their favorite dime novels. Those disciples came in varying degrees of loyalty. Likely none, however, carried their devotion to a loftier level than Senator Zachariah Chandler. He once expressed it publicly, regarding the 1862 Beadle and Adams' dime novel, Oonomoo, the Huron, by Edward Ellis. "The man who does not enjoy 'Oonomoo, the Huron,' Chandler stated flatly, "has no right to live."

A St. Louis Secret

"Mountain Charley" Tracks Down a Murderer

and Eventually Reveals a Fascinating Secret

"My fingers immediately sought and closed about the butt of my revolver," Charley wrote, "and my thumb spasmodically forced the hammer upwards." The object of this deadly preparation, was a traveling gambler named Jamieson. Fortunately for him, Charley decided that shooting an unsuspecting man at a poker table would be viewed as a cowardly act. This near-confrontation, however, would definitely not be the end of the matter. Jamieson had murdered Charley's spouse nearly five years ago, and had gotten off on a technicality.

At a little after midnight, Jamieson left his gambling friends and began walking home. Charley confronted him and reminded him of his murderous deed, then drew a gun with the intention of sending "his black soul to the devil who gave it!" Jamieson sprang backwards with the shot and fired back. Neither bullet hit its mark. Then Jamieson's second shot ripped through Charley's thigh. Charley returned fire, striking Jamieson's left arm. Finally the altercation ceased and Jamieson clutched his injured arm and lurched into the darkness.

"I had fallen," Charley wrote, "and dragged myself a short distance down an alley..." Within minutes, Charley lost consciousness. The next morning, an elderly lady named Mrs. Anderson, discovered the badly wounded gunshot victim near her house and summoned a doctor. Despite severe pain, Charley asked to talk to her before being treated by the doctor.

As Mrs. Anderson leaned closer, she heard a startling secret. "Charley," who lay bleeding before her, was not exactly what the townsfolk thought. He was in fact, not even a he. The rough and tumble youngster who always dressed in boy's clothing and hung around with other men, was actually a young woman. The murder Charley was intent on avenging, was that of a young Mississippi riverboat pilot - her slain husband.

The events that led to this daring deception transpired several years before. Although she didn't provide her first or maiden name, even in her autobiography, a contemporary newspaper correspondent and other resources identified her as Elsa Jane Forest. Due to the inability of her parents to care for her, at the age of five Elsa was sent to a boarding school in New Orleans. There, she would reflect, "I had obtained a strength of character, a firmness, and self-reliance that amounted to almost masculine force." That assertive personality, in addition to a slight raspy hoarseness from a childhood asthmatic condition, set the stage for Elsa's eventual transformation into "Charley."

During Elsa's school days, she matured rapidly. "Upon reaching the age of twelve," she noted, "I was as much a woman in form, stature and appearance as most women at sixteen." A young man by the name of Forest began to visit Elsa at the school and apparently agreed with that assessment. After a brief clandestine courtship, he proposed marriage. Knowing the school would not approve, because of her age, she decided to elope. One morning, she noted, the boarders at the school "numbered one less."

Despite her young age, Mrs. Elsa Jane Forest thoroughly enjoyed her new life. Her husband was a pilot on a Mississippi river boat and they settled in St. Louis. He traveled much of the time but was loving and loyal. Within three years, their little world also included a son and a daughter. "Life flowed on," Elsa reflected, "in a quiet, uninterrupted beauty." That beauty, unfortunately, would soon be forever interrupted.

The disruption came in 1850, with a knock on her door. She wrote later that when she opened it, a stranger stood there "with a countenance so full of evil tidings, that a shadow fell instantly upon my heart." The man hesitantly informed Elsa that her husband "had some difficulty with his mate, a man named Jamieson, about some old grudge." "Jamieson," he continued solemnly, "shot him, wounding him badly."

Elsa harbored a dark fear that the worse had not yet been told. "Are you sure he is only hurt?" she probed. "Is he not...dead?"

After a desolate stillness, the stranger sadly confirmed her dreaded speculation. "He is!"

"Then followed," Elsa remembered, "a dream-like succession of days and nights." When the parade of sorrowful events had finally passed and the initial numbness began to subside, she began to dwell on the cause of her misfortune - Jamieson. "Each privation that I endured," she declared, "served to make Jamieson more prominent as its author..." She wasn't yet sure how, but she resolved to "visit a terrible reparation" on him.

In the mid-1800's, most employers were not exactly bubbling with enthusiasm to hire women. "I knew how great the prejudices to be overcome by any young woman who seeks to earn an honest livelihood by her exertions," she lamented. Elsa considered every avenue, then came to a firm decision - to imitate a man. Obtaining a close-cropped haircut and a suit of boy's clothes, she placed her children with the Sisters of Charity and set out to play her clandestine role.

She found work first as a cabin boy on a St. Louis steamboat, then as brakeman for the Illinois Central Railroad, regularly donning her normal clothes to secretly visit her children. Then, while strolling the streets of St. Louis, she overheard a man inviting another to join him in a game of draw poker. "Won't you come up, Jamieson...?" he inquired. The name surged through Elsa's consciousness. "The blood rushed through my veins," she declared, "as if propelled by electricity..."

"I easily recognized Jamieson," Elsa wrote. Although she had never seen him, she said she had inquired about his appearance, "'till each of his features was indelibly burned in to my mind." This was the instant when her fingers closed around the butt of her revolver and then she had second thoughts about shooting an unsuspecting man at the poker table. "In another instant," she reflected, "I would have drawn it and sent a bullet into his murderous heart..."

Fate, however, had other plans. Following the gunfight that night and the later discovery by Mrs. Anderson of Charley's true gender, Elsa spent months at Mrs. Anderson's house recovering from a bone fracture in her leg. The end of her charade would finally be signaled by another confrontation with Jamieson in the spring of 1860 in Denver City, Colorado. This time he got the worst of the deal - three bullet wounds. None were fatal, and after recuperating, he left for New Orleans. Once there, however, he soon died of Yellow Fever.

Before he left, Jamieson told the local officials the story of Elsa's past, including her years as "Charley." He admitted shooting her husband, which cleared her from blame for his injuries. "The story soon got out," Elsa stated, "and I found myself famous..." The now-legendary Horace Greeley wrote about her for the New York Tribune. During this time, Elsa was running a saloon in Denver City under the nickname of "Mountain Charley."

Soon after the last incident with Jamieson, she married one of her bartenders, H. L. Guerin. Along with her children, they moved to the mountains to open a boarding house and mine for gold. Mrs. Elsa Jane Forest Guerin had finally gained the security and peace of mind she had sought for so many years. And at the same time, western history gained a colorful character, who for a turbulent decade as "Charley," kept her hidden identity a "St. Louis secret."

The Vision of Valor

A Prophetic Dream Image That Charted

a Celebrated Life Course for Crazy Horse

The determined Sioux warrior charged headlong into a deadly stream of bullets as the sky flashed around him. While the projectiles sailed inches from his head during a furious thunder storm, not one bullet touched him or his horse as they floated and danced through the barrage. Rain-packed gusts lifted his flowing hair to reveal a small good-luck stone tied to the back of his left ear. Suddenly, at the climax of the tempest, a sizzling bolt of lightning branded a zigzag symbol onto his face.

Within seconds, white hailstone markings began to dot his body. Although the rider seemed to be a gallant warrior, he wore only simple clothing and sported a single hawk feather in his hair. Suddenly, the brave rider, the dancing horse and the raging thunderstorm faded into the deep blue sky. As they dissipated, a shrieking red-tailed hawk proclaimed their departure.

Awakening from this dramatic vision, a young Sioux boy blinked his eyes and slowly returned his focus to his Lakota homeland. But the dream warrior he saw would soon change the young Sioux's life. Like most Lakota youth, he would acquire several names as he matured. At the time of his vision, he was mainly known by his nickname of Curly, due to his light-colored wavy hair. Within a few years, his name changed to His Horse on Sight, because of his previous success in capturing wild horses. Finally, at around eighteen, his father gave him the name that would resound through generations - Tasunke Witko or "Crazy Horse."

His earlier trance vision about the warrior, had occurred in response to a tragic incident he had recently witnessed. In August of 1854, about thirty soldiers, led by Lieutenant John Grattan, entered Curly's tranquil Lakota camp in present-day South Dakota. They were on a mission to investigate the theft of a nearby settler's cow. The animal had actually wandered into the Lakota camp on its own. Not knowing who owned it, the camp's residents butchered the cow to divide among various families.

Their chief, Conquering Bull, explained this to the soldiers and offered a replacement cow. Lieutenant Grattan, however, was adamant about making arrests. As the situation swirled out of control, one of the soldiers made the fateful move of shooting and killing Conquering Bull. Predictably, the furious Sioux warriors left Grattan and all of his men lying dead on the prairie.

Upset by the violence and in mourning for Conquering Bull, Curly left camp on a vision quest to seek guidance for his future. After staying alone on a mountainside for three days and nights without food or water, he visualized the bold warrior in the thunder storm. On returning, he told his father about his vision. The image, his father explained, was a sign of Curly's future greatness in battle. Accepting his interpretation, Curly adopted the outfit of the dream rider as his future battle dress. Like the rider in his vision, Crazy Horse would never be injured by a bullet in battle.

Prior to the episode with Lieutenant Grattan, life for Curly had been serene. Although unusually quiet and meditative, he was well liked and respected throughout his camp. When he was about five, his father brought home two antelope he had killed during a severe snowstorm. Knowing that other families were hungry, Curly mounted his pony and rode through the camp, telling them to come to his family's teepee for meat. This foreshadowed his compassion and generosity as a great leader. A few years later, an incident highlighted his perseverance and strength. Some older boys talked him into riding a good-sized buffalo calf, which had roamed into an open field. Likely expecting him to go sailing off the beast, they were amazed to witness him hanging on until the calf finally wore himself to a frazzle.

Those qualities would help Crazy Horse rise up the tribal ranks during the late 1850s and early 60s. His legend soared as he bravely fought the Lakota's traditional enemies - the Crow, Shoshone, Pawnee, Blackfoot and Arikara tribes. In the mid 1860's, in recognition of his warfare accomplishments, he was designated as The Shirt Wearer - a title reserved for war leaders.

During the next few years, he was a principal warrior in several historical battles including the Wagon Box Fight, the Battle of Red Buttes and the conflict the Sioux and Cheyenne called the Battle of the Hundred in the Hand. The latter was known by the government as the Fetterman Massacre. Despite the name massacre, Crazy Horse was widely known for participating in fair open battles rather than the notorious slaughters on the trail.

The conflict most often recorded beside his name is the Battle of the Little Big Horn. On the afternoon of June 25th, 1876, Crazy Horse was peacefully watching a game of ring toss, when a warning resounded throughout the camp that the Army was attacking. Crazy Horse sprang into action. Saddling his favorite war pony, he headed to the south end of the camp where the assault had begun. Suddenly, another alarm came from the opposite direction. Looking up, Crazy Horse saw General George Armstrong Custer and his men on the other side of the Little Big Horn river.

Quickly realizing that Custer planned to have his men converge from both the south and north, Crazy Horse also knew that Custer would not be able to cross the river from his position. Leading his fellow warriors, Crazy Horse dashed to the shallow ford in the river to cut off Custer and trap him in his own design. As he did, his flowing hair revealed a small stone attached behind his ear and a lightning bolt painted across his cheek. The Sioux War leader racing in front of Custer, clad in simple clothes and sporting a single red hawk feather, was the embodiment of the vision of valor a young Sioux boy had witnessed years before on a distant mountaintop.

A Daring Dash

The Galloping Race to Safety That

Rescued George Armstrong Custer

There are a great many situations a person wouldn't want to be dropped into. Ranking near the top of these, would likely be that of falling off your wounded horse into a swarm of enemy soldiers during a bloody Civil War battle. Yet, on the second of July in 1863, George Armstrong Custer's widened eyes took in that precise state-of-affairs. Scanning his new surroundings during a battle at Beaverdam Creek near Hunterstown, Pennsylvania, he frantically searched for a way to escape his dismal fate. But no matter where he looked, he saw the same thing - determined Rebel soldiers raising their weapons. This, it seemed, would be the 23-year-old Custer's last stand.

That stand, however was delayed for a few years, when his orderly stormed through a swirl of dust like a hero in a Western movie. Stabbing the most threatening Confederate fighter with his saber, Private Norell Churchill swept Custer onto the saddle with him and charged forward to safety. Sliding off Churchill's horse, Custer showered him with profuse gratitude for saving his life. Gratitude for the private's life-saving act, however, was likely not always echoed by those who later came in contact with George Armstrong Custer. Chief among the dissenters, would surely have been the more than two hundred men of the 7th Cavalry who would later follow him to their senseless death at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

The background that led to these dramatic adventures, foreshadowed Custer's colorful and controversial future. Never one to excel in his studies, young George was much better at creating mischief. One of his former schoolmates said he was a "wide awake boy, full of all kinds of pranks and willing to take all kinds of chances." Soon, the chance-taking boy turned his dreams toward a military future as his father took him to watch martial drills. As he stood with his toy musket, marveling at the soldiers training for battle with Mexico, he was hooked on the gallantry of his newfound heroes.

Although young Custer was much more interested in soldiering than scholarship, he somehow managed to creep through school to graduation. Though Custer was Ohio born, his parents sent him to live with his step-sister's family in Monroe, Michigan to attend New Dublin School. Following graduation, he managed to find a teaching position at Beech Point School back in Ohio.

The teacher's life simply couldn't compete with his vision of a military career. He applied to West Point in 1856, but was turned down. The next year, fate intervened on his behalf. According to accounts, he had struck up a torrid relationship with a young lady named Mollie Holland. Their liaison came to a screeching halt when her father uncovered Custer's note to his daughter, referring to their recent "rendezvous on a trundle bed." Relying on high-placed political connections, Mollie's dad managed to have the 17-year-old Custer nominated for West Point, sending him far from his Ohio home...and his daughter.

As Custer attended West Point, his scholastic achievements not only didn't improve, they plummeted. "It was alright with him whether he knew his lessons or not," a fellow classmate recalled. "West Point had never been afflicted with a less promising pupil." Custer's teachers wholeheartedly agreed with this assessment, ranking him dead last in his class of 34 cadets. In fact, Custer himself later noted that "future students might study his days at West Point as an example to be avoided."

In ordinary times, this less-than-stellar achievement would have prevented his entrance into the military as an officer. But the same fate that had opened the doors of West Point, again interceded to cast him into an officer status. The Civil War had broken out and the Union Army was hungry for officers. Shortly after his entry, Custer seemed to confirm the Army's judgment in selecting him.

During the Peninsula Campaign, in the spring of 1862, Custer's commander, Major General George McClellan, halted his company as they approached the Chickahominy River. Desperately wanting to ford it, he muttered aloud, "I wish I knew how deep it is!" Without hesitation, his gutsy aide, Custer, dashed forward on his horse. Stopping in the middle of the river, he brazenly announced, "That's how deep it is, Mr. General." Word of his bold action spread throughout the Union forces.

His reckless bravado continued to thrust him up the ranks as he served in a string of major campaigns from the Battle of Bull Run through the Richmond campaign, Cedar Creek, Gettysburg and Appomattox. Not satisfied with the typical officer's uniform, Custer decked himself out in a black-velvet outfit draped with coils of gold lace. He topped it off with spurs on his boots, a broad-brimmed sombrero and a red neckerchief. As might be expected, his battle-weary troops initially viewed their new dandy commander with disdain. As they witnessed him boldly leading from the front in battle after battle, though, they sometimes even donned red neckerchiefs themselves.

Despite the many accounts of his Civil War triumphs, those would not be the stories history would traditionally place by Custer's name. The same dare-devil attitude that had earned him the nickname of the "The Boy General" as a twenty-three-year-old brigadier general, would assure his place in Western infamy.

As the thirty-six-year-old Custer sat tall on his horse on June 25th in 1876, he likely reflected on his previous decisions in the Civil and Indian wars. Year after year, he had proven that his intuition was superior to that of his fidgeting fretting superior officers. Why would this battle at the Little Big Horn River be any different? If he waited for reinforcements as Army protocol dictated, he might miss his chance to rack up another colorful Custer victory. Then, as later reported by English-speaking Indian witnesses, he turned to his men with a confident, "Hurrah boys, we've got them!"
The Michelangelo of Con Artists

The Slightly Shady Master Brushstrokes

of Joseph "The Yellow Kid" Weil

"Are you men going to let a parasite eat away your body - your very life?" As old "Doc" Meriwether's voice soared over the sea of wide-eyed yokels, they gawked back like a startled antelope herd. When the good doctor cradled the thirty-two-ounce bottle of Meriwether's Elixer and graphically detailed the symptoms of infestation by the dreaded tapeworm, their mouths gaped open - nearly in unison. Several of those mouths would once again hang low after they had entered his makeshift office to witness the results of his magical cure-all.

Once a patient had purchased and consumed the concoction, he was instructed to lie down in the outer office and wait for the purgative properties of the miracle treatment to begin. When he felt its unmistakable effect, the sucker was led into a darkened room containing a waiting basin. As he returned to the outer office, Meriwether's young assistant would walk out of the room, carrying the basin. When the doc dipped his tongs into its vile contents, his brow winkled knowingly. "There, my friend," Doc Meriwether would exclaim as he dangled the despicable creature, "is your tapeworm! Evil-looking thing isn't it?"

It didn't seem to matter that the sinister critter was actually a long string of potato peel previously placed in a substitute basin. The patient could almost see it wriggling and writhing. Inevitably, he felt a wave of disgust followed by an immediate glow of health and well being from the extrication of the hideous monster. As Meriwether's young assistant, Joseph Weil, would later observe in his autobiography, the sucker's relief may have been due to his having "had a good cleansing, in more ways than one!" While the country bumpkin smiled broadly and poked ten dollars into the hand of his savior physician, he was unaware that the only thing Doc Meriwether had removed, was the ten dollars from his wallet.

Something else though, was in fact removed by the incident - any lingering desire in the mind of Meriwether's young assistant to pursue the hard-working honest life. As his boss tucked the money into his wallet, he confirmed a fact that Weil would later summarize in his book: "Much more money was being made by skullduggery than by honest toil." No, honest toil held little interest for the young assistant...but that crisp ill-gotten ten dollar bill - now that was another thing!

Following the path set by Meriwether and later mentors, Joseph Weil would wheel-and-deal his way through the early nineteen hundreds to become, likely, the best con man to ever roam the earth. Emphasizing the artist in con artist, he would orchestrate complex schemes involving fake banks, phony betting parlors and bogus brokerage houses. These establishments would be fully staffed with "tellers," "stockbrokers" and "customers" played by gangsters, prostitutes and small-time hoodlums. His complex scams, in fact, would become the inspiration for the 1973 movie, The Sting, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

The Chicago-born Weil learned from the best on the streets by carefully studying the established swindlers in his neighborhood. At seventeen, he took a job as a bill collector and soon observed that all of his co-workers were skimming money off the top of their transactions. Rather than simply taking a cut of the bill-payer's money like they did, he turned his attention toward his fellow workers. For a modest sum, he informed them, he would not tell the boss about their misdeeds. His intuition was flawless - they were all glad to provide Weil with a small percentage to avoid being exposed.

It wouldn't be long, however, before his restless mind would concoct more innovative scams. One of his early cons involved a pair of glasses. He had begun selling subscriptions to Midwestern farmers, for a popular rural magazine called Hearth and Home. After making a sale, Weil would thank the farmer for purchasing the subscription and prepare to leave. Then, as an apparent afterthought, he would reach in his pocket and pull out a pair of expensive-looking spectacles. He had found them on the ground, he informed the farmer, as he was coming down the road.

"Do you happen to know anybody in the community who wears glasses like these?" he would inquire. When the farmer said he didn't know of anyone, Weil would somberly shake his head. "Too bad," he lamented, "If I could find the owner, I would return them. They look like expensive eyeglasses." As he inspected the rims, he said they appeared to be solid gold. Weil then held them out to the farmer who would usually try them on. Suddenly, the print in the sample magazine Weil had given him, stood out bright and clear. "Probably," Weil later reasoned, "he'd been intending to get a pair of glasses the next time he went to town."

When Weil told the sucker-to-be that he really didn't have time to go from house to house to find who they belonged to, the farmer inevitably offered to cough up two or three dollars to keep the glasses and search around for the owner. "Of course," Weil explained, "he had no intention of looking for the owner - anymore than I did." Once Weil was on his way with the newly acquired dollar bills in his pocket, and the farmer excitedly informed his family of his good fortune in acquiring the glasses with solid-gold rims, everyone was happy. They were all happy, that is...until the farmer learned he could purchase the same spectacles with their painted rims and magnifying-glass lenses, for twenty-five cents in the local general store.

As his scams grew more complex, Joseph Weil began to engrave his name into the annals of con-artist history. His name would nearly always be followed by his nickname, The Yellow Kid. He received that handle in the late 1800's from one of his early - and typically shady acquaintances, Alderman "Bathhouse John" Coughlin. The alderman noticed young Weil chuckling over the then-popular New York Journal's comic strip, Hogan's Alley and the Yellow Kid. The Yellow Kid character was always trying to pull something over on someone else in the strip. "You know, Joe," Coughlin observed, "you're just like that character, always pulling capers on people." From then on, young Joseph Weil, the up-and-coming conman, would also be known as The Yellow Kid.

During the years to come, Joseph Weil would fashion his career with the meticulous attention-to-detail of a fine craftsman. His far-reaching schemes would eventually require props like counterfeit brochures, letterheads and postmarks to convince suckers they were dealing with an honorable man from an established company. As he turned his attention toward creating the props, no detail escaped Weil's scrutiny. For phony international correspondence, he acquired stamps from foreign countries at a local stamp store and had postmarking machines made for every large city in the world. He hired an old-time hand-engraver to engrave and print letterheads, stock certificates, letters of credit and all the other bogus documents his schemes would require.

His wide-ranging cons would require Weil to assume a number of roles throughout the years. Those productions would involve everything from peddling pills that could turn water into gasoline, to convincing backers to invest in his plan for a French cemetery for jockeys. "I have often marveled," Weil would reflect in his memoirs, "at the number of people who seem to be waiting for someone to come along and take their money."
A Sad Saga of Sweetwater

"Cattle Kate" Becomes the Most Famous

Woman in Wyoming...After Her Hanging

Ella Watson knew life was a gamble in the newly settled West. She had no idea, however, of the tragic fate that would end her brief roll of the Wyoming dice. After all, she was merely a prostitute, and nobody seemed to mind that, especially the trail-worn cowboys. And she had definitely learned her trade well. She had apprenticed in Dodge City, Ogallala and Cheyenne. No, there was simply no logical reason for fate to turn on her near Independence Rock in the summer of 1888. Fate, unfortunately, doesn't always need a "logical reason."

Weighing in at a rather stout 170 pounds, Ella Watson was nevertheless quite attractive. In fact, when saloon-owner, Jim Averill, rode the fifty-some miles to Rawlins in December of 1887, he knew just who he wanted to spend a little time with. There were several brothels for his selection but only one of them housed Ella Watson, a free-spirit in her mid-twenties. He had previously partaken of her favors in Rawlins, and looked forward to a return engagement.

Averill could definitely stand a little diversion. He hadn't exactly been living a stress-free life the past few months. The previous year, he had homesteaded three miles east of Independence Rock and opened a grocery store and saloon, commonly known as a "road ranch." Although Jim was popular with the local cowboys, he wasn't exactly high on the list of the big ranch-owners - at least not on their good list. He had, it seems, more than a little trouble keeping his mouth shut.

He knew he was treading on some powerful toes when he sent his flaming letters to the Casper, Wyoming newspaper, but he just couldn't help himself. Someone had to speak out about the overbearing practices of the Wyoming Stock Grower's Association. They had laid claim to all the good grazing land for miles around the Sweetwater River. It didn't matter to them that the law said the land was public domain. The association had become so powerful and crooked, it was the law.

To make matters worse, they also controlled the newspapers in towns all around them. The editors of the Cheyenne Sun, the Rock Springs Miner, and the Rocky Mountain Life had all buckled under to the association's pressure. The Casper Weekly Mail, however, printed Jim Averil's condemning letters word-for-word. In his letters, Jim called the association's members "range hogs" and "land-grabbers." He raged about their attempts to prevent settlers from locating along the Sweetwater River by using "threats of bodily harm and other forms of intimidation."

Needless to say, the members of the Wyoming Stock Grower's Association weren't delighted with the paper's exercise in free speech. Association member Albert Bothwell took the lead in targeting Averill for revenge. Not only was Averill a threat to the association, he had been a personal burr under Bothwell's saddle. Averill had built his road ranch on land he had claimed for his own. In addition, Bothwell was convinced that Averill had re-branded several of his yearlings. Not one to silently hold a grudge, Bothwell repeatedly told Jim to get out of the country while he still had his health.

But as Jim Averill looked at Ella Watson's smiling face, Bothwell and the rest of his troubles rolled off his mind like a tumbleweed in the warm Wyoming wind. It wasn't merely her "favors" that comforted him. There was something about her spirit that connected them. Apparently the connection ran both ways. By the time Averill decided to head back to his Sweetwater road ranch, he was accompanied by more than his memories of Ella Watson. He was also accompanied by Ella Watson.

Not being the domestic type, Ella built her own little homestead about a mile west of Averill's place. She soon settled into her former trade. As the word got out to the local cowboys, Ella's house became a regular stop on their trail. Unlike the city customers, they often had no available money. That wasn't a problem - they usually had calves with them. So Ella began, as one writer put it, "bartering her favors for beef on the hoof" and would become forever branded as Cattle Kate.

Although Ella's business was thriving, dark clouds were gathering on the horizon which would eventually propel her, unwillingly, into the Western history books. Albert Bothwell became more and more disturbed about Averill's letters to the Casper paper. On Saturday, July 19, 1888, Bothwell and five local association members, met to review the situation. They agreed that Jim Averill and his strumpet friend, Cattle Kate, were to be presented with an ultimatum: get out of the country or be forcibly ejected.

To justify their actions, the association members stressed the rumors of cattle rustling that Jim and Ella had undertaken. According to some observers, local cattlemen often spied their branded calves penned up in a corral next to Ella's bordello. The Cheyenne Mail Leader described her as a "dark devil in the saddle, handy with a six-shooter and a Winchester, and an expert with a branding iron." Ella claimed that all the calves in her corral were simply those fairly traded by her customers or unbranded mavericks that Jim had rounded up. The truth, however, may lie forever obscured by the dusty clouds of Western history.

Cattle rustlers or not, Ella and Jim had definitely become the target of some very powerful enemies. The ultimatum was delivered the day after the meeting. On a sunny Saturday afternoon, Bothwell and three other association members hopped on a buckboard. Two others followed behind on horses. All six were armed with rifles. This time, Bothwell decided, the ultimatum would be one neither Ella nor Jim could refuse.

They stopped first at Ella's cabin. Shortly after they arrived, she came riding in with her hired hand, John DeCorey. One of the men told her to get into the wagon, that they were going to take her to Rawlins. According to later witnesses, she said she couldn't go until she put on a new print dress. Not in a mood to wait for her to get "presentable," one of the men threatened to rope and drag her if she didn't get in.

The scene at Jim Averill's house was similar. One of the men told him they had a warrant to take him in. When Jim asked to see it, he patted his rifle and said that was "warrant enough." With both Jim and Ella aboard the wagon, the mob headed, not for Rawlins as they had said, but toward Spring Creek Canyon. Several members of the mob later testified that they hadn't planned to do more than scare the two into submission. Nevertheless, before the sun had set, both Kate and Jim hung lifeless in the canyon.

There was one small grain of justice buried deep within the tragic and corrupt incident. Ella Watson, previously a little-known Sweetwater strumpet, would soon become the most widely known woman in Wyoming. As the word spread that the Wyoming Stock Grower's Association had committed the appalling act of hanging a woman, resistance to its domination swelled.

The fuse of resentment continued to smolder until it helped to ignite the Johnson County cattle war. The small ranchers eventually banded together to fight the association's tyrannical monopoly. Their resistance was fueled by the memories of the association's despicable deeds - especially a sad saga at Sweetwater - the legend of "Cattle Kate."

Barnum Before the Big Top

Phineas T. Barnum's Pre-circus

Days at the American Museum

It was simply a dusty little brick lying there on the sidewalk. There was no reason it should attract the rapt attention of so many curious bystanders. Yet this one, on the corner of New York's Ann Street and Broadway, like the bricks on the other corners of the little intersection, had become the subject of a lively controversy. As St. Paul's Chapel's clock tower marked his progress, a mysterious "brick man" kept to his solitary task. He looked at no one. He answered no questions. With a deliberate, almost military air, he picked up a brick from one corner, walked to the next and replaced it with the one he was carrying in his hand. Pacing rapidly toward the next corner, he set that brick down and picked up the one he had previously placed there. Corner-by-corner, minute-by-minute, he continued his relentless task.

As the time wore on, one person, then another, stopped dead in his tracks and stared at him with wonder. What possessed this maniacal man? What inexplicable puzzle was he working on? First two or three stopped and scratched their heads in amazement...then a dozen...a hundred...and more. Eventually a crowd of over five hundred observers watched his every move, whispering possible explanations to each other. Then in a split-second, the buzzing of the crowd was silenced. The tower clock struck the top of the hour. As if controlled by the clock's chimes, the brick man suddenly stopped his incessant movement. For the first time in forty-five minutes, he turned away from his task. Then, with a brick still in hand, he entered a nearby building.

Most of the amateur sleuths simply shook their heads and went about their business. A dozen or more however, bought a ticket and followed the mystery man into the building. Once inside, they surveyed the brick man's every move. He slowly walked up and down the isles of the building - a large museum - holding the brick calmly at his side. Then his behavior suddenly altered - much as it had when the clock tower struck the hour. This was it! They knew they were on the verge of discovery. The secret of the mystery man would soon be revealed. And so it was. As the cluster of cagey observers huddled together to share the moment of discovery, the brick man calmly strolled out the back door. As their brows wrinkled and their perplexed heads shook, something gradually dawned on them. Every last one of them had plunked down twenty-five cents of his hard-earned cash for a ticket to a museum he had no intention of visiting.

Outside, a small crowd once again began to gather. With curious gazes and hushed tones, they speculated on the odd behavior of a man who walked from corner to corner, replacing one brick with another brick. Was he mad? Was he controlled by secret powers? Were his actions governed by the mysterious clock tower? No, not really. They were governed by his boss, Phineas T. Barnum. After all, if the "brick man" wanted his salary at the end of the day, he had better start his next brick route. In another 45-minutes, he would lead another batch of suckers into Barnum's American Museum.

Those "suckers," after realizing they had been had by Phineas, likely shook off their initial indignation and decided to enjoy the museum. That, of course, was precisely Barnum's plan. He knew that a visit to the local museum was not everyone's idea of the perfect afternoon. After all, many of America's early museums were pretty dreary little establishments. Often crowded with dusty stuffed animals, sterile mineral collections, and indiscriminate stacks of native spears and arrows, there wasn't a lot to catch the attention. Barnum however, decided to change all that.

"It was my monomania," he once said, "to make the museum the town wonder and town talk." This monomania had begun to overcome him at the age of thirty-two. Working in New York, writing newspaper articles and advertisements, he learned that John Scudder's American Museum was for sale. The museum by that time, 1840, was the most popular in New York City. Barnum had visited it many times, and had longed for years to run it. It was already relatively popular. He knew however, that with the addition of his special touch, it could become a gold mine. Unfortunately this special touch was about all Barnum had to offer for the museum.

He just couldn't let his dreams die. Somehow he had to have that museum. Through the years, it had turned into the ideal business for him - a wild mixture of sideshow entertainment and bizarre curiosities, placed in among the more commonplace museum pieces. Soon after it opened in 1790, the museum had begun to veer from its owner's original design - that of a cultural center. Its creators, John Pintard and Gardiner Baker, had dreamed of setting up a permanent display to spread culture and education throughout the city. Pintard said he wanted to acquire "all that could be found of Indian literature in war-songs, hieroglyphic writings on stone, bark, skins, etc." Baker became the museum's keeper, and enthusiastically set about gathering curiosities to fulfill that dream.

It wasn't long however, before the dream began to fade. Pintard felt the museum was turning into more of a collection of odd curios than a cultural exhibition. Disgusted, he sold his rights to the museum to Baker. As the years rolled by, the museum was transferred from one owner to another. Through the next few years, more and more showmanship entered into the picture. Eventually, by the 1820s, the side show novelties overshadowed the cultural displays. The magicians, minstrels, mummies and ventriloquists were simply bigger crowd-pleasers than the stuffed birds and mineral specimens.

That situation would have mortified the museum's originators, but it suited Barnum just fine. He valued the cultural collections, but realized that sometimes a little showmanship was needed to pull in the crowds. Although he couldn't buy it, Barnum talked his way into the position of the museum's manager, through a series of cunning maneuvers. Suddenly he was no longer walking longingly through the halls of the American Museum, he was managing it! From the minute he got his hands on it, the museum began to take on shades of his personality. Only a simple sign with the words "American Museum" had promoted the museum before Barnum took over. This was simply not satisfactory. "There was no bustle or activity about the place," Phineas recalled. "The whole exterior was as dead as the skeletons and stuffed skins within."

To rectify this situation, Barnum draped the building in colorful flags and banners. He installed floodlights on the top of the building to throw beams of light up and down Broadway. Then he enhanced the bustle and activity by hiring a band to play on the front balcony and announced "Free Music for the Million." In typical Barnum fashion however, nothing was exactly "free." "I took pains to select and maintain the poorest band I could find," Phineas reflected. "One whose discordant notes would drive the crowd into the museum, out of earshot of my outside orchestra." That type of curious scheming was pure Barnum. Although history has attached Barnum's name to the circus, it was actually during his days at the American Museum that his inimitable promotional talents were in full bloom.

The Bad-news Bundle

A Pilfered Laundry Sack That Held a

Glimpse of Billy the Kid's Future

The ordinary-looking laundry bag filled with blankets and clothes, seemingly had no connection to western history. But now, it was only seconds away from becoming a prop for the opening scene in the stirring life of Henry McCarty, later known as the infamous Billy the Kid. Actually, though, Henry wasn't even the one who had stolen it from Charlie Sun and Sam Chung's laundry. That was a small-time street crook known as Sombrero Jack Schaefer. But after Schaefer took it, he gave it to Henry to hide at the home of Mrs. Sarah Brown, where he was staying. Later, Mrs. Brown had discovered the bundle and called the sheriff. Regardless of the chain of events prior to the arrival of Silver City, New Mexico's sheriff at her doorstep - there was Sun and Chung's missing bundle and unfortunately, there was Henry.

In the hopes of putting the wayward youngster back on the straight and narrow, Sheriff Whitehall arrested Henry and tossed him in jail for a couple days. Like most folks in town, he knew that the orphaned boy was basically a good kid. Henry's school teacher, in fact, said he was always willing to help with chores around the school. And his boss at a local restaurant noted he was the only kid who ever worked for him who didn't steal anything. Yes, maybe a couple days in jail would be just the thing to teach him a life lesson. Unfortunately, although Henry would indeed learn something, it was how to escape from jail. When no one was looking, the wiry teenager squirmed his way up and out of the jailhouse chimney. From that day on, William Henry McCarty, a.k.a. William Bonney, Kid Antrim, The Kid and Billy the Kid, would spend his remaining years as a fugitive.

The problems that led to this incident began early for Henry. History is murky as to his early years, but some historians feel he was born in a New York City slum and that his family relocated to Indiana. His father died early in Henry's childhood, leaving him and his younger brother, Joseph, to help their mother keep the family together. Their situation seemed to take an upward turn when their mother, Catherine McCarty, began seeing a man named William Antrim. Catherine likely hoped he would supply the male role model her children were missing. Since there were now two Williams in the household, Catherine began calling her oldest son, William, by his middle name of Henry.

Despite the addition of Mr. Antrim to the family, fate was not about to furnish Henry with a stable childhood. In the summer of 1871, his mother was diagnosed with consumption and the family moved from the Midwest to the dryer and warmer climate of Silver City, New Mexico. William and Catherine married after a two-year courtship, but the change in climate didn't stop the progression of the disease. She died the following year. Apparently not interested in a life of parenting, Mr. Antrim arranged for his stepsons to go to a foster homes, and headed off to prospect for silver in Clifton, Arizona.

As Henry bounced from one foster home to the next, the disillusioned youngster transformed from the industrious and honest kid his teacher and boss knew, into a petty criminal. On the streets of Silver City, he drifted toward an informal gang of ruffians. One of his new acquaintances was Sombrero Jack Schaefer, the troublemaker who thought stealing a laundry sack from the local Chinese laundry might perk up a boring afternoon. Following Henry's arrest for harboring the stolen bag and his later chimney escape, he ran off to one of his former foster families. They bought him a stagecoach ticket and sent him off to Clifton to live with his stepfather. Unfortunately, his stepfather informed him he had no interest in taking him in and told him to leave. Alone now, in an unfamiliar desert town, The Kid, as he was beginning to be called, aimlessly set off down a pathway to infamy.

After working briefly as a hotel cook, he linked up with a horse thief named John Mackie. Having already flirted with the outlaw's world of excitement and easy money, The Kid now leapt wholeheartedly into his new career. He would, however, soon encounter one of the drawbacks of the stirring life of crime - getting caught by the law. He and Mackie were arrested as they ate their breakfast in the Hotel de Luna near Fort Grant. They were later thrown into the fort's guardhouse. After an aborted escape attempt, The Kid was shackled at the ankles and wrists. While his guards attended a dance at the fort, he managed to escape, shackles and all...likely with some assistance by a sympathetic local soldier or two.

His pattern of arrests and escapes continued as destiny prepared the most famous role in his western drama - his part in New Mexico's legendary Lincoln County War. As numerous western history books and articles relate, the bloody conflict would blaze across the desert land of central New Mexico. Powerful Lincoln County rancher, James Dolan, had ruled the roost in the area for years. He was assisted by a seedy collection of corrupt politicians and lawyers known as the Santa Fe Ring. When a gutsy English businessman named John Tunstall, rode into the county with plans to compete with the powerful ring, the fuse to the imminent Johnson County War was lit.

As newspapers covered the dramatic battle, general store conversations across the nation turned from politics and eastern fashion to the feuding Lincoln County factions. The papers' readers were also riveted by accounts of a bold young outlaw who fought and killed, at first for Dolan and later for Tunstall and eventually fell to Sheriff Pat Garrett's bullet. Christening their circulation-increasing anti-hero as Billy the Kid, the reporters with their typical mixture of fact and fantasy, continued to build the legend that stolen laundry bag had started. Along with later generations of western-history buffs, they helped to build Billy the Kid into the legendary character who has been called "the Old West's favorite outlaw."

Mouse Ears and Imagineers

The Origin of Disneyland

Like many other amusement park visitors in the 1950's, a discontented guest sat on a bench in a deteriorating park and glumly observed the shabby peeling paint and the timeworn rides. He had taken his daughters Diane and Sharon to the park for a fun day, but as he watched the broken-down rides and the ill-mannered antics of the pushy workers, his mind filled with disillusionment. Slowly, however, his disappointment transformed into a vivid image. He envisioned sparkling clean attractions run by well-mannered hosts. And...what if, rather than simply a clean safe version of the standard amusement park, it focused on a specific theme?

So, sitting there on the bench, that guest, Walt Disney, envisioned the future of the amusement park. It wasn't difficult for him to come up with a theme since he had already helped give birth to a delightful cast of characters. They could jump off the drawing board and add the touch of fantasy the park would need. Mickey, Pluto, Donald, Goofy and the rest had already won the hearts of Americans. The problem, as Walt found out all too soon, would be in convincing the needed financial backers that his dream could succeed.

Walt soon cashed in an insurance policy to fund a field study of amusement parks around the nation and overseas. As he toured around the world, looking at the existing parks, he gathered ideas for his own "dream park." In 1952, he drew on his personal savings to hire a small group of designers to develop plans and models for the park. The "Imagineers," as he named them, set to work helping him establish some basic standards for the park. It would need wide walkways so guests could leisurely stroll through the area, and there should be a huge custodial staff to make sure it was always spotless. There had to be plenty of food and entertainment and there must be attractions that were unique to that park.

As his Imagineers gradually built the park on paper and in clay models, Walt was becoming more and more anxious to build it in concrete and steel. He refused to even consider making any more movies until he could get his new dream underway. Unfortunately, not everyone around Walt shared his enthusiasm for this new dream park...especially his brother and partner, Roy. Unlike Walt, with his obsessive belief in his new vision, Roy was extremely apprehensive. He felt they were doing well as a film studio, and shouldn't gamble on something unfamiliar. His fears even lead him to circulate a false story in the business community that the banks were against the idea of the park.

One by one they all gave Walt's request for a loan, a sympathetic, but firm "No." When Walt discovered the reason for their reactions, he became even more committed to the project. He refused to even talk to his brother, and they communicated solely through each other's secretaries or wives. Since it was obvious that Roy would continue to hinder his attempts to commit Disney Studio's time and money to the project, Walt developed a separate company to take control of the affairs of his dream park, which he had now decided should bear the name of Disneyland.

After some world-class wheeling and dealing, he eventually landed a contract with the newly organized television network, ABC, for a series about a masked Mexican bandit-hero named Zorro. Both CBS and NBC told Walt they needed to see a film pilot before they would consider signing up for the potential series. Walt told them firmly that he didn't make pilots and they would have to trust him on his film reputation. They were not interested in taking the gamble.

One morning, though, Walt received a call from a TV vice president named Kintner, from ABC. "Walt, I hear you need money to build your fairground," he told him. Walt's immediate response was not exactly delight. "For God's sake," he blurted, "how many times do I have to tell people it's a leisure park, not a fairground!" Then, when Walt found out Kintner worked for the newly formed ABC network he was even less responsive. ABC was, in Walt's opinion, "The peanuts network."

Walt explained that they were simply too new and too small to help him out. Unruffled, Kintner persevered. "Give us Mickey Mouse, Walt, plus the Disney name," he offered, "and I guarantee that within two years we'll be one of the big three." Then, when Kintner offered half a million in cash and a four-and a-half million-dollar loan guarantee, Walt made an agreement on the spot. Now that Walt had the funding, there was no slowing his dream. As he and his Imagineers refined his visions, a fantasy world slowly began to take shape.

By opening day, July 17, 1955, he was ready to show the world his new brainchild - well he was sort of ready. Actually, as he proudly stood in front of the live television cameras, concrete was still being poured and the asphalt on some of the streets was still steaming. In fact, the grand opening of his dream park was not exactly the fantasyland he had hoped for. As ladies walked across the sections of newly poured asphalt, they left behind high-heeled shoes, stuck in the road.

Because of a plumber's strike, there were not enough water fountains and thousands of grumbling guests were convinced that this was Walt's greedy plan to sell more soft drinks. The riverboat, Mark Twain, very nearly capsized during its overloaded maiden voyage. And to top it off, Fess Parker, Disney's popular Davy Crockett, made a highly publicized grand entrance just as the automatic sprinklers suddenly came to life and soaked him to the skin.

Somehow though, Walt and his Imagineers persevered. Throughout the following months, they constantly modified their ideas to fit reality. Walt, for example, had originally wanted to stock live animals throughout his jungle cruise. Zoologists, however, convinced him that the animals would likely sleep during most the park's operating hours. As a concession, he used animated animals, but did rent several live alligators from an attraction near Knott's Berry Farm. He caged them in chicken-wire pens near the Jungle Cruise entrance to impress the guests waiting in line.

In a sense, Walt still got his wish to have live animals in the attraction because, more than once, one of the reptiles broke out of the pen and slinked into the attraction's lagoon. When this happened, the alligator farm's handler was summoned to lure his gator back into the cage. In the meantime, however, the divers who regularly needed to jump in the water to dislodge a boat that had become stuck on its track, likely did so in record time.

Once Walt had ironed out the problems with the sprinklers, the gators, and the rest, it was becoming clear that his new vision of the old amusement park was a winner. Within six months of the opening, over a million guests had entered his "magic kingdom." Less than ten years later, the 50-millionth visitor crossed through the gates. As Walt stood back, surveying the lighthearted crowd of fun-seekers who strolled through his dream, he likely reflected upon the pitfalls and obstacles he had to cross before completing it. Getting Americans to relax and enjoy themselves, he realized, is hard work!
Rampant Unknowns

The Devilish Details Lurking Behind the Race

to Plant the First Footprint on the Moon

"Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace," President Nixon would somberly declare. "These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice." As Nixon reviewed the contingency announcement written by his speech-writer, William Safire, he prayed he would never have to read it to a horrified television audience. He also knew, though, that there would be more than a few potential devils hiding in the details of the incredibly complex upcoming moon-landing mission that might compel him to deliver that mournful message.

One of those devils, didn't show itself until after the astronauts had successfully walked on the moon's surface and reentered their Lunar Module. Aldrin and Armstrong shifted around in the cramped environment, preparing to settle back for a few hours rest before they lifted off the surface of the moon to rejoin Michael Collins in the orbiting Command Module. After they had shed their cumbersome backpacks, Aldrin curled up on the floor while Armstrong sat on the engine cover and leaned back to rest.

In a split second, the priority of their lunar naps dropped to the bottom of their list. As Aldrin surveyed the cabin floor, he noticed something that obviously didn't belong there - a small black plastic switch for a circuit breaker. "Apparently during movement wearing our large spacesuit backpacks," Aldrin would later relate, "either Neil or I bumped into this panel and broke off that particular switch."

That "particular switch," as fate would have it, was no minor control for a panel light or a seat adjustment. Instead, it was required to connect the circuit to ignite the main engine for lift off from the moon's surface. When the astronauts relayed the information to NASA's mission control team, Houston's experts snapped into mental overdrive. They told Aldrin and Armstrong to try to get some sleep while they searched for an answer. But sleep didn't settle over the potentially stranded astronauts. As the mission control team 240,000 miles away, wrinkled their brows and rubbed their chins, Aldrin and Armstrong tried unsuccessfully to divert their thoughts.

Perhaps there was an alternative method of reaching the vital circuit breaker, the controllers considered - but nothing came to mind. Theoretically, they could reconfigure the Lunar Module's circuitry to ignite the engine by bypassing the circuit breaker...theoretically! When morning came, the room full of anxious exhausted scientists and technicians had still not concurred on a workable solution. "Mission Control verified that the switch was open, meaning that the engine was currently unarmed," Buzz would summarize in his book, Magnificent Desolation. "If we could not get the engine armed, we could be stranded on the moon."

Finally, combining a mixture of common sense and brute force, Aldrin contemplated jamming a writing pen into the opening left by the missing switch. His first thought was to use his specially designed Fisher anti-gravity pen. Then the notion crossed his mind that perhaps sticking a metal pen into an electric circuit breaker might not be the smartest idea. Instead, he employed an inexpensive plastic felt-tip pen that he had been using to take notes.

Fortunately, the makeshift switch worked like a charm. "I made a point to push it in hours before lift-off," Aldrin recalled, "so we knew that it would actually stay in!" At last the rocket scientists back home could stop their brow wrinkling and chin rubbing. In the early afternoon of July 21st two sleep-deprived but intensely relieved astronauts fired up their engine to leave their potential space prison behind.

Although the memory of that little plastic pen nowadays brings a head-shake and subtle smile to the faces of nostalgic former NASA personnel, that was not their initial reaction back in the summer of 1969. They knew all too well that, as Neil Armstrong would later summarize, "The unknowns were rampant. There were just a thousand things to worry about." Those unknowns should have convinced any rational level-headed person to simply gaze at the moon on a clear night and wonder what was up there, rather than risk unknown disaster to actually go there to find out. Throughout time though, great mysteries have never been solved by "rational level-headed" people.

The roots of the desire to reach the mysterious sphere wind back past resourceful scientists, imaginative science-fiction writers and likely even a few contemplative cavemen. The spark, though, that would ignite the push that would lead to Neil Armstrong's first lunar boot print, was struck in a joint session of Congress on May 25th 1961. "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out," President John Kennedy proclaimed in his now-famous speech, "of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth." Of course, Kennedy's words didn't solve any of the "rampant unknowns" that Neil Armstrong would later reference. But they somehow seemed to transform them from a huge swirling cloud of nameless barriers into an equally huge, but slightly less overwhelming cluster of challenges waiting to be solved.

The question imbedded in one of those challenges had already been answered a month before Kennedy's challenge. Could man actually survive in outer space? Russian Cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, had successfully endured a suborbital flight into space aboard Vostok 1. Shortly after that, American astronaut, Alan Shepherd, would duplicate the feat in a Freedom 7 spacecraft. These had been preceded by experimental launches of astrodogs and monkeys - some successful and sadly, some not. Despite the safe returns of Gagarin and Shepherd, NASA knew they were only a few steps from the starting line of the extraordinary space race.

The path from that starting line to the surface of the moon would be anything but a smooth passage. For a while it looked like Kennedy's words might be just that - simply words. Although they stirred the nation's pride, they didn't resolve the looming obstacles. The huge Atlas rockets "were blowing up every day at Cape Canaveral," astronaut, Jim Lovell, recalled in a later documentary. Then echoing the unspoken concern of every astronaut in training, he concluded, "It looked like a...quick way to have a short career."

Not only did rockets stop blowing up daily, but as the decade neared its end, enough successful tests and flights had transpired for NASA to actually decide it was time to attempt to fulfill President Kennedy's challenge. Millions of words have been written about the matchless drama of the first steps on the lunar soil. Those words, however, might have read like those in the morbid contingency speech President Nixon reviewed, had it not been for the most important components of the mission - the people inside the high-tech space gadgetry.

With their quick thinking, expert flying skills and a cheap felt-tip pen, those grown-up space-travel dreamers turned potential tragedy into triumph. The culmination of that triumph was forever recorded on the customs and declarations forms they had to fill out for security, following their return. Despite likely smirking a bit as they completed the routine bureaucratic form, all three of the lunar travelers felt a surge of pride as they reflected on the "rampant unknowns" they had conquered in order to fill in the "departure from" section with two words: "The Moon."

Black Bart's Birth

When a Couple of Scheming Wells Fargo Agents Helped

Create Black Bart, the Notorious "Gentleman Bandit"

The muddy water swirled and bubbled down the long sluice box as it separated the silver from the creek gravel and mud. As the tiny silver flecks slowly gathered along with their shiny friends, the New York-born Charles Boles contentedly watched the process. As he slopped the buckets of creek mud into the constant stream of water, he kept a hopeful eye out for big nuggets. It was, after all, the vision of those nuggets that had originally lured him to the little Montana mine. Then in an instant, that vision dissipated. The water stopped churning. Its movement, however, was instantly replaced by a similar churning of his anger. Boles knew exactly why the stream ceased to flow - those scheming Wells Fargo agents had surely diverted it upstream to put him out of business.

They had approached him, not long before that, to buy his little mine. Earlier that year, 1871, they had purchased several surrounding mines and wanted to add his to their venture. Boles was never one to pass up a good opportunity, but their price was much too low. As he turned down the offer, he somehow sensed their greed was not stifled by his refusal. And now, here was his proof. As he stood fuming, he decided to exact revenge on Wells Fargo. That eventual revenge would come in the form of one of the most colorful characters in western history - Black Bart.

Boles' alter ego, Black Bart, first appeared on July 26, 1875 as a Wells Fargo stagecoach bumped along a mountainous road in Calaveras County, California. Suddenly the stage driver, John Shine, saw a sight that would be repeated twenty-seven more times over the next eight years. A man in a long linen duster coat stepped into the road and pointed a shotgun at him. In a calm resonant voice, the mystery crook ordered Shine to "throw down the box." The neophyte stagecoach robber appeared almost humorous, since he wore a derby hat pulled down over a flour sack cut with two eye-holes. Any inclination the driver might have toward laughter, however, was squelched by the ominous barrel of the shotgun pointing directly at him.

As if that firearm wasn't bad enough, it was accompanied by several other guns. "If he dares shoot," the derby-hatted bandit reportedly yelled to his small army of shooters, "give him a volley." Needless to say, the driver tossed down the strong-box without hesitation. With an equal lack of hesitation the robber began to hack it to splinters with an axe he brought along for that purpose. Surrounded by armaments, all John Shine could do was watch as the novice criminal stuffed his pockets with coins and bills. Once the robber's pockets were filled, he motioned for him to move on.

After several minutes, Shine walked back to the crime scene to collect the smashed box for evidence. Once he reached the area, he froze. The robber was gone but the gunmen remained in place with their weapons still trained on him. As Shine later stated, he implored them for mercy, then waited for either a reply or flying lead. The seconds drug by as neither response came. Finally, he crept toward the "rifle barrels" to discover they were simply long tapered sticks carefully tied to the surrounding branches. Charles Boles, soon to be known across the nation as Black Bart, had expertly begun his revenge on Wells Fargo.

Bole's new secret personality would become known as a soft-spoken gentleman who never bothered the passengers. In fact, he even offered up a bit of culture. To poke an extra thorn in Wells Fargo's side, twice, he wrote little verses to leave at the scene. His resulting poems helped peak the public's interest in this new mysterious poet-bandit. After his July 25th, 1878 holdup, he wrote this one:

Here I lay me down to sleep  
To wait the coming morrow,  
Perhaps success, perhaps defeat,  
And everlasting sorrow.  
Let come what will, I'll try it on,  
My condition can't be worse;  
And if there's money in that box  
'Tis munny in my purse.

Obviously Boles couldn't sign his own name to his handiwork, so he coined one. Like most folks in the late 1800's, he read the highly dramatic serialized stories often printed in newspapers of the time. In the early 1870's, the Sacramento Union began to publish a serial novel by William Henry Rhodes. The story, titled The Case of Summerfield, featured a black-cloaked villain with unruly black hair, a black beard and wild gray eyes, named Black Bart. Yes, Boles decided, the name would be the ideal moniker for his shadowy persona, since Bart only robbed stagecoaches from the company he hated - Wells Fargo. Sporting a satisfied smile, Boles signed his new name to the bottom of his poem - "Black Bart, 1877."

As Black Bart robbed one Wells Fargo coach after another, he strode through the imaginations of farm kids and city boys alike. He also inhabited the daily thoughts of teeth-grinding Wells Fargo detectives. Eight years later, in a robbery ironically staged in the same area as his first one, Boles' lucky streak finally ended. A nineteen-year-old boy on a hunting outing had hitched a ride with the driver, and ended up putting a bullet in Black Bart's hand. As the wounded robber escaped through the bushes, he dropped several personal items, including a handkerchief.

A laundry mark on the handkerchief finally supplied the clue the detectives needed. Since they were in San Francisco at the time, they started their search there. Following an exhaustive search of about ninety area laundries, they finally found a match. Once they tracked him down, Charles Boles, a.k.a. Black Bart, was arrested and sent to San Quentin. Since nobody had been hurt in the robberies, he was just sentenced to a six year term and only served a little over four. Like the gentleman bandit he developed to seek his revenge on Wells Fargo, he was also the perfect gentleman prisoner. There was another factor leading to his early release. According to their investigation, the menacing shotgun he pointed at twenty-eight trembling drivers, was very likely never even loaded.

A Transforming Tragedy

The Horrendous Accident That Drove Johnny Ringo

Into the Whiskey Bottle...and into Western Infamy

"I never saw a more heartrending sight," the distraught witness wrote. "And to see the distress and agony of his wife and children was painful to the extreme." The dreadful event he referenced, was the accidental shooting death of Martin Ringo during a wagon train expedition in the summer of 1864. The letter, written by fellow traveler, William Davenport, was printed in Liberty, Missouri's Tribune. It sadly informed the Ringo family's friends and neighbors that tragedy had visited them on their trek westward. Unfortunately, in addition to inflicting misery on Martin's wife and children, the sad event likely stoked the emotional flames of one of the West's most infamous outlaws - Johnny Ringo.

The family journeyed through what would become Wyoming, on their way to San Jose, California when the accident occurred. Just after daylight, Martin stepped out of their wagon with shotgun in hand, likely to scout for hostile Indians. Witnesses reported that the trigger of the firearm caught on something as Martin jumped down, and the shotgun blast discharged through his head, killing him instantly. His wife, Mary, recorded her emotions in a small trail journal. "Oh, my heart is breaking," she lamented. "If I had no children, how gladly would I lay me down with my dead (husband)."

As Western history notes, though, she did indeed have children. In fact, her fourteen-year-old son, Johnny, viewed the whole gruesome incident. His three young sisters would eventually work through the trauma and move on with their lives. Johnny, however, turned to the bottle for liberation from the dark images that haunted his memories. Whether or not the grisly vision of his father's calamity was the main reason for the teenager's rapid plunge into alcoholism and delinquency will never be known. But it would be difficult to imagine that the ordeal would not have jolted the impressionable youth to his core.

Before the end of his chaotic thirty-two-year life, the entrance of Johnny Ringo through the swinging doors of the Texas and Arizona Territory bars he frequented, sent a chill through the toughest of customers. He became known as a hot-tempered loner whose favorite companion was a whiskey bottle. In fact, innocent citizens weren't the only ones who feared him. When he was jailed in Austin along with the notorious gunman John Wesley Hardin, legend has it that that Hardin complained about being put in with someone as "mean and vicious" as Johnny Ringo.

Unlike the rest of his life, the early years of Johnny Ringo seemed to roll by like those of most country boys. Born in Greenfork, Indiana, Johnny and his family moved to a farm in Liberty, Missouri in 1856. As hostilities swirled out of control between the Jayhawkers and the Border Ruffians in the hotbeds of Missouri and Kansas, the Ringos' tranquil lifestyle shattered. Early in the Civil War, two Confederate nightriders were reportedly lynched on the Ringo farm by Union forces. Determined to find a safer residence, Martin Ringo gathered his close-knit family to head west, with no inkling of the misfortune lurking ahead.

Not much is recorded about Johnny's late teenage years, but hearsay recollections of contemporaries paint a picture of an alcoholic trouble-maker in conflict with his family. In late 1870 or early '71, he reportedly headed to the Midwest with a harvesting crew. But the honest hard-working farm life didn't seem to keep his interest. Soon he began to drift around the country, leaving behind a string of newspaper articles about his drunken bar fights.

By the middle of the 1870's, he became entangled in a blood feud in Mason County in central Texas. It was known locally as the "Hoodoo War," since its vigilante tactics were reminiscent of a Texas vigilante group known as the Hoodoos, notorious for ambushes and midnight hangings. Like many other regional conflicts in the early West, the war arose from competing cattle interests. German settlers and cattle-owners, who had supported the Union cause during the Civil War, clashed with Confederate-backing Mason County locals. In the wake of several minor confrontations, the fuse of this volatile mixture ignited in the spring of 1875.

Ringo was drawn into the battle later that year when he befriended an ex-Texas Ranger named Scott Cooley. Scott, the adopted son of local rancher, Tim Williamson, was devastated when Williamson was murdered by a German farmer. As retaliation led to further retaliation, a reign of terror and violence cloaked Mason County. Before the skirmishing finally died away, so had about a dozen of the participants...two, many historians believe, at the guns of Johnny Ringo. As the dust settled and the decade progressed, Ringo left Mason County to roam across Texas and Arizona Territory, where his name would regularly pop up in local newspapers.

One of these accounts, in a paper in Stafford, Arizona Territory in 1878, highlighted his less-than-stable personality. When Johnny offered to buy a shot of whiskey for a fellow sitting near him, the paper noted, the man told him he preferred beer. Apparently not interested in the man's taste in drinks, Ringo took it as a personal insult, drew his pistol and shot him. Fortunately, his aim was off, likely due to the alcohol, and the bullet simply nicked an ear.

The newspaper coverage would not stop even after Johnny Ringo's death. In fact, the mystery surrounding his demise stirred up another flurry of articles. The only thing most of them were sure of was that a 45-caliber slug ended his life on a hot July 14th day in 1882. Suspicion fell on both Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday, since Earp believed Ringo was involved in his brother Morgan's murder - and Holiday had a recent confrontation with Ringo in Tombstone. A local gambler known as Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce, was also on the list of possible shooters. Some felt that Johnny's life-long alcoholic depression had pushed him into taking his own life. Like the ghastly image of his father's tragic demise, the rumors and theories of his death will swirl through history, forever accompanying the legend of Johnny Ringo.

The Most American

Thing in America

The Phenomenon of Chautauqua

Bare light bulbs hung from the half-lit ceiling. A restless anticipation filled the tent and seemed to intensify the mingled smells of dusty canvas, new-mown grass, and dime-store perfumes. Palm-leaf fans stirred the air while open country grins flashed across the tent, as neighbors recognized neighbors. The preparation was completed. The anticipation was at a nerve-tingling peak. It was time. And everyone knew it, from the squirming children to the men casting anxious glances at gleaming pocket watches. Yes it was definitely time!

Then, with the spring-like precision of a toy soldier, a proud man marched across the platform, wearing a Sunday smile and a fresh set of clothes, washed out just last night in the hotel sink. In a matter of seconds, he would officially begin another episode of what Teddy Roosevelt once described as the "most American thing in America."

It would give small-town farmers the chance to hear ideas and opinions from other worlds - worlds that only found the way to their little towns once a year. It would once again come alive and bring together a mixture of unique characters ranging from high-toned poets to boisterous comedians. It would give a platform for speeches on "The Twelve Causes of Dishonesty" and the explanation of "Human Nature and Politics." It was...Chautauqua.

Before Chautauqua would give way to history, millions of Americans would witness this unique mixture of education and entertainment. Presidents Grant, Garfield, Hayes, McKinley, and Taft would all take their turns at stepping out onto its stage. Warren G. Harding, prior to his presidency, would become a Chautauqua "headline attraction." Even after he was elected, the Chautauqua people he had known, were always welcome to visit him in the White House. Fresh new ideas and social movements would take root and grow, born in the fertile setting of the Chautauqua stage. Booker T. Washington and Carrie Nation would stride proudly across that stage and catch the attention of a young energetic country.

Chautauqua would eventually become so successful that speakers could tour the nation, repeating the same speeches year after year. Veteran speaker Ralph Parlette would look back on more than four thousand presentations of his motivational speech, "The University of Hard Knocks." William Jennings Bryan would mesmerize audiences for three decades. Chautauqua would become so popular that Chautauqua regular, Ben Vardaman would step off a train in Valley City, North Dakota, to a welcoming ceremony presented by eleven local bands.

For William Jennings Bryan, Chautauqua would become not only a platform for his opinions, but an open door to the political arena. Bryan was the biggest draw Chautauqua ever had, as well as the highest paid lecturer on the circuit. It has been said that Bryan, primarily through his Chautauqua appearances, spoke to more people than any other man in history.

His booming oratory could be heard for a good quarter of a mile, yet it seemed to float through the air, as one of his admirers described, "like music from an instrument." He picked popular topics and stuck to simple lectures on morals and ideals that reflected his own basic values. His three primary lectures, "Prince of Peace," "Value of an Ideal," and "The Price of a Soul," echoed through a generation of entranced admirers.

The birthplace of Chautauqua itself, however, was quite different from the whirlwind atmosphere that propelled Bryan and the others into the national spotlight. A young New Jersey minister, John H. Vincent, wanted to start a summer program to train Sunday-school teachers. He discussed this goal one day with a friend named Lewis Miller, who happened to be the trustee of a peaceful little site at Lake Chautauqua, New York. This area had once been used for religious camp meetings, and seemed to be the ideal setting. They coordinated a meeting there in the summer of 1874, and named it the "Sunday School Teacher's Assembly."

The meeting was an instant success! As the attendance grew each following summer so did the concept. Speeches on morality and inspiration were added to the pure religious training. John Vincent began to bring in statesmen and senators, as thousands of visitors came from all across the country to join in the Chautauqua experience. The length of the training was extended to two months and larger pavilions were added to contain the growing crowds. As more tents were pitched and more variety was included, this little Sunday school training session was growing into a busy and exciting attraction. It wouldn't be many more years until Chautauqua would stretch from coast to coast as an American institution.

Music became an important ingredient in the mixture. The presentations ranged from simple group sings to engagements by the New York Symphony. Italian bands with shiny horns and colorful uniforms added their lively music. As the word spread about this new "Chautauqua experience" more and more offerings were added to increase the variety. Dramatic presentations and travel lectures became popular. The "chalk talk" artist, a Chautauqua specialty, would illustrate his presentation with rapid-fire cartoons drawn on a large blackboard. Magicians joined in and delighted the children in the family. Suddenly the "quiet little Sunday School training" had grown into a full-fledged show, with something for everyone.

During its lively heyday, some of the country's most interesting and unusual speakers stepped out onto the Chautauqua stage. Where else could you run across David Roth, the "Man who remembered everything" or hear Robert J. Burdette expound on "The Rise and Fall of the Mustache?" And where else indeed, would you run across Jess Pugh of Chicago, who developed a "sneezing act?" He felt that an untimely sneeze had the same humorous value as an unexpected pratfall. And according to the reaction of his audiences, he was correct. Pugh developed a sneezing act around a recitation about a horse race. As he began to excitedly describe a horse race, he suddenly broke into fits of sneezing as the audience roared with laughter. One time in Kansas, a dog in the audience began to "answer" his sneezes with excited barks. Finally the dog leaped onto the stage to challenge him to a sneezing-barking contest. Pugh decided to call off the contest, while the crew boys called off the dog.

The Chautauqua concept began to spread to other areas. Within two years after the beginnings at Lake Chautauqua, a group set up a similar assembly near a lake in Ohio. Now, the locals wouldn't have to travel to New York to soak up this experience. They had their very own Chautauqua. In fact, they used the same name. Next year, Iowa and Michigan joined in the race. By 1900, two hundred Chautauquas graced the nation's landscape in thirty-one states. America had definitely discovered a new treat!

Then, shortly after the turn-of-the-century, the word had been spread so well that nobody wanted to miss it whether they were near a pavilion or not. Farmers in Kansas wanted to see it. So did housewives in Arkansas and storeowners in Texas. In response, Chautauqua packed its tent and took to the road. This traveling version, called tent or circuit Chautauqua is the type most widely remembered now. It reached its arms wide and covered the country with something it had never quite experienced before. Although the mention of the name, Chautauqua, today often brings about a curious but blank look, it was once the most American thing in America.
"I Saw the Yankees"

Young Susie King Taylor is Swept into the Civil War at Fort Pulaski, When Her Uncle Brings Her to "The Yankees"

Seventeen-year-old Susie King Taylor soaked in every word as she focused on the reading of the general orders. "The hour is at hand," the speaker stated, "when we must separate forever." "Nothing can take from us, the pride we feel when we look upon the history of the 'First South Carolina Volunteers,' the first black regiment that ever bore arms in defense of freedom on the continent of America."

As the former slave listened to Lieutenant Colonel Charles T. Trowbridge's general orders on February 9, 1866, her hopes were high. "The valor and heroism of the black soldiers," Trowbridge proclaimed, "has won for your race, a name which will live as long as the undying pages of history shall endure," "The prejudices which formerly existed against you," he continued, "are well-nigh routed out."

Her entry into the conflict occurred in early April of 1862 when Susie was only fourteen. She had been reading about the Yankees, and how they favored freedom for her enslaved race. Susie had secretly developed her reading skills in her Savannah neighborhood. Her grandmother sent her, along with her brother, to Mrs. Woodhouse, a free black woman who taught clandestine reading and writing classes to slave children.

Susie and the other students would enter the house one by one with their books concealed in wrapping paper. "The neighbors would see us going in sometimes," she wrote, "but they supposed we were there learning trades." After two years of lessons with Mrs. Woodhouse, Susie studied further with a white playmate, then later with her landlord's son. As she read newspaper articles about the antislavery activity of the Yankees, Susie longed to meet them. Many of the southern whites, however, portrayed the northerners as horrible creatures. One widely spread story claimed they harnessed runaway slaves to carts, in place of horses. But the bogus stories didn't stop the slaves from dreaming that the northerners would one day set them free. "Oh, how these people prayed for freedom!" Susie reflected.

Their chance for that freedom finally arose when the Union soldiers attacked Fort Pulaski, the guardian of the sea approach to Savannah. The battle raged from the morning of April 10, 1862, through the afternoon of the next day. As it did, a lot of slave-owners fled from their homes, leaving their slaves behind. Many of the blacks remembered the stories about the northern antislavery sentiments, and headed toward Union-occupied land.

"I remember what a roar and din the guns made," Susie wrote about the siege on Fort Pulaski, "They jarred the earth for miles." Two days after the fall of the fort, Susie's uncle brought her, along with his family, to St. Catherine's Island. From there, a gunboat took them to nearby St. Simon's Island. Once on board, Susie met several Union soldiers. "At last, to my unbounded joy," she reflected, "I saw the Yankee."

Susie and the others sought refuge at the ideal time. Major General David Hunter, the newly appointed Commander of the Department of the South, had just issued a general order. On April 13, 1862, he announced that, "All persons of color lately held to involuntary service by enemies of the United States in Fort Pulaski and on Cockspur Island, Georgia, are hereby confiscated and declared free..." Hunter's declaration was the first emancipation document.

Although the idea of being "confiscated," like contraband, wasn't exactly flattering, the declaration of freedom was. Their prayers had finally been answered \- the Yankees had set them free. Their emancipator, Major General Hunter, had not always been a strong antislavery advocate. But prior to the war, he had turned abolitionist when witnessing the atrocities of the slavery-supporting Bushwackers in "Bleeding Kansas."

As Susie traveled on the gunboat to St. Simon's Island, the boat's commander, Captain Whitmore, discovered she could read and write. Once they arrived on the island, she was put in charge of a local school. "I had about forty children to teach," Susie reflected, "besides a large number of adults who came to me nights."

Not only had Major General Hunter freed the former slaves, but in March, he began to organize a unit of black troops. His orders to form the unit, however, were soon rescinded. They had been given without the permission or sanction of either President Lincoln or Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton.

Later, following Lincoln's official emancipation on January 1st, 1863, the black troops were reinstated. Susie joined a company headed by Captain Charles T. Trowbridge. It was composed primarily of the disbanded black soldiers who continued to serve. Trowbridge heard of their bravery and was anxious to meet the soldiers who refused to quit. Although the Union now officially sanctioned the black soldiers, they paid them no salary. Susie said that in many cases, their wives took in wash or baked cakes and pies for the other soldiers. Despite this, their loyalty remained solid.

Month by month, the black soldiers proved their valor and loyalty many times over. Finally, in 1863, the government decided to grant them a salary. This decision, however, proved more of an insult than a compensation, as they were only offered half pay. "The men would not accept this," Susie wrote, "they wanted 'full pay' or nothing." The white soldiers, having witnessed the heroic efforts of their black counterparts, stood firmly behind their decision. "I remember Captain Heasley telling his company one day," Susie reflected, "'Boys, stand up for your full pay! I am with you and so are all the officers.'" The next year, the government finally granted them full pay, including back salary.

For a while, when they were in Beaufort, South Carolina, Susie worked alongside Clara Barton. "Miss Barton was always very cordial toward me," Susie wrote, "and I honored her for her devotion and care for those men." "It seems strange," she reflected, "how our aversion to seeing suffering is overcome in war..." She said she learned to witness "the most sickening sights, such as men with their limbs blown off and mangled by the deadly shells, without a shudder..."

Fortunately, the dismal visions of war were sometimes replaced by more cheerful ones. On Cole Island in 1864, for example, the images of pain and suffering transformed into those of "Piggie," the camp mascot. "Everyday at practice," Susie noted, "his pigship would march out with them, keeping perfect time to their music." The drummers would also sometimes disrupt the devotions by riding him into the midst of the evening praise meeting. "Many were the complaints made to the colonel," Susie added, "but he was always very lenient toward the boys. I shall never forget the fun we had in camp with 'Piggie.' "

The years following the war would, of course, not show the prejudices against her race being "well-nigh routed out," as Trowbridge had predicted. Thirty-six years later, an older and wiser Susie King Taylor would write about her experience. But despite her deep regrets about the lingering racial prejudice, she continued to honor those who had fought for her freedom. "We do not, as a black race," she asserted, "properly appreciate the old veterans, white or black, as we ought to... I can and shall never forget that terrible war until my eyes close in death." Likely though, chief among her visions of the past was the day she first saw the Yankee.

That Long Twelve Hours

Seventeen-year-old Emma LeConte Witnesses

the Burning of her Beloved Columbia, South Carolina

During a Seemingly Endless Twelve-hour Nightmare

"Gen. Sherman had assured the Mayor," wrote young Emma LeConte, "that he and all the citizens may sleep as securely and quietly tonight as if under Confederate rule." Private property, the notorious general had pledged, would be carefully respected. As the seventeen-year-old Columbia, South Carolina girl wrote these words in her journal, she watched the posting of Union guards to protect her neighbor's houses. "How relieved and thankful we feel," she noted, "after all our anxiety and distress."

That anxiety had mounted to a fever pitch as rumors flew around Columbia. The Yankees, they had been told, planned to exact their worst revenge on South Carolina. Because the war began there and it was the first to secede, Union soldiers sometimes referred to her state as the "hellhole of secession." The relentless shelling of the city the day before, February 16th, 1865, added fuel to the speculation of an onslaught of flaming torches. Yes, this assurance from Sherman was everything Emma and her neighbors had prayed for. It was everything, that is, except...true.

That afternoon, Emma LeConte wrote that even though she didn't expect to sleep, she "looked forward to a tolerably tranquil night." Sadly, her tranquility would be forever shattered at seven o'clock that evening. Henry, one of the family's servants, notified Emma there was a fire on Main Street. When she ran to the window, Emma witnessed the flaming assault that Sherman had promised would not occur. "By the red glare," she later wrote, "we could watch the wretches walking - generally staggering...cursing South Carolina - swearing - blaspheming..."

The drunken devils roamed about," she declared, "setting fire to every house the flames seemed likely to spare." The soldiers were well equipped for their mission, armed with matches and incendiaries. "Guards were rarely of any assistance," Emma wrote. "Most generally they assisted in the pillaging and firing." As the grim scene unfolded before the teenager's eyes, terrified women and children ran from their burning houses. The inebriated soldiers tore the women's possessions from their arms, leaving them without food or blankets."

"By midnight," Emma wrote, "the whole town (except the outskirts) was wrapped in one huge blaze." She and her family lived on the campus of Columbia's South Carolina College, part of which was being used as a hospital. Fortunately, although the flames had swept to the wall of the campus, they had not devoured its buildings. Emma described the desperate scene at four in the morning. "Imagine night turned into noonday," she related, "A copper-colored sky across which swept columns of black rolling smoke glittering with sparks and flying embers..."

Despite the hospital flags that had been hoisted over the campus buildings, several members of the drunken mob eventually headed for the campus. "I suppose we owe our final escape to the presence of the Yankee wounded in the hospital," Emma noted. Doctor Thompson, the hospital's director, informed a nearby officer that they were treating a Union soldier there. Emma said Doctor Thompson asked the officer if he would see his own soldier burned alive? Thompson's appeal was effective and the officer posted a guard to protect the campus buildings.

At six in the morning, however, a gang of drunken soldiers attempted to overthrow the guard, swearing that no buildings should be spared. "By great exertions," Emma reported, "Dr. Thompson found Sherman, and secured a strong guard in time to rescue the hospital." An hour later, Emma wrote, "even the Yankees seemed to have grown weary of their horrible work..."

At seven a.m., a blast on the bugle signaled the cessation of the fires. "Oh that long twelve hours!" Emma lamented. "Never surely again will I live through such a night of horrors. The memory of it will haunt me as long as I shall live..." The rising sun, she observed, "set last night on a beautiful town of women and children - it shone dully down this morning on smoking ruins and abject misery." "Strange as it may seem," the bitter teenager added, "we were actually idiotic enough to believe Sherman would keep his word! A Yankee \- and Sherman."

"I seemed to sink into a dull apathy," Emma wrote later that morning. She said no one in her family had the energy to talk. "After a while breakfast came," she added, "a sort of mockery, for no one could eat." Emma and her family had not yet ventured into the town, but heard it consisted mostly of ashes. A friend, who had journeyed out, told them that some of the Union officers expressed remorse over the burning. "Their compunctions must have visited them since daylight," Emma observed bitterly.

That evening, she heard about several soldiers who pillaged the house of a local lady. One of them asked her if they had finally humbled her southern pride. "No indeed," the lady responded, "Nor can you ever." When the solder asked if she feared him, Emma related, the proud lady calmly informed him that she didn't. With that, he cocked his gun and placed it to her head. "Are you afraid now?" he asked. She met his stare and coldly replied, "No." "He dropped his pistol," Emma wrote, "and with an exclamation of admiration, left her." Later Emma would learn that the Union soldiers held a high regard for the "pluck and dignity" of the Columbia women. One commented that he didn't think the South could ever be conquered "if the men were animated by the same spirit as the women of South Carolina."

Four years previously, when she was only thirteen, Emma LeConte was already filled with a good dose of that southern spirit. An extremely intelligent and mature young lady, she felt a strong attachment to her college professor father, Joseph LeConte. Joseph, like most around him, embraced the rebel viewpoint wholeheartedly. A well-respected chemistry professor, he was called to service as a consultant for the Confederate States Nitre and Mining Bureau. Lively political discussions filled the LeConte home, usually focusing on the "purity of purpose" of the Southern cause.

Emma vividly recalled the sunny April day in 1861, when the bells of Columbia began to chime in unison. "At the first rap," she remembered, "we knew the joyful tidings had come." She said that as the word spread that the South had struck its first blow at Fort Sumter, "The whole town was in a joyful tumult." As the months and years slogged by, that "joyful tumult" transformed into a grinding anguish. By the end of 1864, when Emma began to write her journal, there was little remaining of the once-brilliant vision of southern independence. "Alas, I cannot look forward to the new year," she wrote on December 31, 1864, "my thoughts still cling to the moldering past."

Through the years to follow, the dark cloud would gradually pass over and Emma would marry, raise two daughters and take a deep interest in volunteering for the Red Cross and women's suffrage. Emma retained her strong patriotism - not only to her beloved south, but eventually to the country as a whole. There had been "fanaticism on both sides," she later observed. But her thoughts, she explained, did not dwell on the past, "perhaps because there is so much I want to forget." Foremost among those painful memories, was that long twelve hours.

That Horrendous Hacking

The Rib-rattling Cough that Helped Turn Doc Holliday's

Sights from Tooth Extraction to Handgun Action

The squirming patient knew the next few minutes would not rank among the highpoints of his life. He had previously left teeth and money behind at other Dallas, Texas dentist offices. Despite their advertisements of "painless" dentistry, he was quite certain that he had recognized the sensation as their pliers liberated one of his molars. Yes, there was no doubt about it, it was most assuredly pain.

But this new dentist, Doctor John Holliday, had inadvertently discovered a way to keep his patients' minds off their looming extractions. The anxiety caused by his ominous dental tools paled when compared to that created by the dentist holding them. The terrified patient didn't know anything about the requirements for practicing dentistry, but he was quite certain they didn't include the persistent room-shaking cough his new dentist possessed.

Needless to say, that opinion was soon shared by others. Folks didn't expect sparkling sterile surroundings for their medical procedures in those days. After all, the beaten up old medical bags doctors toted into houses were often pretty dusty from the ride. And emergency bullet removal might be performed on a bed that had previously held a travel-worn cowboy who might or might not have taken off his mud-caked boots before retiring. But opening your mouth wide for a dentist with a wracking tubercular cough; no, even the wild westerners weren't wild about that.

Predictably, as word spread, the young dentist's patient list shrank by the day. It was a shame because Holliday was seemingly headed toward a successful career in dentistry. As a teenager, he had been devastated by his mother's death from "consumption" as tuberculosis was then known. To combat his depression, he poured his energy into his studies and rose to the top of his class. Later he enrolled in the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery, founded by his cousin, Robert Holliday. Not only did he graduate, but did so five months short of his twenty-first birthday. Before long, he and a dental partner would even win awards at a county fair for their dental craftsmanship, including "best set of artificial teeth and dental ware." Yes, it looked as if the young professional would surely develop a thriving dental practice. Fate, however, was already plotting to prevent that.

The obstruction to Holliday's medical future would appear in the form of the same disease that had taken his mother from him. After graduating, he apprenticed with a dentist in St. Louis, then moved to Atlanta to set up practice. Sadly, he was also diagnosed with consumption. In a split second, his view changed from the vision of a thriving professional career to the morose face of a physician telling him he likely had only months to live. Striving to add something positive to the diagnosis, Holliday's doctor told him that a dryer, warmer climate might slow the progression of the disease.

Taking his advice, Holliday relocated to Dallas, Texas. Unfortunately, though the move did indeed slow up the deterioration from the disease, the deep nerve-shattering cough he had already developed, followed him to Texas. As one after another of his patients decided to search for a less contagious tooth-puller, Doc Holliday's dwindling income clearly called for a second job. He didn't need to look any further than the local saloons to find that supplementary paycheck. Fortunately, his second-income career of a hard-drinking gambler fit him like a glove.

Poker and Faro caught his attention and Holliday quickly became proficient at both. Soon, he decided to travel from town-to-town to practice his card-playing skills. According to most sources, he quickly developed another skill...cheating. This, of course, didn't endear him to those who frequented his gaming tables. In fact, despite his refined manner and an education which included a fluency in Latin and Greek, he wasn't well received in most towns. During a stay in Las Vegas, New Mexico, for example, a reporter at the local paper gave him a rather scathing review. Noting that Holliday was a "shiftless, bagged-legged character," the reporter concluded that he was "not a wit too refined to rob stages or even steal sheep."

Stealing sheep might not have captured his interest, but fleecing the poor suckers who sat down at his Faro table, now that was another thing. Now and then, someone would catch on to his cheating and pull out a gun. When they did, the good doctor's reflexes, as well as his nickel-plated .41 caliber Colt Thunderer, snapped into action. More than once, he shot the gun out of the complainer's hand, creating a rapid and lasting attitude adjustment.

Another name that would stand beside his in Western history, was that of a free-spirited Hungarian lady, forever branded with the less-than-flattering nickname of Big Nose Kate. Mary Katherine Haroney spent a decade in an off-and-on relationship with Holliday. In addition to the prominent curve of her nose, which earned her nickname, she also had, as one historian put it, "other prominent curves." Although Kate was well educated, she shunned sophisticated society for the more adventurous lifestyle of a dancehall girl and part-time prostitute. Historians debate the issue, but many feel she accompanied Doc to Tombstone, where the gunfight at the O. K. Corral would etch both Doc and Kate's names into Western folklore.

That thirty second 1881 gunfight has been described with hundreds of thousands of words that have catapulted both the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday to legendary status. The conflict has been dramatized in countless books, television shows and silver-screen portrayals. Yes, as hot lead flew from the sawed-off shotgun Virgil Earp had given him to hide under his long coat, John Henry "Doc" Holliday secured his spot in history. That spot, however, might have only contained a brief note about an award-winning Western dentist, if it hadn't been for that horrendous hacking.

The Gingham-trimmed Girl of Sorrow

Elizabeth Eckford, the Fractured Flower of the 1957

Civil-rights Milestone at Little Rock's Central High School

Elizabeth was too excited to sleep. After all, tomorrow morning, the pretty fifteen-year-old would walk into her new high school for the first day of class. Since she was still awake, she ironed the pleated white skirt she had just made, one more time for good measure. The skirt's navy blue and white gingham trimming also received a last-minute touchup. Like her mother and sisters, Elizabeth Eckford was an expert seamstress. This outfit had not come from a basic McCalls or Simplicity pattern, but a more complicated one from Vogue. Yes, with the addition of her new bobby socks and white buck loafers, this should be the ideal look when she entered Little Rock's Central High School the next day.

When morning came, Elizabeth's mother set about her routine inspection of her children, making sure they all had notebooks in hand, pencils sharpened and lunch money in their pockets. When she was satisfied, she gathered them around her and read the 27th Psalm. Although morning family-prayer time was always an Eckford family tradition, this morning Birdie Eckford gave her Bible reading a special emphasis, as if it were her first time. In the background, Elizabeth's father, Oscar Jr., a night-shift worker, who would ordinarily be sleeping at that time, paced back and forth chomping on an unlit cigar. Then, with a flourish of her new pleated skirt, Elizabeth walked out the door and into history.

She knew exactly where her new school was. She had passed it many times on a city bus. Hopping off at the stop nearest Central High, Elizabeth set out walking the two blocks to the front entrance. The neighborhood looked a little different to her, with more cars parked along the street than usual. As she came nearer, she heard the murmur of a crowd. Approaching more slowly now, she heard the murmur steadily turn into a roar. As Elizabeth advanced, step-by-tentative-step, a bizarre scene materialized. National Guard soldiers stood encircling the school grounds.

"I saw the guards break ranks as the students approached the sidewalks," Elizabeth later recalled. Thinking the soldiers had been posted merely to prevent any unfortunate incident, she walked to the place where she thought the other students had entered. When she did, the soldiers closed ranks. Believing she had not picked the right entry point, Elizabeth walked a little further down the line to another sidewalk. As she turned to cross, the guardsmen crossed their rifles. Still supposing she had simply not yet found the right entrance spot, she continued along the row of guardsmen to the walkway near the school's main entrance. This time, the guards' message came across with crystal clarity. Once again blocking her way, the soldiers directed her across the street, toward a crowd of angry protestors. "It was only then," Elizabeth reflected, amazed at her earlier naiveté, "that I realized that they were barring me."

Magazine articles, books and documentary films have since recorded that September 4th, 1957 morning in appalling detail. As Elizabeth anxiously paced toward a bus stop away from the seething crowd, New York Times reporter, Benjamin Fine, would later describe the scene as, "This little girl, this tender little thing, walking with this whole mob baying at her like a pack of wolves." Desperately seeking a friendly face in the crowd, Elizabeth recalled she focused on that of an older woman. "It seemed like a kind face," she noted, "but when I looked again, she spat on me." The sad horror of the morning was preserved with a split-second shutter-click by Will Counts of the Arkansas Democrat. Later in the day, under the dim red light of the newspaper's darkroom, the image of the ferocious screaming face of Hazel Bryan behind the despondent Elizabeth Eckford, would slowly develop.

Perched on the edge of the bus stop bench for over a half hour, the "tender little thing" with the pretty homemade dress, was bombarded with screeches of, "Go back to Africa" and "Drag her to a tree and lynch her!" Sensing potential danger, several reporters covering the event, formed a protective ring around her. Benjamin Fine, in fact, sat on the bench beside Elizabeth, with his arm around her. "Don't let them see you cry," he whispered. Years later, Fine was asked if he felt he had stepped beyond his role as a reporter. "A reporter," he countered, "has to be a human being."

One of the saddest aspects of Elizabeth's ordeal is that it really didn't need to happen. The brave teenage volunteers, forever remembered as the Little Rock Nine, were supposed to go to the school together. The day before the fateful episode, Daisy Bates, the president of the Arkansas chapter of the NAACP, had called the other eight students. She told them to come to her house the next morning, where they would leave together in the company of a number of community ministers. Elizabeth's family, however, didn't have a telephone. Amazingly, no one bothered to drive to the Eckford house to inform Elizabeth and her parents. Although the other eight would encounter the stern faces of the soldiers and growling chants of the angry crowd, the forgotten Elizabeth's solitary excursion into the terrifying terrain stands alone.

Daisy may have forgotten Elizabeth, but Elizabeth would never forget the morning when the "baying pack of wolves" tracked her to the bus stop. As a writer for Vanity Fair later summarized, "Something descended on Elizabeth that has never fully lifted." "Afterward, she walked with her head down," observed Jefferson Thomas, another one of the Little Rock Nine. He said it seemed "as if she wanted to make sure the floor didn't open up beneath her."

Although her spirits would eventually improve, her response, years afterward, would summarize the tragic impact of that September day. When nagging reporters knocked on the door and asked her children if they could interview their mother, the previously excited gingham-trimmed girl, wiped away a tear and said, "Tell them I'm dead." No, the floor never opened up beneath her, but sadly the door to her traumatic memories never totally closed.
Just a "Little Ole Pop Song"

The Song Patsy Cline Didn't Want to Sing

That Stopped the Show and Started Her Career

Patsy Cline knew the song had to be perfect. She had worked toward this day for far too many years to use just any song. It had to be her song. But when would she find it? And where would she find it? She had already gone through her entire repertoire and as she sadly realized, it simply wasn't there.

She had won a spot on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, and Janette Davis, a regular on the show, was trying to help her find the perfect song for her voice. But they just couldn't seem to locate it. After Patsy had shown her over thirty possibilities, she glumly offered her last song. Janette slowly shook her head and asked if she had anything else.

Patsy reluctantly showed her a couple of songs she had recently recorded. The record hadn't been released, so she really wasn't supposed to perform them publicly. Patsy, however, was desperate. This was a national television spot with millions of people hearing her voice for the first time.

That's when it happened. Janette's eyes finally lit up. She knew they had found Patsy's song. Patsy, however, was not exactly ecstatic. In fact, she couldn't believe it. It wasn't the country tune she offered first, but the bluesy Pop number on the flip-side - "Walkin' After Midnight." Not that song again! Patsy still remembered the first time she heard it. She didn't want to sing it at all. In fact, she only agreed to record it if she could sing "Poor Man's Roses" on the other side. She didn't have too much bargaining power, however, since the record company had poured a lot of money into her sessions - and she hadn't exactly set the world on fire with her previous record sales.

But when would people realize she was a country singer, and not a "pop" singer! She remembered listening to Walkin' After Midnight and telling Don Hecht, the songwriter, "But that's nothing but a little ole pop song."

Hecht knew she wasn't attacking his song, but was fighting against using the smooth pop-style qualities of her voice. "And you're nothing but a little ole pop singer who lives in the country," he responded.

But Patsy was a country girl at heart. Her dreams had never been of the Broadway stage. She dreamed about singing on the Grand Ole Opry. She wanted to be another country singer like Kitty Wells. Her voice, however, was so pure and smooth, she sounded more like another Patti Page. Maybe, however, this might be the time to suspend the battle, just for this one song. She still wanted the world to view her as a country singer, but she also wanted the world to like her first nationally broadcast song.

Patsy telephoned Hecht before the show, "Okay," she told him, "I give up. I surrender. It's four against one now." Hecht asked her what she meant. She laughed and explained that everybody had told her she should sing his song...him, the record company, and now Janette Davis and Arthur Godfrey.

"Well God bless Janette Davis," Hecht responded, "and Arthur Godfrey too."

Even Patsy was changing her mind. She told him that as soon as she returned to Nashville she wanted to re-record it. "I really like it now," she told him, "And we're gonna win with it!"

And that, as history is well aware, is exactly what she did. On the evening of January 28, 1957, when she walked in front of ten million television viewers and sang that "little ole pop song," she sang it with all of her heart. Then, after the two minute and ten second introduction of Patsy Cline to the world, she looked toward the applause meter and hoped for the best. She didn't have to hope for long.

The audience, who had expected to hear a talented, but amateur singer, suddenly rose to their feet. Their spontaneous cheers and wild ovation pushed the Talent Scouts applause meter over the top and froze it in place. They wouldn't let her leave without singing another song. Patsy, with tears in her eyes, was also able to show the world her country talents that magical evening, and followed up with Hank Williams' "Your Cheatin' Heart."

As soon as Decca released her record, it became a million-seller. It would be several years before Patsy would come up with another song as popular as "Walkin' After Midnight," but once she did, she produced a stream of solid-gold hits.

In the early 1960's, her classic hits like "Crazy," "I Fall to Pieces," "She's Got You" and "Sweet Dreams" followed the path of "Walkin' After Midnight." They not only hit the country charts, but also crossed over to the popular market. Apparently both she and Don Hecht had been right. She was a country singer. But she was also a pop singer. That was okay; she could live with being "part pop," because in 1960, she had reached her childhood dream. She was ushered into the family of the Grand Ole Opry.

Her success seemed particularly sweet because she had dreamed about it for years. At sixteen, she walked into the local radio station and informed the announcer and bandleader that she could sing. He was so struck by her voice that he made her a regular on his live Saturday morning broadcasts.

During the same year, Wally Fowler of the Grand Ole Opry starred in a touring show that played her hometown. So naturally, the bold young teenager lined up an audition with him. He was so impressed with her talent that he encouraged her to travel to Nashville to audition for the Grand Ole Opry.

He didn't have to make that suggestion twice! An excited Patsy, along with her mother and sister, headed off to the Opry. Unfortunately, Nashville wasn't quite ready for her. She got a few radio spots, but their money soon ran out. They spent their last night in Music City sleeping on park benches.

Nashville, however, would eventually be very ready for her. She would be the first female solo singer inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In fact, during her all-to-brief career, she helped pave the way for the smooth version of country music, which would come to be known as the "Nashville Sound."
Stepping Inside the Tube

The Pioneer Performers of Early Television

During the late nineteen-forties, an odd little contraption began to draw some of the big-name radio stars away from their microphones. They would transform from vivid mental images into tiny black-and-white characters trapped inside a small glass world. As they did, hundreds of thousands of Americans would excitedly peer into that world to follow their transformation. The new media's first celebrity had roots in both radio and vaudeville. In fact, the programs given out to his early television studio audience, listed his show as the "Texaco Star Theater Vaudeville Show."

Within less than a year of his June, 1948 premier, Time Magazine listed Milton Berle as "the undisputed No. 1 performer on U.S. TV." Between eight and nine o'clock on Tuesday nights, the streets of America's towns were nearly empty. Restaurant owners looked sadly across vacant tables. A manager of an Ohio movie theater hung a sign on the door saying: "Closed Tuesday - I want to see Berle too!" The city of Detroit even reported a sizable drop in the water levels of their reservoirs just after 9:00 p.m. because people waited for Berle's show to end before heading to their bathrooms.

"Mr. Television," as he was soon known, was reputed to have single-handedly been responsible for selling more television sets than any advertising campaign in history. Parade magazine reported an increase from 190,000 sets to twenty-one million during Berle's TV reign. However, fellow comedian, Joe E. Lewis, couldn't resist wisecracking just a little. "Berle is responsible for more television sets being sold than anyone else," he observed. "I sold mine, my father sold his... "

During Berle's unchallenged reign, the landscape of the television scene had changed. Just as he had been wooed by the glow of the little tube, a host of other performers had also followed its beam. Suddenly, there was no shortage of talent, just waiting in the wings. As "Mr. Television's" ratings dropped, his competitors were only too happy to step into the lead.

One of those contenders had a concept that television executives were sure the audience simply "would not buy." The whole idea was preposterous. After all, why would a beautiful red-headed American movie star marry a Cuban bandleader? Lucille Ball, a young actress from Buffalo, had made the tough climb up the show business ladder. She had landed roles with the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges, and ended up on CBS radio's popular show, My Favorite Husband. Desi Arnaz, meanwhile, had also scaled the steep slope of success. He had been discovered by Xavier Cugat who had helped him open doors to the top nightclubs on the circuit.

In 1940 they married, and continued in their own fields. Ten years later, CBS executives decided it was time for the audience to see My Favorite Husband rather than simply hear it. When they told Lucille and the rest of the radio cast they would be moving to television, Lucy refused. After all those years of separate careers, she wanted a job she and Desi could share. Although they were married in real life, the CBS executives argued that the television public just wouldn't accept them as husband and wife. To prove them wrong, Lucy and Desi put together a stage show of slapstick vaudeville routines and headed across the country on a whirlwind twelve-week tour. By the end of the tour, they found out what the public thought of them - they loved them!

The rave reviews from their tour attracted television interest. NBC directors made them an offer. Not wanting to lose Lucille, CBS ultimately gave in and offered the couple their own show. The network officials liked The Lucille Ball Show as a title. Once again, Lucy balked. She wanted Desi's name to come before hers. But the CBS folks just wouldn't buy The Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball show. It looked as if they had run up against another wall when someone finally devised a way to work Desi into the title first. Desi would obviously be the "I" if they called it "I Love Lucy." As the program rocketed to the top of the television ratings, it was obvious that America loved Lucy too.

As the patchwork variety of television programs continued to grow, the viewers would set aside another piece of sacred time. This was reserved for an unlikely program that would eventually grow into the all-time leader of variety shows. It would turn Sunday evening into America's favorite "really big shew" for twenty-three years. That shew, however, was almost never born. During a meeting of CBS executives in 1948, the topic had centered on their need to compete with NBC's popular Texaco Star Theater with Milton Berle.

During a planning meeting, the CBS executives leaned back in their chairs to hear the suggestion of the man in charge of finding new programs for the network - Washington Miner. They were prepared to hear him propose some razzle dazzle showman who could out-sparkle Berle. Miner knew however, that nobody could do that. The show itself had to be the competing factor, rather than the star. The emcee should be someone with the power to draw in exceptional talent. As Miner surveyed the anxious faces of the CBS directors, he explained his theory to them. Then, taking a deep breath, he bravely presented his choice: Broadway newspaper columnist Ed Sullivan.

As he remembered later, "They were bored stiff. Everyone thought I had gone off my rocker." Frank Stanton, the executive vice president, quietly dismissed the topic, saying somberly "Well, let's move on to some of the other matters we have to cover." At that moment however, CBS president Bill Paley walked into the meeting and asked who they had come up with to rival Berle. Miner explained his concept and offered Ed Sullivan as the non-performing emcee. After a long pause, Paley said simply, "I like it."

Through the years to follow, millions of Americans would slowly begin to "like it" as well. Not everyone was sure how to take Ed's self-conscious nervous mannerisms, though. As viewers watched him fidget and grimace, more than one wrote in to applaud Sullivan's valiant struggle over "facial paralysis" or a "twisted spine," But just as Miner had predicted, Sullivan began to draw in celebrities like a magnet. His new program, originally called Toast of the Town, would become the gathering place for famous-name performers from around the world. Even his premier show was packed with stars. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein appeared. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis added their comedy skills. And in the well-balanced style that would typify his show, Sullivan included concert pianist Eugene List, singer Monica Lewis and a New York City fireman-singer, John Kokoman.

As The Honeymooners, Howdy Doody, The Lone Ranger, Our Miss Brooks, The Jack Benny Show and a nearly unending list of programs lit the glass tube of early television, they began to fill mental scrapbooks. Eventually the pictures in those scrapbooks would include much more than comedians, singers and cowboys. They also display vivid images of Dr. Martin Luther King's determined face as he marched through America's tense southern cities. Some of those mental scrapbook pages depict gleaming gold medals as Olympic athletes try unsuccessfully to hold back tears of pride. And of course, nearly all of them hold souvenir snapshots of a trip though the black vacuum of space to watch Neal Armstrong take "a giant leap for mankind."
"Un-swayed Will"

A Perilous 1845 Overland-trail Journey

Tests the Will of 16-year-old Sarah Walden

Dusty books on darkened library shelves sometimes hold fascinating stories taken from faded lines of ink, forever suspended in time. One of these hidden treasures tells the true tale of a party of pioneers who first banded together in St. Joseph, Missouri in the spring of 1845. Their dream was to reach the Willamette Valley in present-day Oregon, where they had heard of the distribution of donation land-claims.

The teenage diary-writer was a young lady named Sarah Walden. Much later in her life, as Sarah Cummins, she transcribed her diary entries into a small book written primarily for her family. As Sarah embarked upon her destiny, she had only recently begun another new life-style. Three weeks previously, she had married a young man named Benjamin Walden. Despite the major changes in her life, Sarah kept her equilibrium and launched into the preparations with enthusiasm. Like the rest of her family, she didn't dwell on the dangers that might lie ahead. "It seems a special providence of God," she later observed, "that our hearts were kept strong and true to the task before us."

Their journey started on a fascinating note. "Within a few hours time," Sarah remarked, "we began to sight vast herds of buffalo on their way to and from the plains..." The grand sight, however, soon took on an ominous tone. "One bright morning," she related, "several thousand of these horned beasts were seen coming directly toward our train." The captain shouted an order for the drivers to stop and veer sharply to the left. His quick thinking likely saved the party. The stampeding herd barely missed the wagons. For the next two hours, Sarah and the others watched the seething mass of buffalo flood by. She said the galloping motion of the individual animals gave the herd "the undulating movement of a great sea as it rises in regular billows and falls in gently undulating troughs." The terrified settlers knew all too well they could have easily been trampled beneath that "great sea."

Within a few days, their wagon train had reached the plains of the Platte River. The high winds, Sarah observed, would lift the treeless soil and heap it into huge drifts. One of the group members said it resembled the great Sahara desert he had witnessed in the wild region of Africa. Sarah let her imagination carry her there, saying the semblance seemed complete, "had we but camels to complete the 'panorama'..."

Despite the absence of camels, another fascinating animal soon caught their attention. The small creature raced across the plain one afternoon just after the party had stopped for dinner. "A little old man mounted a fleet horse and went in pursuit..." Sarah wrote. The small critter soon left the man and his "fleet horse" in its dust. After the defeated pursuer had returned and faced the group's laughter, he said the animal resembled one described in one of his natural history books. He had decided from its first jump that it must have been an antelope. "Chasing antelopes," Sarah added, "now became a favorite sport for the younger men..."

While the men were fooling around chasing antelope, the women were faced with a considerably less pleasant activity. In the sparse plains, they could find very little wood for their cooking fires. Many times, to their disgust, they had to substitute dried buffalo chips. Apparently they didn't all suffer in stoic pioneer resignation. "Many were the rude phrase uttered," Sarah noted, "far more humiliating to refined ears than any mention of the material used for fuel could have been."

Soon, the party welcomed the day-to-day sameness of the journey. As the emigrants persevered, the trek became, as Sarah observed, "a good place to study human nature." One wagon for instance, would pull out ahead of the others every morning. The lady of the family said their stock wouldn't have enough to eat if they remained with the others. Then in the evening, seeking the security of the group, she would ask that they be voted back into the train. "This was kept up so regularly," Sarah noted, "that at last some of the crowd would vote 'no' just to annoy the lady."

Fortunately, the strain of the trip brought out positive traits as well. Another woman had placed her soup kettle over a fire made from the slender branches available for fuel. The branches burned in half and, as Sarah noted, "down went the kettle, soup and all." She salvaged the soup bone, prepared the contents again, and placed it on another spot on the fire. Once more the branches broke and the kettle hit the ground. On the fifth attempt, the kettle finally held up long enough for the soup to cook. Turning to those observing her ordeal, she said simply, "Well, I intended having that soup for supper after all."

The day-to-day sameness, was not to last. In fact, the world very nearly never knew of Sarah's story. In late September, nearing the end of their trek, several of the group members left The Dalles to search for a potential route across the Cascades. Feeling the river trek would be safer than the mountain journey, Sarah's parents decided she should join them on the boat. But both her husband and brother had been selected for the group to drive the cattle over the mountain. That cemented her decision. She resolutely joined them. "To this there was a strong remonstrance," she reflected, "but my will was not to be swayed in that matter."

Her will would soon be tested. One morning they awoke to a blinding snowstorm. "As night was coming on," Sarah noted, "it seemed we all must perish, but weak, faint and starving, we went on." Their hopes for a life-saving fire at the day's end was also diminishing. The packed snow on their clothing had melted enough during the day to drench them to the skin. Even if they found wood, they would need some dry cloth for kindling to start the fire. As they trudged into the late evening, Sarah became so weak that her husband, Benjamin, had to drag her much of the way, valiantly lifting her over obstructions along the frozen path. Benjamin and another man tried hoisting her onto one of the horses \- but with no success. "Not one step would the poor beast take," Sarah reflected, "even though I weighed less than eighty pounds at that time."

Eventually, Benjamin managed to locate a small scrap of dry cloth deep in the inner lining of one of their coats, and with a fortunate pistol shot, started a roaring fire. Thankfully, this would signify a slow turnaround in their luck. As they trudged forward, the pitiful little group happened upon bushes loaded with huckleberries. The welcome delicacies gave them the energy to continue. Finally, eleven days after they had wandered into the Cascades, they stumbled across an occupied cabin. As Sarah staggered toward the doorway, the lady of the cabin, Mrs. Hatch, caught her in her arms. Sarah's nightmare was finally over.

As with all the other pioneer chronicles, Sarah's real-life joys and tears would eventually transform into lines of dried ink on yellowed paper. But as we read them, those lines once again spring to life. The rough-edged adventures she documented, remind us that those who carved out a future in the untamed wilderness definitely required an "un-swayed" will.

Kickapoo Cures and Wizard Oils

The Silver-tongued Masters of the Medicine Shows

"My friends, do you suffer from that most dreaded of all diseases, rheumatism? If you do, take a bottle of my bitters, and if it doesn't cure you..." The medicine showman paused dramatically as the wide-eyed crowd stared through the flickering light of the kerosene pan torch. "If it doesn't cure you..." he repeated, perched majestically on the runway of his wagon, staring intently into the quivering mass of country bumpkins, "then prepare to meet your God, for you've got to die."

Modern-day high-pressure salesmen with their neon striped jackets and florescent smiles, didn't invent hard-sell salesmanship. Oh, no! They are no match for the old medicine showmen. Silk Hat Harry for example, would prove the purity of his product by eating his own soap right there in front of you. Milton Bartok would catch your attention by apparently setting himself on fire with a blowtorch. That's hard-sell salesmanship!

The "doctors" and "professors" and all the other characters of the old medicine shows peddled everything from Doctor William's Pink Pills for Pale People, to the Little Wonder Electric Tibetan Rheumatism Ring. The rare formulas they discovered from far-off Indian tribes and brilliant German scientists were often concocted in such exotic environments as their hotel bathtub, the night before the show. They quoted statistics never to be found in medical journals, and promised cures that would top the miracles of the ages. For years, a steady stream of fast-talking "German Doctors" and "Indian Chiefs" sold relief for everything from biliousness to a "loss of manly powers," in twenty-five and fifty-cent bottles.

During their golden age, before and after the turn-of-the twentieth century, they crossed and re-crossed the country, leaving salves, bitters, tonics, and well-entertained country folk along the way. The little country towns were the favorite picking grounds of the medicine showmen, especially the small towns in the mid-west and the south. For years after the city folk had become too sophisticated and suspicious for Kickapoo cures and Wizard Oils, the country yokels were happy to see the shows arrive, and eager to buy their magical remedies.

The medicine showmen developed from the early pitchmen. These hard-sell specialists traveled alone, or sometimes with one or two entertainers. Until World War I, they traveled in wagons, on freight cars, or on foot with their supplies on pack burros. Following the war, many pitchmen adapted a truck with a tailgate that dropped down to form a small stage like the earlier wagons. The stage was often lit at night by alcohol torches made from old cans, or by a more expensive gasoline or kerosene pan torch made by a blacksmith.

Most pitchmen developed a spiel and stuck to it, sometimes for years. One of the exceptions to this was pitchman Curly Thurber. One time he would be "Chief High Eagle," peddling a mystical Indian remedy, and at the next stop, he might be dressed as a swami. No matter how he was dressed, his silver tongue was always in prime condition. "Buy this medicine," he would advise people walking by the sidewalk. "Don't go to the doctors. What do they do when you go them?" he asked. As the stunned bystander waited for the answer, he continued. "I'll tell you what they do. They cut open your umbilicus and take out your tweedium." Upon hearing that horrid news, buying a bottle or tin of whatever Curly might be selling at the time, seemed like a small price to pay to avoid loosing your tweedium!

Soap pitchmen were also a common sight, peddling a variety of perfumed and "medicinal" soaps. Their demonstrations were eye-catching as they took a bar of their soap, rubbed their hands together, and instantly produced mounds of foaming lather. Unfortunately, the customer had a little trouble creating the same bubbles at home; since usually the soap pitchman had either secretly palmed a soap-filled sponge or had previously dipped his hands in liquid soap.

One of the best-known soap pitchmen was Silk Hat Harry. He could reach out and "reel in" the yokels with his spiel. "People come forward every day, my friends, and tell me how this soap has cured them of skin diseases," he would say. Then he would describe some poor wretched customer who once had scabs and sores all over his face, and of course...bought a few cakes of his wonderful soap. That same poor soul, he would relate, saw him later, looking handsome and clear faced, and introduced his beautiful wife and his new twin babies. "But gentlemen," Harry would say, with a twinkle in his eye, "I do not guarantee this same result for everyone who buys my soap."

Mineral salts became a favorite product for a lot of medicine pitchmen. The pitchman would often use graphic charts or models to illustrate the body's organs, and catch the eye of the bystander. One of the standard mineral salt pitches told the audience that the precious healing mineral waters were the "gift of the Great and Wise Creator. He makes those treatments way down deep in the bowels of the earth, in a laboratory far greater than man could devise, and forces them to the surface in the form of mineral water, and gives them to us."

During a lengthy dissertation, the listener learned that hardening of the arteries "helps kill ninety-nine out of every one hundred working men and women in America today..." Fortunately, however, they found that regular doses of the mineral salts would take them off the endangered list. It also took care of rheumatism, malaria chills, weak bladders, kidney stones, constipation, and a nearly endless list of ills.

Even for the country bumpkins, some of the demonstrations were just a tad hard to believe. Old Doc Ruckner, for example, would not only cure corns right there on the stage, but he would cure them right through your shoes! The enthusiastic patient wasn't aware that the soothing coolness was created by the secret ingredient - gasoline!

As interesting as Curly, Silk Hat Harry and Doc Ruckner were, most of the pitchmen and women realized they could draw in more people if they included entertainment with their pitches. Through the years, they tried nearly every type of act imaginable. Ventriloquists, comedians, banjo players, magicians and singers took their place among the boxes and bottles of tonics and salves. In addition to the human entertainers, snakes, lizards, alligators and monkeys also took their turns at drawing in the crowds.

As the decades rolled by, some medicine shows began to resemble small circuses. The Big Sensation Medicine Company, for example, could seat up to 1,500 people under its 60 by 120-foot canvas. The entertainers even had the luxury of using dressing rooms set up behind the huge 40-foot stage. Eventually, however, our maturing nation simply became too sophisticated to believe the miracle cures.

As the wild and colorful era of the medicine shows came to an end, so did some of the simplicity and innocence of a young nation. The "chiefs" sadly packed away their feathers, and the "high physicians" dropped their German accents. Medicine would become legitimate and entertainment would become sophisticated. We're likely better off, but what would be the harm if...every now and then for old times sake, the pharmacist behind the sterile counter would drag out a few snakes and lizards while he munched on a bar of soap or set himself on fire with a blowtorch?
With the Help of "Tee-Tot"

When an Old Black Street Singer Pointed

Hank Williams Toward the Stars

The concentration on the skinny boy's face was reflected in the old black man's proud eyes. Month by month, young Hiram Hank Williams had been slowly learning how to play the guitar. The street "classroom" wasn't exactly the ideal place for guitar lessons, but Hank soaked up all he could in between his duties of shoe-shining and peanut-selling.

His street-singer teacher, old "Tee-tot," couldn't have been more tickled. The young boy was not only learning the basic chords, but also seemed to have an ear for the blues that Tee-tot loved. In fact, young Hank was even learning how to put a little "tear" in his voice.

Hank's mother had noticed his early interest in music, and bought him a $3.50 guitar when he was only seven. Times were tough, however, and they couldn't afford to pay for traditional music lessons. So to teach him the basics, they turned to a street singer named Rufus Payne. Rufus, whose street name was "Tee-tot," often received his payment in the form of a home-cooked meal.

Rufus turned out to be the ideal teacher for the young boy. Hank didn't need to know how to read music or master fancy picking techniques. The stories his songs would one day tell the world were as simple and straightforward as the basic blues style Rufus taught him. It was also good for Hank to have a male role model. His father had suffered shell shock from combat during the First World War, and was committed to the Veteran's Administration Hospital in Biloxi when Hank was only seven.

This left Hank, his mother, Lilly, and his sister, Irene, to fend for themselves. Lilly, fortunately, was not exactly a fragile little flower. She definitely had the necessary fortitude to steer the family through the tough times. Not only was she a strong-willed lady, but also, according to Hank's memories, was a pretty tough character in every way. "Minnie," he once told Grand Ole Opry star, Minnie Pearl, "There ain't nobody in the world I'd rather have alongside me in a fight than my mama with a broken beer bottle in her hand."

Hank himself learned how to survive in the somewhat "less than cultural" atmosphere of the South Alabama honky-tonks. As he began playing clubs and bars around the area, he soon learned why these establishments were often referred to by the rather graphic name of "blood buckets."

Hank could usually avoid potential conflicts simply by being one of the boys, and not acting uppity. Occasionally, however, some drunk would decide to pick a fight with him. That's when the steel guitar player's metal fretting bar came in handy. Hank would grab it on the way into the scuffle and with a few whacks, produce a rapid attitude adjustment.

During one fight, however, the fretting bar didn't do the trick quite soon enough. "One more good blow woulda done it," Hank reflected. "But he reached out and bit a plug, hair and all, outta my eyebrow."

One more strong-willed character would need to enter the picture before Hank's career would take off. He began dating nineteen-year-old Audrey Mae Sheppard in what was not exactly a "match made in heaven." For one thing, Audrey had a husband overseas.

Not only did her father threaten to kill Hank, but when Hank brought her home to meet Lilly, the two "ladies of his life" ended up in a fist-fight. Nevertheless, Hank and Audrey eventually married, and she took up the role of providing the force needed to mold Hank's native musical genius into a professional image.

According to a popular story, when the couple walked into music-publisher Fred Rose's office, he handed Hank a guitar and sent him off to write a song. After a few super-creative minutes, Hank returned with a penciled copy of one of his greatest hits. The problem is, even though the movie version of Hank's life promoted this tale, nobody who was actually there agrees.

Fred Rose's son Wesley gives a little less romantic but likely more accurate picture of the historical meeting. He said Hank and Audrey wandered in on his parents' traditional lunch-time ping pong game. Since Hank and Audrey seemed so hungry for someone to hear his music, the Roses put down their paddles and listened to him sing a half-dozen of his songs. Among these were "When God Comes and Gathers His Jewels" and "Six More Miles to the Graveyard." Fred signed Hank to a contract on the spot.

Although it's not as good a story as the fictitious version, the meeting opened the door for the man many fans consider to have been the greatest country music star of all time. During the six short years between the opening of this door and the tragic closing of his life, he filled the world with his songs. His music not only touched millions of traditional country fans, but also jumped across musical boundaries through the talents of such diverse musicians as Tony Bennett, Ray Charles and Lawrence Welk.

History will always remember Hank for the golden string of songs he wrote, like "Your Cheatin' Heart," "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," "Hey Good Lookin'," "Cold, Cold Heart," "Jambalaya" and all the rest. Ironically though, the highest point in his career came as the result of someone else's song.

When Hank first set foot on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry on June 11, 1949, the song he chose, "The Lovesick Blues," was co-written by a Russian-born lyricist and a vaudeville piano-player. His presentation, however, was pure Hank. When the thin sad-eyed country singer finished the last note, the Opry house exploded. The audience wouldn't let him leave. For six encores, they called him out to sing the closing line, "I'm so lo-o-onesome, I got the lovesick blues."

As history is sadly aware, Hank's dark moody periods and legendary drunken binges began to throw shadows over the light of his genius and eventually snuffed it out. That light, however, will continue to reflect in the hearts of millions of fans...just like the image of that young peanut-seller with a "tear" in his voice, reflected in the proud eyes of old "Tee-Tot."
Gleams in Their Eyes

Sixteen-year-old Sarah Wister and Young Major

Stoddard Hatch a Scheme that Helps Relieve Some

of the Tensions of the Grueling Revolutionary War

"What would you do if the British should come here?" Major Stoddard asked young Sarah Wister.

"I'd be frightened just to death!" she replied.

Then turning the conversation to a light-hearted vein, the major told her he would escape their rage by hiding behind the statue of a British grenadier that stood upstairs. The figure was a six-foot tall painted wooden representation of a British Coldstream Guard grenadier. The well-crafted piece appeared quite realistic from a little distance.

Then a mischievous gleam lit the eyes of the young Maryland major as his imagination switched into high gear. He decided he would use the wooden figure for a practical joke on his Virginia comrade, Robert Tilley. A reciprocal gleam in Sarah's eyes told him she would be a willing coconspirator. Together, they hatched a plot to stand the statue just outside one of the side doors, with a house servant hiding behind it to furnish its voice. As a precaution against their joke turning hazardous, they gathered all the pistols and swords from the house.

That evening, December 13, 1777, their nefarious plot unfolded. One of Major Stoddard's comrades, Augustine Seaton, had been apprised of the hoax. With his candle in hand, he answered a knock at the side door and told Tilley someone wanted to see him. Expecting news from his outfit, Tilley calmly approached the door and peered out through the flickering light. "The first object that struck his view," Sarah Wister would later record, "was a British Soldier."

"Is there any Rebel officer here?" the wooden figure appeared to bellow. "Not waiting for a second word," Sarah noted, Tilley "darted like lightning out the front door, through the yard, and bolted over the fence. Swamps, thorn hedges and plowed fields no way impeded his retreat." Major Stoddard, the instigator of the antic, slowly rose from his convulsive fit of laughter to call Tilley back to the house. "He will lose himself," he declared to his friends, "indeed he will."

As Sarah watched Tilley's hesitant return, a wave of sympathy swept over her. "Irrepressible confusion had taken entire possession of his countenance," she wrote. "He smiled as he tripped up the steps," she observed, "but 'twas vexation placed it on his features. Joy at that moment, was banished from his heart." But she said that shortly, his good nature "gained a complete ascendance over his anger and he joined heartily in the laugh."

Laughter was a welcome visitor to the war-wearied soldiers who had been granted quarters at that Pennsylvania country house. By late 1777, the Revolutionary War had descended upon the area like a smothering blanket. Contradictory military intelligence had confused George Washington at nearby Brandywine on September 11, resulting in defeat and withdrawal. Philadelphia had fallen to British control on September 26. And early in October, a combination of heavy fog and poor communication had forced a Continental army retreat at Germantown, just north of Philadelphia.

Sixteen-year-old Sarah Wister and her Quaker family had vacated war-ravaged Philadelphia several months before the British took possession. They found refuge in the Gwynedd, Pennsylvania home of Hanna Foulke and her three children. Hanna, a relative of the Wisters by marriage, was recently widowed, and appreciated the company. Together, about fifteen miles north of Philadelphia, they anxiously waited and hoped the British would evacuate the city.

During this stay, Sarah regularly wrote to her former schoolmate and closest friend, Deborah Norris. By September, the shortage of paper and the difficulty of sending mail, forced Sarah to write her letters in a journal for Deborah to read later. Fortunately for us, that journal was preserved. In this account, Sarah's words remain intact but her spelling has been touched up for clearer reading. Hopefully she would have wanted that.

Sarah wrote her first journal entry on September 25, 1777, two-and-a-half months before the wooden-statue incident. In it, she wrote that she learned the British had crossed the Schuylkill River, south of her. Washington and his troops, she heard, were at Pottsgrove to her west. "Well thee may be sure we were sufficiently scared," she confided to Deborah, "however, the road was very still 'til evening."

The stillness she described would soon cease. "About seven o'clock, we heard a great noise to the door..." she wrote. Outside, they found about three hundred members of the Philadelphia Militia and a great number of wagons. The sight of so many military men frightened Sarah, but she soon discovered they were a civil and gentlemanly group. "My fears were in some measure dispelled," she wrote, "though my teeth rattled and my hands shook like an aspen leaf..." After quenching their thirst at the well, the troops marched off.

On October 19, Mrs. Foulke's daughter, Lydia, ran into Sarah's room. Sarah said she described "the greatest drumming, fifing and rattling of wagons that ever she had heard." What Lydia had witnessed was a group of Colonial soldiers marching to take possession of Germantown. The British had recently left the town in order to fortify their river defenses. Sarah quickly dressed and joined her cousin and a friend for a half-mile walk to watch the troops pass.

That afternoon, two soldiers visited the house and asked Mrs. Foulke if she could supply quarters for a General William Smallwood. She agreed, and young Sarah and her cousin, Prissa, were excited about the concept of a dashing military man joining the family gathering. Since he was likely not a Quaker, he could never be considered as a suitor, but nonetheless, the teenagers snapped into action. "When we were alone," Sarah confided, "our dress and lips were put in order for conquest."

That evening, General Smallwood arrived, accompanied by six attendants, a guard of soldiers, and several horses and wagons. "The yard and house was in confusion," Sarah reported, "and glittered with military equipments." Among the attendants was a young man the general introduced as Major William Stoddard. Sarah learned he was General Smallwood's nineteen-year-old nephew. She said Major Stoddard was "vastly bashful" and hardly looked at her or Prissa. "If 'tis bashfulness only," Sarah noted in her evening journal entry, "we will drive that away."

A couple days later, that mission was accomplished. Sarah and another cousin, Liddy, were seated at a table reading a book of verses. Major Stoddard, Sarah noted, "looked at us, turned away his eyes; looked again." Eventually he joined their table, asking if there were any verses in the book they could sing. Liddy said she couldn't sing, but told the young major that Sarah could. "I denied," Sarah disputed, "for my voice is not much better than the voice of a raven." As they continued to chat and laugh, the girls indeed broke through the young major's bashfulness. "No wonder," Sarah noted, "a stoic could not resist such affable damsels as we are."

In time, Major Stoddard, General Smallwood, Robert Tilley and others who would pass through her world during the Revolutionary War, headed their separate directions. But their spirits would remain together, forever preserved in the faded lines of ink in Sarah Wister's yellowed journal. Those ink lines would remind later generations that our country was not forged by grade-school pasteboard cutouts of Quakers and Colonial soldiers. Instead, it was created by affable young damsels, bashful soldiers and conspiring jokesters with gleams in their eyes.
The "Talkies" First Words

When the Celluloid Silence Was Broken

"Maybe we win," mumbled one of the perspiring brothers, trying half-heartedly to comfort the other three. Without even looking, he knew they were as nervous as he was about the outcome of the next few minutes. He didn't need to see their white-knuckled fingers digging into the cloth theater seats. He just had to remember their twenty-year uphill struggle to make a name for themselves in the movie business. And now that they had finally carved their family name into the hallowed halls of the movie industry, they were going to gamble it all - everything they had worked for. In one hour, when the flickering projector stopped, the nervous Warner brothers would either be cheered as the pioneers of a new age of motion pictures, or jeered as the lunatics of moviedom.

And it wasn't as if they actually had the kind of money needed to take this gamble. Their independent movie company had more than once teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. Yet there they sat, in their New York theater on the sixth of August, 1926, ready to view an hour-long movie that had cost them over two-million dollars to bring to the screen. As they sat fidgeting, they tried hard not to remember that they had merely made commitments to pay off much of the money since...they didn't exactly have over two million dollars. But the time for nervous rumination was behind them. As the theater lights dimmed, all they could do was take a deep breath, sit back in their seats and hope for the best.

Suddenly, a white beam of light pierced the darkness of the hushed theater. Words were projected onto the draped stage curtains. Then, as the curtains parted, the familiar printed subtitle, like those that had graced the silent movie screen for so many years, disappeared. It was replaced with a picture of a man facing the audience. And that's when it happened, as he was strolling forward. Had it been their imaginations? Was it actually someone else in the audience? No, as they surveyed their excited theater-mates, they could see that everyone in the theater had witnessed it. As the man on the screen had approached them, they had all heard it. He had definitely done it. He had cleared his throat!

As the throat-clearer, Will H. Hays, the president of the Motion Picture Producers Association, came closer, he began a short speech about the show to follow. "No story written for the screen is as dramatic as the story of the screen itself," he proclaimed. But the astounded audience wasn't concerned about what he was saying. They were riveted on the fact that he was saying it. Some of them had heard about the experiments of adding sound to pictures, but they were simply not ready for this! It was almost as if the huge projected image in front of them was actually present.

At the end of Hay's short talk, the audience found themselves, almost unconsciously applauding the towering black and white figure. His presence in the theater was further enhanced as he magically acknowledged their applause with a sedate bow - which ignited another ovation. Although this was only the beginning of the film, the brothers could release their grips on the theater seats. They had already received their answer. The little theater was filled with magic and everyone knew it. Just as the mumbling brother had quietly hoped, they had definitely "won." There was no maybe about it.

As the show continued, the little first-night audience was treated to a performance by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. The magical spell which had been cast by the soft clearing of a throat had not died away. It only grew stronger as the camera focused in on the individual musicians as their music poured out from the previously silent screen. As the final note died away and the orchestra leader turned to face the theater audience, he was greeted, like the earlier announcer, with an eruption of spontaneous applause.

That applause, to the delight of the anxious brothers, continued as other musicians and vocalists filled the screen with their images and the room with their music. By the time the final celluloid frame flashed past the smoking light and the synchronized yellow wax disk fell silent, the excited audience knew they had just witnessed history. The next day, the press spread the news to the rest of the country. The New York Times reported that during an instrumental performance by Roy Smeck, "every note appeared to come straight from the instrument." As Giovanni Martinelli sang an aria from I Pagliacci, the reporter wrote that "the singer's tones appeared to echo in the body of the theater as they rose from a shadow on the screen." Variety headlined their story with, "Vitaphone Bow Is Hailed As Marvel."

In the midst of the praise, however, one reporter couldn't resist becoming the first critic to turn his poison pen on the new marvel. While filming Marion Talley, the "Kansas City Canary," he felt the producers made the mistake of allowing the camera to come too close. "Long shots - and good, long ones," he observed, "were just invented for that girl." On the whole though, the media concluded that the "talkies," as the public immediately christened them, were a raving success.

As more and more movie pioneers turned their attention toward the new creation, they slowly worked the "bugs" out of the process. Through the years, the audio quality improved and more sophisticated synchronization techniques were developed. As the talkies became more practical, popular stage entertainers began to turn their attention toward the new medium. Traveling musicians and singers figured that if they could make a couple "short subject" films a year, they could add the royalties to their touring salaries. Ironically, few entertainers realized until it was too late that by doing this they would sometimes end up "competing with themselves." When they played towns that were running their movie shorts, the public would often choose the less expensive filmed version over their live performance.

Nevertheless, the talkies were here to stay. An October, 1926 headline in Variety likely alerted some of the live entertainers to the growing threat. Commenting on a second special put on by Warner Brothers, a front-page banner headline read, "Better than Vaudeville." Suddenly this infant form of amusement was being compared to time-tested live entertainment. Not only did the second show draw rave reviews, but one of the entertainers on that special was destined to step off his familiar live stage and into the movie history books. One year and a day after the special, on October 6, 1927, that singer, Al Jolson, would premier in the first full-length talking movie. The movie, The Jazz Singer, would start the new entertainment form on a course bound for the stars.

The Spell of the Russian

"Night Witches"

The Stone-cold Bravery and Skill of the Gutsy

Russian Female Night Bombers in Puny Antiquated

Biplanes, who Battled the Fierce German Air Force

With the barely perceptible whooshing sound, adrenalin surged through the German's soldier's frigid body. As his eyes flashed toward the night sky, that sound...that horrible sound, foretold impending disaster. His mind concocted possible causes for the ghostly noise that suddenly filled his consciousness. Maybe it was just a wind-swept tree limb or a low-flying nighthawk. But even as his mind raced to comfort him, his heart had already identified its deadly source. He knew that within seconds, the airfield he was guarding would become a target for a dreaded Naphtha...a Russian "Night Witch."

Although the mention of that nickname nowadays usually brings about an inquisitive but unaware look, it could instantly turn a German soldier's blood to ice during the Second World War. They had all heard the rumors about the mysterious Russian lady bombers who struck only in the dark of night and somehow slipped past their defenses until it was too late. Some said the female Russian pilots had been given secret injections to give them the "night vision of a feline." Others were convinced that their planes were high-tech marvels that could hover in mid air and then speed away in reverse.

Despite the rumors, which likely helped the soldiers retain their masculine dignity, the reality was quite different. The Russian night bombers that filled the enemy with such cold terror, were definitely not high-tech wonders flown by chemically enhanced pilots. They were instead, dilapidated biplanes piloted by young women, barely twenty-years-old who often decorated their aircraft with flower designs and used their red navigation pencils to paint their lips. Once in the air, however, they were anything but girlie girls.

Known officially as the Soviet's 588th Night Bomber Regiment, they soon inherited the nickname of Night Witches, given to them by angry and terrified German soldiers. The female pilots flew only at night and set their little 110 horsepower engines on idle to silently swoop down for bombing attacks. The only sound the soldiers would hear was the ghostly whistling of the wind against the little biplane's wing-bracing wires - apparently sounding a little like the rustling of a witch's broomstick. Once that sound entered their consciousness, it was too late to run.

Three regiments of female pilots began their training in the summer of 1941 at the town of Engels, north of Stalingrad. Due to the urgent need for additional pilots, the training sessions were strenuous. Instruction that would ordinarily have stretched out over two years was crammed into six months of grueling twelve-to-fourteen-hour days of flying and ground school. Not only was the training rigorous, the uniforms and equipment provided for the recruits did not exactly come from the top shelf. They cut down uniforms leftover by the male pilots, and stuffed paper and cloth into the toes of their boots to make them fit. Not only that, but the young women who, like most Russian women of the time, valued their long flowing locks, were ordered to cut their hair to a maximum of two inches long to make them look more "soldierly."

Like their leftover uniforms, their planes were not exactly tailor-made for the young ladies either. They would pilot old wooden and canvas 1920's Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes that had previously been used primarily for crop dusting and flight training. Although the aging planes had been refitted for bombing missions, they had no radios or parachutes and in fact, no guns to shoot at the German fighters that were sure to attack them. To make matters even worse, the puny biplanes were slower than most World War I aircraft!

That slow speed, however, would become their saving grace. With a maximum speed of 94 mph and a cruising velocity of 68, they would prove to be difficult targets for the German jets that would stall out trying to fly slowly enough to dogfight the sluggish biplanes. Their slow cruising speed also made them extremely maneuverable and allowed them to fly very close to the ground, actually hiding behind buildings and hedgerows. They could keep dodging and swerving until the faster but less agile Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulf planes would simply give up and leave them alone. Despite these advantages, the young ladies in their little wooden and canvas biplanes definitely didn't face an easy path ahead.

The lightweight planes with their diminutive engines couldn't carry much of a load. Rather than dropping a string of bombs on their targets, they could only carry two relatively small 220-pound bombs. This meant they would need to fly back, reload and head out again - over and over; sometimes flying as many as 15 to 18 missions a night. The night bombers had a specialized mission - to provide "harassment bombing" of less-strategic targets than the daytime bombers. They usually targeted small airfields or enemy encampments.

Like the name implies, their constant harassing throughout the night, kept the German soldiers unnerved and fearful - casting nervous glances toward the night sky for a stealthy Night Witch. Little by little, the Russians girls who had once been viewed by many male soldiers with wrinkled brows and raised eyebrows, were considered a valuable resources for the Russian military...and despised enemies for the Germans. In fact, it was reported that Germany's esteemed Iron Cross was awarded to anyone who shot down a Night Witch. As Veteran Night Witch, Nadya Popova, recalled, "They called us Night Witches because we never let them get any sleep."

The Night Witches didn't get a lot of sleep either. It was well known that most of them had flown over 1000 missions each and that even when one of them was shot down, she would make her way back to the base, hop in another plane and head right out again. They would become the most highly decorated regiment in the entire Soviet military. At their peak, as many as 40 two-person crews pounded the enemy with stone-cold bravery and red-hot flying skills.

When Nadya Popova remembered her friends flying in what were basically open-air militarized crop-dusters, she said, "It was a miracle we didn't lose more aircraft. Our planes were the slowest in the Air Force. They often came back riddled with bullets, but they kept flying!" She said she had been the pilot for one mission that ended with 42 bullet holes in the plane. In addition, there were holes in her map...and in her helmet. As she surveyed the damage after they landed, she simply shook her head and told her navigator, "Katya my dear, we will live long."

Sadly, not all of the brave young women who filled the night skies with power and the German soldiers with terror, did live long. Thirty-one would never be able to tell their amazing stories to their wide-eyed children and grandchildren. But even though their lives would end in fiery crashes, their spirits still soar - along with all of the incredible ladies who eventually delivered three thousand tons of bombs in over 23,000 missions to keep the German army under the spell of the Russian Night Witches. Many years later, Nadya said she would sometimes look up into the night sky, close her eyes and picture herself as a young girl at the controls of her little bomber. "Nadya," she would ask herself, "how on earth did you do it?"
"Everything But Our Lives"

Mary Rockwell Powers Faces Prairie Storms, Desperate Thirst

and a Fanatical Husband on An 1856 Trek to Sacramento

"The crashing of the thunder was deafening," the young wife wrote. "There came up such a hurricane accompanied with rain, and such lightning as I never saw before." Mary Powers' wagon pitched from side to side as the terrified horses lunged with each flash. "To keep the children from the storm of wind and rain," the brave young mother noted, "I had to hold down the lower corners of the blanket at the fore end of the wagon." As she did, the full force of the storm buffeted her.

Clad only in her nightclothes, Mary dived across their trunk and clasped the blanket with all her strength. She said that for two-and-a-half hours, she sheltered her children from the rain with "hailstones beating upon my head as though they would crack my skull." When the volley finally subsided and the frozen mother inspected her children, she found them warm and dry. She reported that amazingly, "They did not wake at all."

"I expected to be down sick after it," Mary noted, "but was not." The next morning, stiff and sore, she awoke to find the ground strewn with thousands of hailstones. As she stood surveying the Wyoming Black Hills' landscape, she could feel herself transforming into a seasoned pioneer. Like so many other westbound emigrants, the delicate and refined young lady discovered she possessed a rock-solid inner strength. Before the completion of her 1856 trek across the Overland Trail, she would need to tap into every ounce of that strength. Not only did young Mary Rockwell Powers encounter the usual challenges of the trail, she carried an added burden. Her physician husband, Americus Powers, often sank into "sullen moods" and occasional spurts of irate "ranting." Mary would eventually record, "I felt as though myself and little ones were at the mercy of a mad man."

Her trip had begun several weeks before the hailstorm. In her journal, she always referred formally to her husband as "the Doctor." In fact, it was only after extensive research by editor W. B. Thorsen, that the names of Mary and Americus Powers were uncovered. Like many of the pioneer diarists, Mary apparently had no idea anyone would later be interested in learning her story. Hopefully, she wouldn't have minded our snooping through her journal and letters to her mother, to share her fascinating adventure.

That 1856 adventure took Mary, Americus and their three small children from their Chicago-area home across the plains to Sacramento. Although Mary's husband had an established medical practice, the lure of California had worked its magic on him, as it had for so many others of the time. He spent most of their savings on a team of fine Canadian horses to pull their wagon across the plains. Since, according to Mary's journal, the cumbersome vehicle weighed almost 900 pounds empty, this uninformed decision would later prove disastrous.

Mary and the children met Americas in Iowa City. Their trip there sent a forecast for the rest of their trip. They had to get out and carry their baggage for a half mile, then squeeze back aboard the train through a milling crowd of other muddy passengers. "Such a perfect jam," Mary asserted, "I never saw before." Several days after they finally arrived, the doctor showed up and proudly exhibited the four horses he had procured for the journey. "One is a fine bay," Mary wrote, the other three were black, and one was considerably smaller than the others. That horse, Mary stated, "is the one I call mine; there is an elegance about him that I much admire."

They hitched up the regal creatures and set off on May 14th for Council Bluffs to begin their overland trek. But within a couple days' travel, the poor little black horse began to fail. It was becoming apparent to Mary that the doctor had made a faulty selection of animals. In fact, it seemed his choice in picking a hired hand had not been ideal either. "The young man the Doctor has with him," Mary alleged, "is about as good as a basswood man..." He had promised to help her with the cooking, she observed, but had not yet lifted a finger. "I think him a perfect shark."

Nonetheless, despite their "basswood" helper and the flagging horses, they were underway on their trek across the Great American Desert. By May 18th, the previously elegant little black horse was so stiff and sore he could hardly move. "How I pity him!" Mary lamented. "I very much fear we shall completely use up our team before we get to Council Bluffs." Fortunately, her prognosis was wrong. The poor animals managed to lug the cumbersome wagon into Council Bluffs three days later.

On the first of June, after a rest stop at Council Bluffs, they set out across the plains. The next few days fell into more of a routine. In early June, Richard, the "basswood man," managed to raise his standings a little in Mary's eyes. As they were cleaning up after breakfast, a heavy rain and fierce wind raced across the plains. The gale hammered their tent and the stakes began to fly. "Richard caught the children," Mary wrote, "and I grabbed the blankets and ran for the wagon." Other than being totally drenched, they reached the security of the wagon unharmed

A few days later, however, Richard's status dropped back down a few notches. As they reached the Platte Hills, the Doctor handed him the reins and let him drive the wagon. "The road was too deeply gullied for a careless driver to succeed," Mary observed, "and we were upset." Fortunately, they had been traveling in the company of a horse train and several young men helped right the wagon.

As the straining horses hauled their heavy burden across the prairie toward Fort Laramie, it seemed their suffering might be nearly over. "The Doctor says he will trade off his horses at the fort for an ox team," Mary rejoiced. Her hopes were high as they camped up river from the fort and Americus went in to make a deal. While he was gone, though, Richard thoroughly validated his "basswood man" appraisal. He told Mary he wanted to reach California and didn't think they would be able to travel much further. After informing her that he had made no bargain to stay, he simply left her and the children alone on the prairie. "Then it was," Mary wrote, "that I felt like sitting down and crying."

Fortunately, Americus finally returned and they were off again...still with no new horses. He simply told her he wasn't able to make a trade and they would have to drive on. Amazingly, even though they would eventually lose all but one horse, helpful strangers hooked up their animals so they could complete the journey. "We have seen hard times indeed," Mary reflected, "since we left our eastern friends." As her thoughts raced back across the months, the rigors of the trek settled heavily on her mind. She knew that behind the lush new visions of California, would forever lurk the icy panic of being left alone in the wilderness and the dying gasps of the stately animals sacrificed along the way. "Our journey across the plains was a long and hard one," she wearily recorded, "We lost everything but our lives."
A "Misguided Fanatic"

How Abolitionist, John Brown, Likely Ignited

an Early Beginning to the Civil War

"No," John Brown yelled to his attackers as he squatted with rifle in hand near the doorway of the little engine-room, "I would prefer to die here!" Many of the militia, marines and local citizens who trained their rifles on the little building would have been more than happy to help him achieve that preference. Fate, however, had a different plan; one that would cement John Brown's legacy as one of the most controversial figures of the nineteenth century.

His impassioned response from the small engine room was in response to an offer from the young Army Second Lieutenant, J. E. B. Stuart, to cease firing in exchange for Brown's surrender. Brown realized the hopelessness of his predicament - holed up in a tiny building surrounded by both military and militia. Surrendering, however, and abandoning his vision of creating a safe haven for liberated slaves, was simply not an option for the fiery Connecticut-born abolitionist. After all, twenty-five years earlier, he had laid out the framework for his life in no uncertain terms. "I consecrate my life," he had pledged, "to the destruction of slavery."

As the fifty-nine-year-old revolutionary shouted from the little Harper's Ferry, Virginia fire-engine house, the stark resolution of that promise was not far off. And something else would soon be close at hand - the eruption of a soul-wrenching war that would virtually rip the nation in half. Most analysts of the time-period, whether they view John Brown as a crazed terrorist or a bold hero, agree on one thing – the emotion that swirled around his well-publicized hanging, likely lit the fuse of the Civil War earlier than it would have ignited without it.

Although most people vaguely remember seeing illustrations of John Brown's piercing eyes and wild hair and hearing an odd song about his body "moldering in the grave," not everyone is familiar with the reasons behind his infamous attack on Harper's Ferry. Attacking the federal armory at Harper's Ferry was simply the beginning of his wide-ranging scheme. The hundred thousand-plus weapons in the armory were intended to arm what Brown envisioned as a massive uprising of freed slaves. As his master plan would unfold, the ever-growing horde of liberated slaves was to be drawn from plantations along his southern-bound route.

As the mighty assemblage lumbered south, Brown envisioned, it would eventually deplete Virginia of its slave population and cause the institution of slavery to collapse. The same thing would occur, he reasoned, in other states, as the growing cluster marched through the pro-slavery South. By the time his journey had concluded, the very foundations of the immoral practice of slavery which he had battled for so many years, would crumble and fall to ruin. Then Brown and his giant army of abolitionists and freed slaves would head to the mountains of Virginia and Maryland to stake out a new life in a state created specifically for liberated slaves. Grand as his vision was, it did have one slight weakness - it didn't exactly work.

That vision, impractical as it turned out, became the guiding light of his life. His hatred of the institution of slavery was born when Brown was twelve years old. He witnessed the vicious beating of a young slave boy in Michigan. The screams of the young man, suffering at the hands of his cruel master, would haunt Brown for years and spark his ever-increasing fiery abolitionism. Although it would be decades before events would ignite the fury he would express at Harper's Ferry, several times throughout the next few years, he would back up his anti-slavery ideals with action. He assisted over forty escaped slaves along the Underground Railroad as well as giving away free land to black families. In addition, he established an organization called the League of Gileadites, named for Mount Gilead, where Gideon was reportedly led by God to free the Israelites. Brown formed the group to protect escaping slaves from bounty hunters.

These endeavors, however, remained peaceful as he traveled around the northern states. But as John Brown fruitlessly assailed the proponents of slavery, his patience for the peaceful approach was slowly wearing thin. As his fiftieth birthday approached, he had decided that the time for action had arrived. He was, he declared, "commissioned by God" to make his vision of a slave-free nation a reality. And that commissioning, it seemed, included the dictate to bring about his goals in whatever method he deemed necessary. In the summer of 1855, that necessary method would prompt him to follow five of his sons to the embattled territory of "Bleeding Kansas." He was becoming more and more disillusioned with those who continually combated proslavery violence with only fiery speeches and lectures. "These men are all talk," he would complain, "What we need is action - action!"

In selecting Kansas, John Brown had indeed chosen an area swirling with action. The territory had been a tinderbox of both anti and pro-slavery aggression since the Kansas-Nebraska Act had passed the previous year. The legislation declared that the citizens of each state would decide whether they would enter statehood as a pro or anti-slavery state. Although it likely seemed to be a logical move to the congressmen, the law set both sides streaming into the states...especially Kansas, igniting riots. Each group tried to stack the deck in their favor. In the spring of 1856, the proslavery forces swept through several towns, wreaking havoc as they went. The antislavery town of Lawrence, Kansas had especially taken the brunt of their violence.

Brown had decided that only one thing could counter the violence \- more violence. "Without the shedding of blood," he proclaimed, there could be "no remission of sin." The remission of sin and blood shedding would commence on May 24th of 1856. Brown and seven of his followers - including four of his sons \- kidnapped and savagely murdered five reportedly proslavery men who lived along Pottawatomie Creek. As the word spread about this horrific event, John Brown transformed from a minor figure in the background of the abolitionist movement into a despised character who's name was on the lips of every pro-slaver in the country.

Over the next few years, Brown's hatred of slavery would simmer and bubble until it crystallized into the daring plan he would carry out at Harper's Ferry. "There will be no peace in this land," he stated firmly, "until slavery is done for." He began to voice a radical plan of action to other abolitionists. Despite their alignment with the cause, the actual methods he planned to employ often elicited arched eyebrows and a somber shaking of the head. In fact, Frederick Douglas was one of those head shakers.

Brown told them he planned to arm slaves by breaking into the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia and equipping them with the hundreds of thousands of guns inside. He would then establish a stronghold in the southern mountains, where well-armed former slaves and free blacks could safely gather to start new lives. As history has recorded, his grand scheme never transpired. During the raid, blood spilled on both sides with nothing actually accomplished, and Brown was captured and later hung. In fact, most people, even if they shared his feelings about slavery, agreed with President Abraham Lincoln's assessment that John Brown was simply a "misguided fanatic."
"On Heathen Ground"

Presbyterian Missionary, John Dunbar, Travels Light Years

From his Sedate Eastern World to Live with the Pawnee

"Though the day was very cold," John Dunbar recalled, "The shameless being went about through the village the whole of the forenoon as naked as he was born." "In his left hand," he continued, "he held a bow and two arrows; in his right a stick about two foot long." The pitiful member of the Arikaras tribe spent all morning begging at the Pawnee village while he sang at the top of his lungs and beat time on the bow with his stick.

As he entered a Pawnee lodge, Dunbar wrote, the man stood singing until they either gave him something or told him to leave. The inhabitants of the first lodge he called upon had handed him a piece of cloth to cover himself with. "But the brutish wretch, instead of wearing it," Dunbar declared, "carried it about with him 'till he went away." "The Pawnees," he reported, "called him a dog and not a man."

Later in the spring of the same year, 1835, John Dunbar, a refined eastern college graduate, witnessed another distinctly unrefined scene. During a "great festival," he watched as one of the elders laid out the contents of a bundle of sacred objects. Carefully, the old man arranged the items - a buffalo robe, various furs, an ear of corn, rods of arrows taken from their enemies, the stuffed skins of sacred birds and clusters of human scalps. The elder then placed the cranium of a bull in a place of honor. One of the others mixed a red powder with tallow and handed it to the master of the feast. Taking the paint bowl, the feast's host quickly set about painting his face, chest, arms and legs with the mixture. Every member of the group eventually followed suit. In fact, even the skull received its own coat of red paint.

"Five rods were now whittled and painted," Dunbar continued. "To these rods, pieces of scalps were attached..." Four of the five rods were taken outside the lodge and placed on all sides, representing the four points of the compass. The fifth was set directly in front of the bull's skull. Next came the ceremonial smoking of the pipe - first puffing the smoke up and down, then in all four directions and finally onto the sacred objects and the skull.

Four buffalo tongues and hearts were then burned as offerings to their deity, Ter-ah-wah. Following several speeches and prayers, the participants gorged themselves on boiled corn and massive helpings of buffalo meat. Not only did they feast, they set food in front of the bull's skull. "Though it was utterly senseless to place this for the dry bone to eat," Dunbar commented, "it was wiser, perhaps, than to place it before these stupid creatures, who had already eaten too much."

Despite his aversion to their gluttonous ceremony, John Dunbar had developed a fondness for the Pawnees in the lodge with him. His hope of changing their uncivilized behavior with his missionary efforts, however, was fading. He wrote that as he left the lodge, he was "perfectly disgusted" with their senseless ceremonies. "When shall these dark minds be enlightened by the bright beams of gospel light," he pleaded silently to his journal, "and serve God in sincerity and truth?"

Although his mission may not have brought the Pawnees "sincerity and truth," it provided them with a new neighbor and gave young John Dunbar fascinating glimpses of the intimate lives of a culture bound for near extinction. His Presbyterian mission work had taken him to the Grand Pawnee band, near the Platte River. As he surveyed his newfound family, none of whom could speak the first word of English, he wrote in his October 19, 1834 entry, "I was now alone with a strange people, in a strange land."

During the next few days, Dunbar and his hosts traveled south along the Missouri river toward the Grand Pawnee village. By about four in the afternoon, the weary little party arrived at their destination. As Dunbar looked around the village, he later solemnly noted, "I now realized I was standing on heathen ground."

After a good night's rest, Dunbar awoke to encounter the first of many feasts. "Soon after I had risen," he wrote, "the bowl of buffalo meat was set before me, and the other dishes came much sooner than I could have wished." Before noon, he was invited to six other lodges to eat. The inhabitants of the village were excited that a la-chik-oots or white man had joined them, and were intent on making him feel welcome. Dunbar, not wanting to offend anyone, dug into each meal with vigor. By noon, he said, he was "stuffed with their food and kindness."

As Dunbar settled into his new surroundings, he witnessed the first of many remarkable incidents. A man from the village had been severely burned in a recent fire. Early in the morning, two Pawnee medicine men called on him. First, Dunbar noted, they sat down to smoke. Then, one man puffed the smoke upward two or three times, then down for several more. He proceeded to blow puffs toward the east, west, north and south. When he was finished, he gave the pipe to his companion to do the same.

After they examined the injured man's burns, one of the men filled his mouth with water. Dunbar said he "groaned, grunted, beat his breast with his hands," and "crept backward and then forward on his hands and feet..." Then he picked up dust and rubbed it between his hands while he made many "horrible gestures." Finally, he spat the water out violently, then refilled his mouth and began the ritual again. He eventually began to blow small quantities of the water on the patient. At the end of the procedure, he sprinkled a brownish powder on the man's burns. Sadly, as Dunbar reported, their intense efforts did not save their patient.

Throughout his notes, he also commented on the tremendous job duties heaped upon the Pawnee women, who at the end of a trip were expected to unpack the horses, set up the tents and prepare the meal. The only true men's work, according to the Pawnee mandates, was that of hunting buffalo and making war. But Dunbar pointed out that they seldom fought anymore and despite the dangers involved in hunting, it was really considered more of a sport than a job. Speaking for the overburdened women, he stated, "I am inclined to think they perform more hard labor than any other women on this continent..."

Despite his disappointment with some of their ways, he moved his fiancée, Esther, to the Pawnee camp, where they married and settled in for twelve years. As they raised their four children and assisted with planting and building, they were accepted as valuable members of the community. He had also long since realized that despite his acceptance into the Pawnee culture, he would never change their "heathen ways" with his missionary zeal. "When I have told them how the white men lived, they have said it was good," he noted, "but have never manifested any anxiety to change. They simply love their lifestyle," he reported. Then prophetically, he added that they have no intention of abandoning it until "they are compelled to do so, either by force or a prospect of starvation."
Patience, Personality and Perseverance

How Abigail Scott Duniway, the Northwest's Best-known

Suffragist, Helped to Turn the Tide of Women's Rights

"Don't you consider your mother as good, if not better," the speaker inquired, "than an ordinary street bum?" The target of her question was a barefoot boy who had wandered up to join her attentive little audience at a Salem, Oregon rally. When young Oswald West glanced around the group, he didn't see any other street kids. Instead, his listening companions sported long dresses, sun bonnets and serious expressions. They had gathered to hear the speaker during her 1883 tour, advocating that newfangled concept sweeping the nation - women's suffrage.

As Oswald donned a solemn face to match the others, he nodded decisively and replied with a firm, "Sure I do." Nearly thirty years later, Oswald West, by then the governor of Oregon, would again wear that serious expression as he signed his name to a bill allowing women the right to vote in his state. In honor of the lady speaker he had heard as a child, and the decades of spirit and determination she exhibited following that, Oswald had asked her to write the bill. Within seconds, his signature would forever rest beside that of the personable and persuasive speaker from his childhood, Abigail Scott Duniway.

The strong self-sufficiency that would lead her through history alongside Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others, was forged early in Abigail's life. Born in 1834 in a log cabin in rural Illinois, she quickly learned that farm girls were expected to shoulder a good deal of the family chores. As her day-to-day duties crowded into her youthful existence, she was only able to attend school intermittently. In spite of the hard work and her limited prospects, her close-knit pioneer family provided a steadfast anchor in her early life. Sadly, that anchor would break away in 1852, during a brutal 2,400-mile wagon journey to Oregon.

Abigail was seventeen-years-old when she and ten other members of the Scott family set off for Oregon. Her father had designated her as the journalist for the trip. Day after day, she recorded their excitement as the five ox-driven carts bumped along past the novel sights of the trail. Before the weary oxen finally clomped into Oregon over five months later, her journal would also contain tear-stained lines written from the depths of sorrow. Both Abigail's mother and younger brother fell victim to cholera and took their eternal resting places alongside the perilous trail. The elation and misery inscribed in that journal, found its way into an impressive string of twenty-two novels she would ultimately write.

In addition to her literary pursuits, Scott's passions would lead her toward suffrage issues, but also to an intricate mixture of career, marriage and family. In the spring following the disastrous journey, she opened a small school near Salem, Oregon. Later that same year, 1853, she married a handsome young rancher and prospector named Ben Duniway. They settled on his land claim in the hill country of Clackamus County. During the next few years, the couple farmed the land and started their family, which would eventually include five sons and a daughter. Somehow, sandwiched among the many duties of a farmer's wife and a mother, Abigail managed to squeeze in time for her favorite pastime of writing. Drawing on her experiences along the Overland Trail, she wrote pioneer stories that she would read aloud, to the delight of her family and their guests.

Despite enjoying the warmth of family, Abigail began to notice that the woman's role in this new stage of her life, seemed to be just as harried as it had been on her family's farm. In addition to the rigors of back-country life, bad luck descended on their already hardscrabble existence. Just three years after they began farming, a fire destroyed their house. They moved in with Abigail's relatives who had preceded her to Oregon, and continued to work the farm. Once the couple fulfilled their four-year obligation of working their land claim in order to own it, they sold it and moved to a rural area near Lafayette, Oregon. There, they purchased a farm, which Abigail christened Sunny Hillside.

Once again though, misfortune stalked them. In 1861, a flood ruined their harvest. Not only were they left in bad financial straights, but Ben had previously co-signed a loan for a friend who was later financially wiped out by the catastrophic flood. Forced to sell Sunny Hillside to cover their friend's debt, the saddened but resilient family moved to a small house in Lafayette, where Abigail opened a boarding school and Ben took a job as a teamster.

Unfortunately, Fate still had another tragic discouragement to deliver. Ben was crushed beneath the wheels of a heavy wagon pulled by a team of runaway horses. Although he survived, he was injured so severely he was relegated to light-duty jobs. Suddenly, Abigail stepped into the role of the family's primary breadwinner. Despite the misfortune, their marriage and partnership remained strong, and her husband and children would become lifelong supporters of her suffragist efforts.

Her leanings toward her future role in the women's rights movement, would continue as Abigail joined the full-time labor force. They moved to Albany, Oregon, where she taught school and later opened a millinery and notions shop. As her customers tried on hats and searched for thread and material, they filled Abigail's ears with stories of their challenges in the male-dominated frontier world. "The making of new farms in the brush and timber in a pioneer community," she would later write, "is doubly trying for the women folk." The men, her customers informed her, although they worked hard, often toiled together in group efforts like log-rollings, bridge-building and barn-raisings. The women, she noted, "must remain in solitude, a prey to their own thoughts."

Her concern for the customers evolved into action over the next few years and pressed her to form an equal-rights society with a couple of friends in 1870. The following year, she moved the family to Portland where her legacy would begin. Abigail called upon her writing background to start a newspaper that highlighted various women's issues. For the next sixteen years, that publication, The New Northwest, became the first platform she used to launch a legendary career. The paper's motto, "Free Speech, Free Press, Free People," spoke to her zeal for uninhibited discussions about the issues and challenges confronting women in the pioneer country.

Soon her opinions found their way onto a multitude of other platforms across the Northwest. The impetus for this, came from a two-month lecture tour with the nationally known suffragist, Susan B. Anthony. Shortly after Abigail started her newspaper, she signed a contract with the national suffrage movement, to manage a tour for Anthony throughout the Northwest. As Abigail delivered introductory speeches for her at the various stops, she began to realize that, like her more experienced colleague, she was able to capture the attention and imagination of the audiences.

Following the tour, Abigail set out to deliver her own speeches, which would soon transform her into a renowned lecturer. Through the years ahead, she would help obtain the right for women to vote in Washington, Idaho and Oregon. As she doggedly crisscrossed the country, she slowly won over the minds and hearts of sun-bonneted ladies, fair-minded men and barefoot street boys.

The Forming of a Pearl

The Colorful Alabama Farm Lady who

Became the Model for "Minnie Pearl"

Young Sarah Orphelia Colley's eyes and ears recorded Mattie Burden's lively actions like a movie camera. As the colorful Baileyton, Alabama farm lady relayed family stories and local folk tales, she lit up the room. Her bright-eyed enthusiasm and folksy dialect painted vivid pictures in Sarah's mind. Sarah loved listening to her stories. Somehow, the hopeful actress also knew it was essential that she capture the essence of this wonderful lady.

Why...she wasn't exactly sure. She couldn't hope to use her mannerisms as a character for one of her own theatrical personalities. Sarah, after all, was not exactly a country bumpkin. She had graduated from Nashville's prestigious Ward-Belmont College, majoring in stage technique. She was also well versed in great literature and classical music. She had, in fact, become quite the cultured "southern lady." Obviously, nobody would accept her portrayal of a backwoods mountain character.

Sarah had been working as a show director with the Wayne P. Sewell Production Company based out of Atlanta. She would travel around the south to organize plays using the local town-folk. The play would usually be offered as a fund-raiser by a service club like the Lions or Elks. Since she was a young single lady, local families would offer to host Sarah while she directed the play. This particular stay in Baileyton, Alabama in 1936 was destined to mold the rest of her life. Even after she thanked the Burdens for their kindness and went on to direct plays in other towns, the memory of that spirited old farm lady lingered with her. Sarah knew that even though she would have trouble convincing people that she could play a hillbilly type, she had to give it a try.

Through the months, she began to refine her new character. First, she had to create a fictitious hometown. A railroad switching station near her home had the catchy name of Grinder's Switch. That would be perfect. Then she added family members. As Sarah's imagination went into full swing, she created Uncle Nabob, Brother and the rest. Finally, with another wave of her mental wand, she christened her character - Minnie Pearl.

At first, Sarah only let Minnie come out and play a little at a time. She would sometimes slip into her new character for a moment, to promote the play she was directing. Oddly enough, she didn't receive criticism and disbelief, but broad smiles and warm approval. Was it possible that a college-educated city slicker might be able to pull off this salt-of-the-earth country role?

Her first real chance to find out would come when she was producing a show for a local bankers' convention. When a scheduled speaker ran late, Sarah decided to bring out her new friend Minnie to fill in. Once again, the smiles and approval spread through her little audience. In fact, one of the bankers enjoyed Minnie so much, he suggested that Sarah consider auditioning for the local WSM radio show, the Grand Ole Opry.

Sarah was not familiar with the show, but what could it hurt? After all, this new Grinder's Switch lady seemed to be able to fit in anywhere. Like Sarah, the Opry management was a little concerned that the rural listeners might be offended by a cultured college girl playing a "hayseed" character. So rather than bring her out during the main show, they scheduled her for 11:05 p.m., well after the prime-time segment. The Opry audition was held at the War Memorial Auditorium where the show was then performed. Sarah's mother was in the crowd, and when Sarah finished, she anxiously asked her what the audience thought about her act.

"Several people woke up," her mother replied. The following Wednesday, Sarah learned what the listening audience thought about Minnie. George D. Hay, the Opry director, asked her to come over to the station. When she arrived, she was greeted with over 300 enthusiastic fan letters - and an offer to join the Grand Ole Opry on a regular basis. Apparently, several radio listeners "woke up" as well.

For more than fifty years, Sarah shared Minnie with millions of fans. In the mid-forties Rod Brasfield joined the Opry family. He was also from Sarah's hometown of Centerville, Tennessee. During the next decade, they continued to perform separate routines, but also became one of the most beloved comedy duos of all time. Later, Minnie would often team up with Grandpa Jones.

As the years rolled by and the Grand Ole Opry became more and more popular, so did Minnie Pearl. When she bounced on stage sporting her frilly homemade dress, and still wearing the price tag on her flowery hat, the fans knew they were in for a treat. From the first Howdee, she lit up the room for her audience just as that Alabama woman had done for her.

"Well they say a woman is only as old as she looks," she would inform the Opry crowd. "Well boys, I'm still lookin'." As the audience warmed to her homespun stories, she would tell them about her latest trip with Brother and Uncle Nabob, to the city to see a big league ball game. She remembered that they had a lot of trouble finding the stadium.

"When we finally got to the game, I said to Brother, 'What's the score?' Brother said it's the seventh inning and the score is nothing-to-nothing. And I said 'Oh goodie! Then we ain't missed nothin'."

And so it went, for over fifty years. As Hank Williams, Marty Robbins, Ernest Tubb, Patsy Cline and all the other Opry legends took their turns, Minnie Pearl was right there with them, and just so proud to be there.

In fact, along with Roy Acuff, Minnie Pearl would eventually become a beloved symbol of the Grand Ole Opry. Her total acceptance by country fans was demonstrated in 1975 when she was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Those fans didn't realize it, but on that day they actually inducted three people. When Minnie gratefully acknowledged the plaque, she also accepted it for a sophisticated young college graduate and a colorful old Alabama farm lady.
The Perfect Prescription

The Life-saving Preventative Treatment That

Rescued Wyatt Earp and His Future Legend

Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp's condition plummeted from satisfactory to critical within seconds as he dashed through the swinging doors of the Long Branch saloon. In fact, from a medical perspective, the startled deputy sheriff had an extremely dismal prognosis. No, as the Dodge City lawman faced the gleaming pistol barrels of a gang of rowdy trail-hands, his chances of continuing to breathe seemed to lie somewhere between infinitesimal and nonexistent. Fortunately though, there just happened to be a doctor in the house. In fact, the poker-playing doctor at the back table, immediately snapped into action. Granted, he was a dentist and not a medical doctor, but on that 1878 summer day, he devised a perfect prescription.

Fully aware of Wyatt Earp's perilous condition, Doctor John Henry Holliday's diagnosis called for a sure and swift procedure. As he reached for his favorite therapeutic instrument - his trusty pistol, he held it to the head of the gang's leader, Ed Morrison. Holliday's quick-witted procedure instantly brought the result he was hoping for - a reluctant order from Morrison for his men to drop their guns. Once the blood returned to Wyatt's face and his gaping eyes focused, he surveyed his would-be assassins as well as his daring savior and new best friend, Doc Holliday.

The origins of Earp's Long Branch confrontation sprang from the type of hell-raising incident often dramatized in later western movies. Ed Morrison and his band of ruffians had come to Dodge City, Kansas to blow off steam and shoot up the town. After they galloped down Front Street, the gang dismounted and burst into the Long Branch. Once inside, they vandalized the furnishings and harassed the customers. Hearing the commotion, the town's young deputy marshal, Wyatt Earp, stormed through the saloon doors, neither expecting nor prepared for what he encountered on the other side. The near-disaster, though, would serve as a crash course in expectation and preparation for future encounters.

There would be no shortage of rousing encounters as Wyatt Earp's future unfolded. Although history spotlighted the high points, the unvarnished accounts of his contemporaries furnish us with a number of less-than-stellar scenes. A July 1878 entry in the Dodge City paper reported that Wyatt had been fined a dollar for slapping a prostitute named Frankie Bell. The reporter however, sided with Wyatt, noting that Frankie had "heaped epithets upon the unoffending head of Mr. Earp to such an extent as to provide a slap from the ex-officer."

The Peoria Daily National Democrat covered another low point in our hero's career. The paper noted that he had been arrested aboard a floating brothel he owned, named the Beardstown Gunboat. Wyatt and the boat's skipper were fined $43.15 each. In fact, the reporter referred to Earp as the "Peoria Bummer" - a bummer being a term used for contemptible loafers. "Some of the women are said to be good looking," the article continued, "but all appear to be terribly depraved!"

Fortunately for the Peoria Bummer, his mark on history was not left through the court records of his misdeeds. Instead, they were overshadowed by accounts of likely the most famous gunfight in western history - the gunfight at the O. K. Corral. His 1879 move to Tombstone in the Arizona Territory, still a wild young town and home of the O. K. Corral, would come after Wyatt got bored with Dodge City. "Dodge," Wyatt would later write, "was beginning to lose much of the snap which had given it a charm to men of reckless blood."

Wyatt would definitely find a good deal of snap in Tombstone to stir up his reckless blood. He had learned about the potential of the new silver boomtown of Tombstone through his older brother, Virgil, who was working as the town constable of Prescott, Arizona Territory. Within the next couple years, Tombstone would definitely become Earp country. In the summer of 1880, their younger brothers, Morgan and Warren moved there. That fall, Wyatt's friend and Dodge City savior, Doc Holliday, arrived from Prescott with $40,000 of gambling money in his pockets. As Virgil joined his family and friends and pinned on the Tombstone marshal's badge, the stage was set for the infamous confrontation.

The Earp brothers had several run-ins with a loosely organized bunch of outlaws locally known as The Cowboys. Brothers Tom and Frank McLaury and Ike and Billy Clanton made sure the Cowboys reputation was permeated with their ingrown mean streaks. Their stream of nonstop lawbreaking often brought them into conflict with the Earps. Their crimes escalated to the federal level when they stole and re-branded U. S. Army mules. The Earps tracked the animals to the McLaury's ranch. Slowly the backdrop was constructed for the historic gunfight.

The final scene for several of the feud's participants played out on the streets of Tombstone in the early afternoon of October 26, 1881. Marshal Virgil Earp learned that the McLaurys and Clantons had gathered near the O. K. Corral's rear entrance on Fremont Street and had promised to wipe out the Earp brothers. Aware that taking their guns would not be easy, Virgil enlisted the help of his brothers as well as Doc Holliday.

Thousands of pages have been written about the subsequent 30-second battle on the narrow lot between the Harwood House and Fly's Boarding House and Photography Studio. By the time the smoke cleared from the barrage of gunfire, the bodies of Tom and Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton, lie lifeless on the dirt road. Billy's brother, Ike and a fellow outlaw, Billy Clairborne, had fled the scene. Although Virgil, Morgan and Doc Holliday were injured, they would live to fight another day. Wyatt not only escaped uninjured, he would manage to avoid bullets the remainder of his eighty years. Perhaps that was due to the prolonged effects of his "doctor's" perfect prescription.
The Spectacular "Spruce Goose"

The Massive Airboat that Transformed from a

Potential Savior into Howard Hughes' Folly

Lord, how Howard Hughes hated the nickname "the Spruce Goose." After all, it wasn't even made of Spruce. It primarily consisted of Birch. But the press insisted on using it. He knew the term was used in a derisive way, and he knew why. When Hughes had signed the contract for the huge airboat in 1942, World War II was raging. The original agreement, in fact, called for three huge amphibious aircraft that could transport a massive cargo of troops and tanks across the Atlantic. Time, obviously was a vital concern, since the German U-boats and submarines were ravaging Allied shipping. The military hoped a huge airboat could fly troops and tanks over the enemy ships.

Due to war-time restrictions on metal, the project had to be constructed almost entirely of wood. The concept of the massive transport plane was the brainchild of the shipbuilder and iron tycoon, Henry Kaiser. For the actual construction though, he turned to the famous aviator and engineer, Howard Hughes. Unfortunately, the obsessive-compulsive behavior that would eventually destroy Hughes, had already begun to emerge. Every aspect of the project, he decided, must be perfect. Despite the obvious urgency, he took sixteen months to even settle on a design. After reviewing a number of possibilities, Hughes chose the plans for a mammoth aircraft, six times larger than anything that had come before it.

Designed to carry an incredible 700 troops, the wingspan of the giant would stretch 320-feet; longer than a football field. Despite the obvious time concern, Hughes fretted over every detail. Although the specialized birch-wood veneer and state-of-the-art plywood and resin Duramold process was turning out a handsome craft, the passing of years was making its slow-moving birth irrelevant. By the time the airplane finally emerged from Hughes Aircraft Company's factory in the fall of 1947, the war was just a bitter memory.

The frustrated military brass were given a useless wooden behemoth and a bill for 23-million dollars - over 280-million in modern currency. During a U. S. Senate committee meeting investigating his possible misuse of millions of government dollars, Hughes stood his ground. Apparently unconcerned that he had missed the war deadline by two years, he bristled, saying, "I put the sweat of my life into this thing." "If it's a failure," he pledged, "I'll probably leave this country and not come back. And I mean it!"

Not only did the government and the public question the huge expenditure, many felt the monstrosity wouldn't even fly. In response, Hughes took the Goose, actually named the H-4 Hercules, on its one-and-only flight. On the second of November, 1947, Hughes, a co-pilot, several engineers, crewmen and journalists piled on board for the test.

Just as Hughes said it would, the airboat lifted smoothly into the air. After a one-minute flight that reached an altitude of 70-feet, it descended to the surface of California's Long Beach Harbor. As it did, some of the military observers likely wondered how may lives the H-4 Hercules might have saved had it actually appeared during the war.

Following its only performance, Hughes had the H-4 Hercules transported to a climate-controlled hanger, where it was guarded by his security team until his death. Following Hughes' passing, it was displayed first at Long Beach Harbor, then in a permanent home at the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon, There, it stands as a testament to both the genius and failings of its creator.

Both that genius and those failings emerged early in Howard Hughes' childhood. His mother constantly worried about his health, checking him daily for any sign of illness. This would help to ignite a life-long fear of germs that would eventually take over his life. As an overindulged only child of wealthy doting parents, young Howard became more and more concerned about himself, and disinterested in making friends.

Concurrent with this destructive behavior however, he began to exhibit a genius for building things with scraps of metal and wires. At twelve, he created a radio transmitter out of an electric doorbell. Shortly after, he made a self-starting motor for his bicycle. As the divergent threads of his personality wove together, they began to fashion one of the most admired, disliked, esteemed and dishonored icons of the twentieth century.

During his life, newspaper headlines constantly documented the wide-spread ups and downs of his anything-but-ordinary achievements and disappointments. He inherited a large portion of his father's thriving tool business at the age of eighteen. His father had invented a revolutionary drill bit for oil wells, that brought in a constant stream of money. Howard had no interest in running the company, but a great amount of interest in spending a good chunk of the profits. He hired men who knew how to run the business, and walked away from the day-to-day management. After spending time with his uncle, who worked with the movie industry, he married a beautiful socialite, Ella Rice, and headed to Hollywood.

His career in Hollywood, like the rest of his life, would also include highs and lows. Among the lows was the 1926 film, "Swell Hogan," which was apparently so bad it didn't make it into a single theater. Although a later movie, "The Outlaw," projected Jane Russell into stardom, the plot didn't exactly sparkle with brilliance. One writer said the movie, with all of its sexually provocative scenes, was "more to be pitied than censored."

On the high side, though, were the films, "Scarface," "Hell's Angels" and "The Front Page." Hells Angels was one of the most expensive movies of its time. To make the production about World War I Royal Air Force fighter pilots, he obtained eighty-seven vintage Spads, Fokkers and Sopwith Camels. After hiring stunt pilots to film the extravaganza, he personally directed the aerial combat scenes. Sadly, three pilots actually died in crashes during the filming. Hughes himself, obtained a pilot's license and flew some of the scenes. Not as ill-fated as the other three, he nevertheless crashed and was pulled unconscious from the wreckage.

Although his experiences would lead most people to rip up their pilot's license, they infused Hughes with a fascination with flying. In the early 1930's, he turned his attention from Hollywood toward the airfields. In addition, his early mechanical abilities began to kick in with full force. In 1934, he converted a Boeing pursuit plane into a speedster and set a speed record of 185 miles per hour. The next year, he equipped a Northrop plane with a newly built 1000-horsepower engine to claim an air-speed record of 314 mph.

The following year, he turned his attention to longer flights and cut two hours off the previous transcontinental speed record, by flying from Los Angeles to Newark in nine hours and twenty-seven minutes. Stretching his sights even farther, he cut Wiley Post's around-the-world record nearly in half. As he landed at Floyd Bennet Field in New York City, about twenty-five thousand cheering New Yorkers greeted his arrival.

Tragically, as history has recorded, the cheers for his movies and air-speed records would eventually be replaced by the crushing silence of a lonely hotel suite. There, secluded by black-out shades, the world's most famous hermit sat alone in the "germ-free center" of the room. His accomplishments as a movie producer and daring pilot will forever be overshadowed by his bizarre reclusive ending and a gigantic airboat that cost too much and arrived too late - the "Spruce Goose."
When the Air Began to Talk

How "Radio-crazed" Would America Become?

"Only the Shadow Knew"

The nearly unending row of eyes stared unfocused and dreamless at the dust beneath them. Behind those eyes, the victims of the depression shuffled from bread lines to job lines. They waited, along with hundreds of other broken men, for two or three rumored job openings. For millions, the American dream had become a nightmare. Where were the good times President Hoover had predicted? Where was the laughter and the warm glow of family fun they had known only a few short months ago -before the bottom had dropped out of their world?

The good times unfortunately, were still somewhere down the road. But later in the evening, some of that warm glow and laughter would emerge from a polished walnut box in the family living room. When the depression told them life was hopeless, that box would let them know Jack Benny had reverted to his typical stinginess. Rather than driving Rochester to the train station, he had dropped him off to hitchhike. Then he had delivered a brief talk on the "generosity of the American tourist."

"You mean that's all Mr. Benny gave you?" an astonished Mary Livingston asked.

"No," Rochester informed her, "he also gave me a white glove for night operations."

As the images of Rochester and Mary filled the room, soft chuckles and slow smiles gradually replaced the worry lines and dreamless stares. Like all of the other radio characters who would flow into their living rooms over the static-filled airwaves, they were immediately transformed into mental pictures. Just like The Shadow, The Green Hornet and all the others who lined up to fill those living rooms, every character looked a little different to each listener. The mental projectionist could put poor Rochester and his silly white glove out in the middle of nowhere if he wanted. Or he could be a little kinder and let him walk down a well-lit city street. It was up to the listener - after all, the movie screen was in his or her own mind.

The mental movie screen of this new "wireless music box" or "radio telephone" as early radio was sometimes called, would soon take the entertainment scene by storm. While many people were still heading out the door to take in a live vaudeville show or stage drama, other Americans decided to lean back in their easy chairs and turn a magic dial. That dial would reach out and bring the actors right into their living rooms. Radio would have such a strong impact that two Chicago comedians, named Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, could literally "slow down the nation" with their radio microphone.

Beginning in the mid-twenties as Sam and Henry, they had developed a local following with a minstrel show type of act. When they switched radio stations, Gosden and Correll changed their names to Amos and Andy. Soon, they would become so popular it was reported there was an overall decrease in national crime during their show's time slot. Apparently even the crooks couldn't pull themselves away.

Radio was destined to become so powerful that Calvin Coolidge may well have flowed into the White House on its airwaves. Despite his unimpressive physical appearance, his radio voice commanded attention. Some historians felt this may have been the major reason for his being elected. In 1938, the now infamous Halloween "trick" by Mercury Theater on the Air also displayed the enormous power of radio. When the announcer interrupted a program of dance music to bring "a special bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio News," many listeners had not been tuned in previously when it was explained that the evening's program was merely a practical joke.

As the young Orson Welles brought his version of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds to life, he treated the story as if it were a legitimate news report. While he graphically described a Martian invasion of the United States and the resulting destruction of major cities, much of the nation went into shock. Orson, however, was unaware and left the studio for a peaceful night's sleep. The next day, when the unsuspecting Welles was assailed with a battery of reporters who informed him about the shockwaves he had sent throughout the nation, he quickly discovered the potential power of this new entertainment medium.

Years before Amos and Andy and the War of the Worlds broadcast, radio had already begun its impressive journey. That trip began on the second of November 1920 in a little shack on top of a six-story building in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A one-hundred watt transmitter was fired up and ready to broadcast to a few hundred anxious potential listeners. This was to be the very first non-experimental public radio broadcast. The Westinghouse Electric Company had named their pioneer station KDKA. The company's timing was perfect. That evening, they would broadcast the election results from the presidential race between Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox.

The waves of excitement from that little shack's achievement continued to ripple across the nation, even after the transmitter was turned off. Newspapers and magazines let folks know that something pretty impressive had happened in East Pittsburgh that evening. Americans soon set out, by the hundreds of thousands, to get one of those talking thingamajigs for their very own. Seldom had anything caught the nation's fancy with such lightning speed. Within only two years of the KDKA broadcast, the country hosted over five hundred-and-fifty radio stations. About a million-and-a-half listeners were eagerly tuning in their static-filled signals. It was exceedingly clear - this new wireless music box was here to stay.

Very early in radio's development, listeners realized it was the ideal medium for communicating fast-breaking news. The instant airwaves could easily outrun the lumbering newspaper presses. Announcers began to stick news items in and around the entertainment. It wouldn't be long, however, before the news would have its own place in the lineup. Throughout the decades to come, legends like Lowell Thomas, Edward R. Murrow and Eric Sevareid would step behind the microphone and catch the attention of a news-hungry nation.

Radio comedy popped up in 1922 when vaudeville favorite, Ed Wynn, appeared in a play called "The Perfect Fool." Three years later, serialized comedy shows found their way to several stations. In 1925, a show called The Smith Family featured Jim and Marian Jordan. They would later become a staple of the radio world as Fibber McGee and Molly. As with the other radio scenes, everyone would picture different objects tumbling out of Fibber's over-packed closet whenever he inadvertently opened it. But no matter what they envisioned, it was as difficult for listeners to hold back a chuckle the hundredth time as it was the first.

Those mental pictures also appeared with the blaring of police sirens, sub-machine-gun fire and marching convicts, as Gangbusters came on the magic little talking wooden box. In addition, some pretty bizarre characters were waiting to manifest themselves in the shadowy corners of the living room. But that was okay, there were more than enough heroes to deal with them. One of them, The Shadow, even knew what evil lurks in the hearts of men. He also knew how to make the hearts of his radio listeners pound with suspense. As he and the hundreds of other radio characters stepped up to their carbon microphones, they filled the living rooms and imaginations of a radio-crazed America.
The Daring Nellie Bly

The Gutsy Young Lady who Carved out a Notch for

Women Newspaper Reporters in the 1800's

Elizabeth Cochrane was already known across the country as a crack reporter for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World by 1888. Writing under the pen name of Nellie Bly, she typically dreamed up story ideas on Sunday and presented them to her editor the next morning. One weekend during her first year with the paper, however, the ideas simply weren't coming to her.

"I had spent the greater part of the day and half the night vainly trying to fasten on some idea for a newspaper article," she remembered. Finally at three in the morning she became frustrated with her inability to concoct a story concept. "I thought fretfully, I wish I were at the other end of the earth!" Then a notion suddenly penetrated her consciousness. She needed a vacation so...why not take a trip around the world? Her night thoughts immediately jumped to Jules Verne's popular novel, Around the World in Eighty Days. She decided that if she could possibly beat the record of his fictional character, Phileas Fogg, she could likely make quite a name for herself. With a contented smile spreading across her face, she finally drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, when her editor asked her for story ideas, Nellie hesitantly made eye contact as she worked up her nerve and finally blurted out, "I want to go around the world!" As she explained her concept, Nellie said he exhibited "a faint smile in his kind eyes." That smile, however, was not shared by the business manager when he was included in the conversation. Despite agreeing that the basic story concept was interesting, he was dead set against her going. She would need a male "protector" to accompany her, he pointed out - and besides that, her cumbersome baggage would slow down her transfers from one form of transportation to another.

"There's no use talking about it," he flatly informed Nellie, "No one but a man can do this." "Very well," she asserted, "Start the man, and I'll start the same day for some other newspaper and beat him." Her aggressive gamble worked. As the business manger tried to fight back the smile forming on his face, he solemnly shook his head and exclaimed, "I believe you would." Eventually, the three parted with the agreement that if anyone would be commissioned for the trip, it would indeed be Nellie.

Her commission would arrive, but it would be another year in coming. Despite the extended time period, Nellie would receive little advanced notice. One evening in mid-November of 1889, she was summoned to the newspaper's office. Half expecting to be scolded for some journalistic mistake, she was relieved and delighted to hear her editor's question. "Can you start around the world day after tomorrow?" he queried. As Nellie struggled to still her racing heartbeat, she wasted no time in responding. "I can start this minute!"

That tour would commence on the morning of November 14th, 1889 and would navigate Nellie through the pages of history as she circled the globe. Not only would the event serve as an invaluable promotional stunt for the New York World, adding hundreds of thousands of fascinated readers, it would germinate some great stories. From the far reaches of the globe, she would write first-person accounts of people and events most of her readers would never otherwise witness.

In the Bay of Suez, Nellie and the other passengers noticed that they were about to be assaulted by a throng of sailboats. The boats were filled with men hoping to sell fruit, souvenir photographs and local shells to the ship's passengers. She said most of the travelers paid little attention to the native peddlers, but showed interested in several entertainers who had boarded the ship with them. One of them, Nellie noted, came equipped with two lizards and a small rabbit. After he performed a slight-of-hand trick for the crowd, he turned his attention back toward his little menagerie.

Unfortunately, during his trick, some prankster had stolen his rabbit, and one of his lizards had apparently wandered off to some cool secluded spot. "He was much concerned about the loss of them," Nellie wrote, "and refused to perform any more tricks until they were restored to his keeping." Finally, a young man returned the pilfered rabbit from his pocket but Nellie said the lizard was never to be found.

In Singapore, she shared the vision of a lively pageant, announced with a heralding blast of trumpets and the waving of black and white satin flags to clear the parade route. Nellie learned that the colorful spectacle was actually a funeral procession. She reported that the event was lead by "musicians on Malay ponies - blowing fifes, striking cymbals, beating tom-toms, hammering gongs and pounding long pieces of iron with all their might and main." Close behind, several men followed, toting roast pigs on long poles. On their heels, marched men carrying Chinese lanterns and colorful banners.

"There were probably forty pall-bearers," Nellie continued. "The casket, which rested on long poles suspended on the shoulders of the men, was hidden beneath a white-spotted scarlet cloth." She said that the mourners were dressed in white satin from head to toe and "were the happiest looking people at the funeral." She watched with several of the other ship's passengers who had rented a horse-drawn carriage called a gharry, for a tour of Singapore. "We watched until the din died away in the distance," Nellie noted, "when we returned to town as delighted as if we had seen a circus parade."

Nellie left Singapore with more than memories of the funeral parade. She also bought an energetic little monkey from the driver of the carriage. The little fellow added a colorful touch for the devoted New York World readers who religiously followed her escapades. That touch of color, however, was not perceived by the stewardess who helped transfer Nellie's monkey from the ship as she docked in Yokohama, Japan. "I asked how the monkey was," Nellie wrote, "to which she dryly replied, 'We have met.' " Noticing that the arm of the poor stewardess was bandaged from the wrist to the shoulder, Nellie anxiously inquired, "What did you do?" "I did nothing but scream," the stewardess explained, "the monkey did the rest!"

Story after story and country after country, Nellie escorted her readers vicariously across her nearly twenty-five-thousand-mile trek until she arrived on the west coast of America in late January. She knew that readers were following her experiences but had no idea of her intense popularity. On a stop in California, she noticed that a huge crowd had gathered at the railroad station, dressed in their Sunday best. She said that she thought they were having a picnic of some sort and asked what the event was. When Nellie was told they had turned out to see her, she was amazed. As they began to call her name, she walked to the back platform of the train car. "A loud cheer, which almost frighten me to death, greeted my appearance," she remembered, "and the band began to play By Nellie's Blue Eyes."

Billion-dollar Beans

An Eventual Billion Dollars in Silver, Gold and Copper, Begins

in the White Pine Mountains, with a Simmering Bowl of Beans

The alchemists of ancient times would surely have flipped over in their graves. For hundreds of years, they unsuccessfully focused their magic formulas on nearly every material on earth - desperately striving to transform each one into precious metal. And now, in eastern Nevada's White Pine Mountains, some rough-cut prospectors had finally stumbled upon the secret ingredient...a simmering bowl of beans.

The enticing scent of those beans wafted through the icy mountain air in late winter of 1867. Three prospectors, Thomas Murphy, Eddie Merchand and A. J. Leathers ran a small silver mill on White Pine Mountain. While they worked, they left a pot of beans cooking on the cabin stove for their evening meal. As the tantalizing aroma blanketed the surrounding area, it found its way into the nose of a nearby Shoshone Indian named Jim.

Never one to turn his back on a prospective meal, Jim followed the trail of the intriguing fragrance. Once he had tracked down the scent's origin, the lure of the bubbling mixture overcame his rather limited social graces. Since there was no one in the cabin to ask him in for supper, he invited himself. Following his pilfered meal, however, Jim's conscience began to bother him. In order to right his wrong, Jim decided, he should bring the cabin's occupants a present in exchange for the food. His selection of that gift would not only soothe his conscience, it would ignite White Pine fever and eventually generate over a billion dollars in silver, gold and copper.

Several days after Jim's free meal, he showed up at the cabin with the gift - a chunk of nearly pure silver ore he had found. The prospectors quickly forgave the bean-burglar and, trying hard to stifle their excitement, casually inquired where Jim had found the silver. They were in luck. He didn't realize the potential value of his find and said he would be glad to show the site to the miners. The four of them later trekked over the 10,000-foot summit of the mountain to a ledge on the east side of what would later be called Treasure Hill.

As the prospectors dug into the area, they found that their Indian guide's lump of rich silver ore had a lot of company. That site, later dubbed the Lost Treasure Mine, was permeated with nearly pure silver ore. Since napias was the Shoshone name for silver, Jim would inherit the name of "Napias Jim." As for inheriting anything else for his discovery, the miners were said to have given him a whopping "five-dollars and a saddle."

Despite the best efforts of the three prospectors to keep the discovery under their hats, rumors about the mine spread across Nevada like the scent of the bubbling beans had swept over the mountainside. The silver rush was on. During the early months of the White Pine silver stampede, many of the newcomers didn't even bother to build cabins. They simply found or dug holes in the side of the mountain.

Within a few months, however, enterprising builders got into the act. Even most of the rough-cut prospectors would prefer to live in a town rather than a cave, so a town named Treasure City was constructed on the mountainside at ten thousand feet above sea level. Later, three promoters planned a town-site at an altitude about two thousand feet lower. One of the three, W. H. Hamilton, honored himself by christening the new town "Hamilton." In true western fashion, Hamilton's very first structure was the King and McIver's Saloon. Churches and schools later joined the community but their numbers paled in comparison to the hundred-and-one saloons the town eventually sported.

A number of small communities began to spring up around the area but Hamilton was clearly becoming the queen of the White Pine mining towns. At the height of the rush, the Sacramento Union reported that the Pacific Railroad had sold over 10,000 tickets to the White Pine area in a single month. Six lines of daily stagecoaches to Hamilton dumped off more silver-hungry fortune seekers. Less affluent but equally hopeful prospectors trudged in on foot. The swirling cluster of newcomers pumped the new town full of an untamed energy that prompted the Reno Crescent to claim, "It's a faster camp than the Comstock."

Hamilton took shape with the lightning speed of the silver rush itself. Before long, an opera house, a newspaper and a courthouse graced the scene. The luxurious J. B. Withington Hotel was constructed of lumber hauled from Oregon and stones shipped from England. It was deemed the "most expensive structure built in Nevada." Hamilton was settling in for a long and prosperous life. Although excitement ran rampant in the new town, something else didn't - water. It was extremely valuable - so much so that several far-sighted miners abandoned their unproductive properties to file claims on nearby snow banks. Melting the snow and selling buckets of water seemed more of a sure thing than digging for silver. They eventually deserted their "snow mines" when the town built an elaborate water system that conveyed over a million gallons a day from nearby springs.

While Hamilton was in the process of becoming a rather sophisticated little burg, its loftier neighbor, Treasure City, retained its pioneer lifestyle. The "hill-toppers," as they were called, also had a water shortage but it didn't seem to bother them as much. The reason, according to most reports, was that the majority of them only used the water for cooking anyway, since for drinking purposes, "whiskey was cheaper."

The hill-toppers not only liked their whiskey, they loved to gamble. The daily mail delivery from Hamilton up the three-mile climb to Treasure City became quite a sporting event. As the mail stage rolled into Hamilton, two messengers eagerly awaited it; one from each of Treasure City's two rival express companies – Wells Fargo and Pacific Union. Each rider would grab his mailbag from the stage driver and point his horse up the mountain.

Nell Murbarger, one of Treasure City's former residents, vividly remembered the races and the wagering. "As two dark specks rounded the distant shoulder of Treasure Hill," she reflected, "more gold pieces would make their appearance..." When the two riders and their snorting, foaming steeds neared the town's border, the shouts of encouragement, she recalled, would shake the mountain. Upon their arrival, two men would throw blankets over the horses and walk them up and down Main street to cool off. Meanwhile, a cluster of lucky gamblers hoisted the winning messenger over their heads and toted him to the nearest saloon for free drinks.

As colorful as the characters were and as rich as the silver ore was, the wild boom times of White Pine County, Nevada were destined to dissolve into history, and the once-lively towns would decay into ghost towns. Mother nature had played a cruel trick. The silver ore was extremely pure, it was true. And it showed up, along with some gold ore, all across the mountains. The problem was, as one mining company after another discovered, it ran very shallow. The jolting news came from all directions - Treasure City, Hamilton and the other surrounding mining towns - the precious commodity had simply run out. The Island Empire newspaper sadly captured the essence of the death of the once rowdy and thriving area, with its simple headline, "Babylon has fallen!"
Those Grand Ole Walls

The Birth of the Grand Ole Opry

A never-ending spotlight shines on the memory of Patsy Cline as she walked sedately toward the microphone, and suddenly began to cry out the sweet dreams that still echo through the years. And somewhere, frozen in time, the applause still lingers, that roared from the old Ryman Auditorium in 1949 when Hank Williams first stood on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry. Tucked away in history, the roots that slowly grew to produce these golden moments, trace back through a heritage of beaten up guitars and homemade fiddles, to the beginnings of the old radio "barn dances."

Shortly after the birth of radio itself, fiddle-playing farmers and honky tonk heroes leaned over huge carbon microphones and filled the air with their music. While they did, country plowboys and hardworking housewives tuned their magic dials and strained their ears to pick them out of the static. The music that the early country radio shows brought to life over the quivering radio waves was filled with real-world joys and tears. Farmers and mechanics laid down their tools to pick up timeworn fiddles, banjos and guitars. The stories they sang, told of love and death and heartbreak and the pure and simple joys of life.

The WLS Barn Dance, out of Chicago, was announced as a program "planned to remind you folks of the good fun and fellowship of the barn warmings, the husking bees, and the square dances in our farm communities of yesteryear and even today." The leading announcer during the first year of the Bam Dance, was destined to play a vital role in country music history. Starting off the show with an imitation train whistle, he called himself "The Solemn Old Judge." George D. Hay, a former newspaper reporter, went on the radio when the Memphis paper he worked for, started station WMC. Soon, the Chicago station hired him away from Memphis.

Later in 1924, he would win the Radio Digest award as the country's most popular announcer. He didn't direct the Barn Dance at WLS, but was the leading announcer for all of the station's programming. In 1925, he was hired away from Chicago by newly opened station WSM in Nashville, Tennessee. The WSM call letters stood for We Shield Millions, which was the slogan of the station's owners, The National Life and Accident Insurance Company. WSM, was billed as "The Air Castle of the South," and the station was destined to become the heart of country music.

Hay knew, from his experience at WLS, that the new barn dance concept was a potential audience-builder. When he hit Nashville in November of 1925, he began to look around for entertainment that would perk up the brass band music, the story ladies, and the other less-than-exciting entertainment that WSM had been offering its listeners. He found that several mountain-music style groups had played earlier on Nashville radio, and had drawn a good listener response. Remembering the success of the WLS Barn Dance, Hay decided to experiment with what was usually known as hillbilly music, at WSM. On November 28, 1925, he began a new program, with only two performers. Seventy-seven year old Uncle Jimmy Thompson played the fiddle while his niece, Eva Thompson Jones, accompanied him on the piano.

Uncle Jimmy actually was the uncle of one of the station's staff musicians, and was known locally for his repertoire of old-time songs. When the segment started, he was given a comfortable chair in front of an old carbon microphone. Hay then introduced Thompson and his niece, and invited the audience to request old tunes. According to Hay's later memories, the telegrams began to pour in. An hour later, at nine o'clock, Hay asked Jimmy if he hadn't done enough fiddling and might want to rest. Jimmy replied, "Why shucks, a man don't get warmed up in an hour. I just won an eight-day fiddling contest down in Dallas, Texas, and here's my blue ribbon to prove it."

The audience response was so favorable that Hay decided to re-create the barn dance program at his new station. The station's directors were not very happy with this new interest in hillbilly music. In fact, several citizens of Nashville voiced their concern over having such a common type of entertainment originate from their fair city. Nashville had been trying to establish a reputation as the "Athens of the South," and this new show simply did not fit that sophisticated mold. The station's directors, however, realized that most of the people who would buy their company's insurance policies were working people who enjoyed the old-time rural music.

Since business was business, Hay was given the okay to create his barn dance. He continued having Uncle Jimmy and his niece for the next few weeks, and was soon swamped with calls from other local musicians, even though there was no salary involved. Almost anyone who could perform was accepted, and on December 27, about a month after Uncle Jimmy and Eva had appeared, the WSM barn Dance officially premiered. The Nashville Tennessean announced: "Because of this recent revival in the popularity of old familiar tunes, WSM has arranged to have an hour or two every Saturday night..." During the next few months, Hay had assembled about twenty-five regular acts for the new program.

Many of the groups had no name. They were simply farmers and other salt-of-the-earth working folk who had been playing together for fun, and decided to come over to the WSM studio on Saturday night to perform. Hay wanted to keep a down-home country flavor to the barn dance, so he gave the groups names that fit the hillbilly atmosphere. The groups now became official bands, with names like the Clod Hoppers, Gully Jumpers and Fruit Jar Drinkers.

The first of these string bands to play was led by a local physician, surgeon and harmonica player named Dr. Humphrey Bates. Hay named them the Possum Hunters. Dr. Humphrey Bates, incidentally, was not only a well-educated physician, but relaxed to classical music. While he was on the radio or posing for promotional pictures, however, like other city slickers on the show, you could almost smell the corn in the air. In fact, the pictures of the groups often showed them in overalls, standing alongside lazy-looking coonhounds in cornfields and pig pens.

Shortly after the Possum Hunters joined the show, the Crook Brothers became regulars. Not long after that, Kirk and Sam McGee joined up. Sam was known as one of the best finger-style guitar pickers of his time. It was becoming clear, as more and more talent joined the list, that George Hay had created something special, in fact, something "grand." In a couple of years, Hay would make a quip that would forever change the name of the WSM Barn Dance. In 1927, the program was preceded by NBC's Music Appreciation Hour. This high-toned program primarily presented classical renditions. One evening, Hay made the comment that, "For the past hour we have been listening to music taken largely from the grand opera, but from now on we will present The Grand Ole Opry."

The name stuck and the Opry concept became so successful, that one-by-one, station managers across the nation, leaned back in their executive chairs, and began to think about hillbillies in overalls. Eventually country music shows with similar formats popped up across the country, but none would ever top what happened...and still happens, inside those Grand Ole walls.

"Foot Soldiers of Zion"

The Sad But True Story of the Handcarts and Heartaches

of the West's Greatest Emigrant Disaster

"Brethren and sisters, what I have said, I know to be true... " The lone voice of Levi Savage had just warned the hundreds of other Latter Day Saints about the hazards of continuing their journey during the summer and into the late fall. He had graphically described the dangers and suffering that would likely befall them. But as he surveyed his companions in the 1856 meeting, he knew his warning had been eclipsed by their burning religious fervor

The trail-wise Savage shared the enthusiasm of the others in Captain James Willie's party. But he realized that continuing the arduous trek on foot, so late in the season, could lead to disaster as they neared the snow-shrouded mountain regions. After all, it was already the eleventh of August and they had only reached the town of Florence in the territory of Nebraska. Savage knew they should over-winter in the Midwest and depart the next spring.

After issuing his warning and staunchly voting against setting out, he nevertheless allied himself with his friends. "I will go with you," he asserted, "will work with you, will rest with you, will suffer with you, and if necessary I will die with you." Fortunately, Levi Savage's destiny would not include dying along the Mormon trail. Sadly, that would not be the case for many of his companions.

The plan they followed was conceived several years previously in the mind of Mormon leader, Brigham Young. For years after the 1847 founding of Salt Lake City, thousands of converts had trekked across the Mormon Trail. A communal fund had been set aside for emigrant loans to cover their expenses. But in the summer of 1855, a grasshopper infestation wiped out many of Utah's crops. In addition, that year's unusually severe winter took its toll on many weakened farm animals.

Young was suddenly faced with a dilemma. Thousands of newly converted Latter Day Saints, primarily from England, were anxious to join his gathering. Yet there wasn't enough money to set them up with wagons and oxen. In response, Young rekindled an earlier idea. He had sent out a message to his followers in October of 1851, stating an opinion that would eventually become a reality. He said if gold seekers could walk to California with their belongings on their backs or in wheelbarrows, "then Saints seeking a higher god than gold ought to be able to do so as well."

In October of 1855, in another message to the Saints, Young turned the idea into a challenge. "Let them come on foot, with handcarts or wheelbarrows," he proclaimed. "Let them gird up their loins and walk through, and nothing shall hinder or stay them." Unfortunately, as the concept transformed from words on the paper into handcarts on the trail, there would be plenty to hinder or stay them.

Mormon missionaries had recently converted thousands of new Latter Day Saints in England. Despite the difficulties involved in crossing hundreds of miles of wilderness without wagons, they swarmed to the docks in Liverpool to begin their journey to their new Zion. But exceptionally stormy weather delayed the chartering and departure of their ships. By early June, when they should have been in Missouri setting out across the plains, two of their four ships were still thousands of miles away.

Their luck didn't improve when they reached America. According to plan, they boarded the Rock Island Line railroad in New York City and took the train to its termination point at Iowa City. When they arrived, however, they found that hundreds of handcarts were yet to be built. Labor in Iowa City had been scarce and seasoned lumber was hard to find. They remained there for weeks as some of their own craftsmen helped build the carts.

During their delay, the curious emigrants inspected the handcarts they were expected to transport across the wilderness. Some were basically boxes on wheels, while other larger family carts sported hooped tops like covered wagons. Side rails extended in the front and were connected with a crossbar. The back rim of the cart was smooth so those behind could help push. They were originally intended to rest on iron axles and wheels. But due to sparse materials and time-pressures, many of the axles and wheels were crafted from unseasoned wood.

At last, some of the anxious pilgrims were ready to begin their journey. They divided into smaller companies; each led by a returning missionary who was familiar with the trek. The first two groups, headed by Edmund Ellsworth and Daniel McArthur, pulled out during the second week of June. Despite the lateness of their start and the obvious rigors that awaited them, their spirits were high. In the evenings they sang and danced to the Birmingham Band, whose members had joined the emigration.

Their singing and dancing, however, would not continue. As they tugged their carts across the arid prairie, the unseasoned wood began to warp. The sand slowly ground down the unprotected wooden wheels and axles, leaving them wobbly and difficult to push. Like the oxen they had replaced, the emigrants numbly lowered their heads and pushed or pulled their burdens. Along the way, they sometimes had to stop to bury one of their members who died along the way from disease.

Despite fatigue, short rations, the searing sun and rickety handcarts, the Ellsworth Company trudged into Salt Lake City on September 26th. The city's entire population swarmed to welcome those they dubbed the "foot soldiers of Zion." They sang and broke open melons to cool the traveler's parched lips. Before the celebration had completely faded, the McArthur company plodded in and the festivities were revived.

As Brother Brigham Young personally met them and Captain Pitt's Brass Band filled the air, many likely proclaimed the handcart concept a roaring success. When the third company, under Edward Bunker arrived a week later, the Saints again broke open the melons and fired up the brass band. Bunker's assistant, David Grant, had predicted that, "the Saints would be crossing with handcarts for years to come."

Sadly, not only would the Saints not be using handcarts "for years to come," but the very word handcart would forever be enshrouded in dark sorrow. Captain Willie's company of 500 Saints finally left Iowa City on July fifteenth. The 576-strong Martin Company crept out on July twenty-sixth. Behind them trailed two smaller wagon trains under W. B. Hodgett and John Hunt. As late fall arrived, they became hopelessly trapped in swirling blizzards. The frigid weather, teamed with total exhaustion, began to take the life of one poor soul after another. "Life went out," a member of Willie's group later noted, "as smoothly as a lamp ceases to burn when the oil is gone."

As search parties, sent out by Brigham Young, brought in the pitiful survivors in middle and late November, heartfelt tears and medical supplies replaced the melons and brass bands. Over two hundred Saints would never see the new Zion. While the years progressed, the abandoned handcarts strewn along the trail slowly disintegrated. Their splintered skeletons bore testimony to future pioneers that potential tragedy lurked along the way. History books have recorded the sad facts and statistics of the ill-fated excursion. None of them, however, could fully portray the unthinkable sacrifices and the raw courage of the 1856 "foot soldiers of Zion."
A Bullet-free Smoke Break

When Sitting Bull Enjoyed a Peaceful Smoke Break

in the Midst of a Constant Barrage of Rifle Bullets

The smoky wisp that leisurely ascended the vivid blue sky, matched the calm demeanor of the pipe smoker beneath it. As the swirl dissipated above Sitting Bull's head, a much less tranquil scene swirled around him. U. S. Army bullets kicked up flurries of dust as they pelted the surrounding ground. The stoic Lakota Sioux warrior, however, was determined not to let the intruding projectiles disrupt his smoking pleasure. Not only did he puff the war pipe to the bottom of the bowl, but as the rifle bullets continued to fly, he carefully cleaned it and returned it to its case before strolling away.

This incident, although it didn't reek of mental stability, made an indelible impression on both Sitting Bull's friends and enemies. If there had ever been any questions about his unflinching bravery, they were laid to rest on that hot 1877 August day. His fellow Sioux warriors were battling soldiers who protected railroad workers along the Yellowstone River. During the fight, Sitting Bull and four others purposefully placed themselves within range of the soldiers' rifles and, as if picnicking in a peaceful valley, staged their smoky display of bravery.

Although his pipe-sharing friends were likely not quite as relaxed as Sitting Bull, they knew he was known for having great medicine and magical powers. Whether or not that medicine and those powers were responsible for his bullet-free smoke break, his tribesmen - especially his fellow smokers, were likely transformed into true believers. Before exiting the Western stage, he would build an enduring legend wrought from a mixture of warm reverence and blood-chilling dread. The mention of the name Sitting Bull conjured images of years of raging war parties, culminating in a colossal victory along the Little Bighorn River, which the Sioux called the Battle of the Greasy Grass. It would also elicit the curious vision of a proud chief circling the Wild West show arenas to a chorus of jeers and hisses, given by secretly respectful admirers.

Many years before he would circle those arenas, the young Lakota Sioux boy circled the fields of his prairie homeland in present-day Montana. Born with the Lakota name for Jumping Badger, he soon gained a nickname that didn't exactly foretell his eventual legendary status. That name, Hunkesi, was Lakota for "Slow." Actually not meant to be demeaning, it was given to him to describe his careful and unhurried nature. It wouldn't be long, though, before he was considered anything but slow.

By the age of ten, Sitting Bull killed his first buffalo. Foreshadowing his later reputation as a generous and benevolent chief, he gave the meat to needy elders in the tribe. He joined his first war party at 14 and counted coup on an enemy Crow warrior by stealthily touching him with a coup stick his father had given him. This was considered to be a sign of extraordinary bravery. Following the battle, his father, Sitting Bull, held a ceremony in which he proudly transferred his name to his son, taking the name Jumping Bull for himself. The name Sitting Bull, incidentally, did not signify a resting animal, but a bull stubbornly planted on its haunches to resist outside forces. That name would symbolize the rest of his life.

Since his tribe, the Hunkpapa division of the Teton Sioux, hunted north of the emigration trails, white settlers were not yet part of his early life. Steadily, he rose through the tribal ranks, gaining entry into prestigious clubs like the Kit Fox Warrior and Midnight Strong Heart societies. The structured comfort of his lifestyle, however, would eventually shatter around him.

The first cracks that led to that shattering, appeared in the summer of 1863. Suddenly, a new enemy came on the scene. Unlike the rival tribes Sitting Bull was familiar with, the white government soldiers seemed to feel "an Indian is an Indian." The army retaliated for a series of massacres known as the Santee Rebellion, which had been carried out by several bands of eastern Dakota tribes. Even though Sitting Bull's people had not been involved, they were included in the Army's vicious revenge attacks.

As Sitting Bull skirmished with the soldiers that summer, he would help write an early chapter in the chronicles of an inevitable clash of cultures. The Lakota saw the prairie and mountains as their historic homeland, while encroaching settlers and prospectors viewed them as potential towns and goldmines. Due to a series of failed agreements, their raging battles would only grow in frequency and ferocity.

At the forefront of many of those battles rode Sitting Bull, firmly rooted in his past and not the least bit interested in altering it. As the pressures of constant battle, thinning buffalo herds and diminishing Indian territory pushed one chief after another toward surrender, his steadfast resistance became legendary. So did his prophetic visions. Prior to the stunning victory by his massive gathering of followers at the Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull had a vision of U. S. soldiers falling from their horses, like dead grasshoppers.

Years later, following a bitter surrender, initiated only to save his endangered followers, he had another seemingly prophetic vision. A meadowlark on a nearby hillock suddenly turned and talked to him. "Your own people, Lakotas," the dream-bird warned him, "will kill you." About five years later, in the early morning of December 15th, 1890, over forty Lakota agency policemen were sent to arrest him for his support of the controversial Ghost Dance movement. During a scuffle outside Sitting Bull's house, one of them shot and killed him.

Despite his inability to prevent the near-extinction of his beloved lifestyle, Sitting Bull never stopped trying. The words he had uttered at his surrender summarized his lifetime resolve. With the same tenacious spirit he had exhibited years before during his "bullet-free smoke break," he solemnly reminded the witnesses, "I was the last man of my tribe to surrender my rifle."
A Ridiculous Republic

The Odd and Unsuccessful Scheme to Claim a

Large Part of Mexican Texas as the "Republic of Fredonia"

The little red and white flag fluttering in front of the Old Stone Fort in Nacogdoches, proclaimed to everyone around that Mexico no longer owned all of Texas. No, as of mid-December, 1826, a sizable chunk of the Mexican possession was now under the control of Haden Edward, his brother, Ben, and twenty-some rag-tag rebels. To emphasize their command of the old fort, as well as a massive portion of the surrounding land, several of them had signed their names on the flag. As the handmade banner waved across the vivid blue sky, the little band of revolutionaries proudly reviewed the bold lettering printed above their signatures, reading "Independence, Freedom and Justice."

This flag, they concluded, should clearly inform the locals that they were now under the rule of a new government, which Benjamin Edwards had named the Republic of Fredonia. With their small number, they wouldn't be able to launch their new kingdom by themselves, but they figured that shouldn't present a problem. After all, it wouldn't be long before hundreds of Cherokee Indians would join their cause. In fact, that's why their flag bore a horizontal red bar beneath a white one - to symbolize the inclusion of the red man in their new homeland. In addition, they were sure the surrounding colonies, one of them run by Stephen Austin, were busy selecting large contingencies to come to Fredonia's aid.

Yes, as long as everything went according to their grand strategy, the small band of rebels should soon transform into a massive army, able to declare and defend the independence of their new republic. As it turned out, though, theirs was not necessarily the best-designed scheme in frontier history. It might easily, however, have been the worst. The defective parts of their strategy were readily summarized - everything!

One of the residents of the Nacogdoches area deftly identified the plan's shortcomings. "There never was," he proclaimed, "a more silly, wild, quixotic scheme." Stephen Austin seemed to fully concur with that assessment. His response to Hayden Edwards' invitation to join forces, was unequivocal. "You are deluding yourself," Austin scolded him in a return letter "and this delusion will ruin you."

That quixotic plot had grown from the same sustenance that has nourished hair-brained schemes for centuries - the fertile and ever-present soil of greed. Hayden and his brother had inherited their father's love of money as well as his passion for land speculation. John Edwards had acquired more than 23,000 acres in Bourbon County, Kentucky. Not only was he adept at land dealings, but being a smooth-talking political animal, he ran for and won a position as a U. S. Senator. John's fatherly pride likely beamed when his sons, Hayden and Benjamin, showed their own flair for wheeling and dealing, and pooled their resources to acquire a Mississippi plantation.

Their investment proved successful, and the thriving brothers soon turned their attention southward. Word had reached them of the exciting prospect of colonizing the area known as Mexican Texas. In an attempt to control the sparsely populated land, Mexico had passed the General Colonization Law in 1824, which encouraged legal immigration from the United States. Interested speculators were given large plots of land, as long as they pledged their allegiance to Mexico and developed a militia to defend the settlers they recruited. The Edwards brothers obtained a grant in 1825, to organize a colony in northeastern Texas for up to 800 families. That seemingly innocuous agreement would soon trigger the bizarre formation of the Republic of Fredonia.

The brothers had already recruited fifty settlers for their real-estate venture by the fall of that year and were anxious to complete their 800-family quota. The spirit of the Mexican agreement was to provide the land free-of-charge to the settlers. This arrangement, however, was not exactly what the greedy brothers had in mind, so naturally they decided to charge a hefty finders fee of several hundred dollars for each parcel. When they arrived at their potential real-estate goldmine, the brothers were dismayed to find that many people had already homesteaded there. Some were squatters from the United States, but many were locals with valid family land grants dating back to early Spanish rule.

It didn't take long for Haden and Ben to decide what to do with them. Any settler who couldn't produce a legitimate deed for his property, would simply be thrown off. The squatters, of course, had no deeds. Most of the long-term residents possessed no documentation, since the agreements with the Spanish had been forged long before. Their excuses though, had no effect on the Edwards brothers. If proper documents could not be produced, they stated flatly, their claims would be sold at auction to the highest bidders. Needless to say, this attitude didn't ingratiate the new landlords to the community.

Those whose land had been confiscated, complained to the local officials. Those authorities had already received a flurry of concerns from angry residents in Haden and Ben Edwards' new colony. In response, they began validating and updating the residents' old Spanish and Mexican land grants. The infuriated Edwards brothers accused them of forging deeds, further stirring up the locals. Adding to the turmoil, Haden organized his little colony's militia, then found out they had elected their municipality clerk as their leader. Incensed, he angrily tried to nullify the results and place himself in charge.

In mid-December of 1826, Benjamin and his little armed band headed into Nacogdoches to make history. Although they would do just that, historians would not record the incident with glorified prose describing them as the pioneers of their new republic. Instead, history would echo the sentiments of the Edward brothers' earlier critics, branding the incident as "ill-thought out," "muddle-headed" and "hair-brained."

The days and weeks following the dramatic occupation of the Old Stone Fort, would deliver them nothing but bad news. None of the surrounding colonies they had counted on for reinforcements, offered a single man. The same held true for the Cherokees who had previously promised assistance. Haden had offered them clear title to all the land north of Nacogdoches, in exchange for their armed support for his plan. Despite their initial interest, the word of the risky nature of the scheme reached them through the surrounding colonists. Fearing Mexican retribution, the Cherokee withdrew their backing. In the meantime, Hayden had returned - bearing no new recruits for their little war.

Eventually, they would come to the stark realization that something was definitely amiss in their revolution's strategy. That awareness quickly intensified as the Mexican authorities sent more than a hundred well-armed troops to quell their rebellion. To make matters worse, Stephen Austin, whom Hayden and Benjamin had counted on for support, decided to assure the Mexican government of his continued loyalty. He backed up their soldiers with 250 of his own militiamen.

Without formality, the Republic of Fredonia's founding fathers abandoned both the fort and their dreams of easy money. As they unceremoniously hightailed it across the Sabine River to the safety of the United States, some were captured, but later released. Most, however, including the Edwards brothers, made it to safety. By the end of 1826, the Old Stone Fort was left with only a tobacco-juice stained floor, a tattered red and white flag and an odd history of a ridiculous republic.

A Convenient Concealment

Cock-eyed Charlie's Disguise That Led to

One of the Biggest Shocks of the Old West

Charlie's yellowed teeth nearly flattened the tobacco wad as the lead horse lurched away from the wild hog. The equally startled intruder trotted off the stagecoach trail, leaving the driver to deal with the frantic horse. With one hand, Charlie diverted the horse's attention by cracking the tip of the whip inches from the animal's head. The other hand instinctively tightened the reins on each horse of the matched set of six grays. Like a concert pianist, Charlie's highly trained fingers responded without conscious thought. The similarity between the two professions, however, ended there. As a rule, concert pianists don't sport a filthy buffalo-skin coat and greasy eye patch or have tobacco-stained teeth and smell as ripe as the coach's sweat-soaked horses.

Those questionable attributes, though, didn't phase the slightly bruised inhabitants of the imperiled Concord stage. Once the blood returned to their faces and their hearts slowly dislodged from their throats, they realized their driver had managed to keep the stagecoach safely perched on the steep mountain trail. As they tentatively glanced down the rocky mountainside, several likely made silent promises to attend church that Sunday - and maybe even drop a gold nugget in the offering plate.

Despite the amazement of those passengers at their driver's skill, many years later, news stories about that driver's death would trigger an even more astounding revelation. The shock waves from those reports pulsated through California like tremors from their San Andreas Fault. As wide-eyed readers stared at the day's headlines, they discovered their old friend, Cock-eyed Charlie, had not been particularly forthcoming with them.

Oh, Charlie was the real deal when it came to controlling a six-horse stage through the treacherous mountain passes. And there was no debating the fact that some locals wouldn't even hire a stage unless they were promised Charlie would be their driver. But there was one aspect of old Charlie that wasn't exactly on the up and up. Their beloved tobacco-chewing, hard-drinking, heavy-cussing stage driver had disguised one little fact during a legendary thirty-year career. Charlie was not Charlie, but Charlotte. Yes, it turned out that he was not a he.

Years before, a disguise would trigger Charlotte's life-long deception. Born in New Hampshire, she was orphaned shortly after birth and later shuttled among foster families and a Massachusetts orphanage. Anxious to experience the outside world, at the age of twelve Charlotte disguised herself in boy's clothing and ran away from the orphanage. Stopping at a livery stable in Worchester, Massachusetts, she was befriended by the owner, Ebenezer Balch. He was impressed with the youngster's enthusiasm and hired the runaway to wash carriages and clean stalls.

Charlotte's disguise had worked well and Balch seemed to have a fatherly feeling for the young boy. She found no reason to tell him differently, and decided to use the name Charlie. As Balch taught the art of driving carriages and coaches to his protégé, a whole new world opened for the excited youngster. Balch beamed with pride as his student mastered the art of driving two, four and later six-horse teams. In fact, Balch proudly promised to take the youngster under his wing and "make a man out of him."

That goal, of course, was never achieved but his apprentice became a well respected New England stagecoach driver. As Charlotte developed, she wore shirts with pleats to hide her figure. A raspy quality to her slightly high-pitched voice also helped conceal her secret. Once, though, on a frigid January night, her disguise was unexpectedly jeopardized. Her small hands became so stiff she had to turn over the reins to a male driver. Fortunately she escaped detection, but started wearing gloves throughout the year. Although some historians feel that a few of her close friends likely knew she was female, she successfully deceived the rest of the country for decades.

After working several years in the New England area, Charlotte moved to Georgia for a while. Following that, she relocated to Rhode Island where she drove for stage-owners, Jim Birch and Frank Stevens. The year was 1848 and Birch and Stevens were anxious to head to California to reap the benefits of the gold rush that would sweep the nation the following year. They sought their fortunes, not with gold pans but with a stagecoach line. Before long, the young entrepreneurs consolidated several small outfits into the thriving California Stage Company.

Charlotte followed Birch and Stevens to California, where she set about earning a reputation as one of the toughest but safest drivers in the Golden State. "I aim to be the best damn driver in California," she once proclaimed. Soon after arriving, an accident would earn her the less-than-charming nickname of Cock-eyed Charlie. While she was in Redwood City shoeing her lead horse, Pete, the spirited animal spooked and kicked her in the eye. Despite the tragic injury, Charlie spent the next couple decades working for several stage companies, fulfilling her promise to be the best damn driver in California.

Cock-eyed Charlie was said to have been able to run over a half dollar laying in the middle of the trail, with both the front and rear stage wheels. In addition, Charlie could cut the cigar in a man's mouth at fifteen paces with a well-aimed whip. The news of these accomplishments, however, just couldn't compete with the reports of Charlotte's gender deception.

According to contemporary news reports, at least one of her deceived companions "waxed profane to the extreme" when informed. The Santa Cruz Sentinel, though, reported that Cock-eyed Charlie's long-time friend, Hank Monk, summarized his astonishment in a more socially acceptable manner. "He was so overcome for several minutes that he gasped for breath," the paper noted. Finally after regaining his composure, he caught his breath and solemnly proclaimed, "Jehosaphat!"
A Second-choice Selection

Assembling a Set of Legendary Frontier Expeditions

With the Back-up Choice of Kit Carson

Kits are not always perfect. Sometimes you have to do quite a bit of twisting and hammering to make one fit together. Even then, the end result will not be successful unless all the pieces are close to what you need, from the start. If you are going to create a celebrated frontier adventure, for instance, you're obviously not going to begin with a soft-spoken long-haired young man barely five foot tall. And you definitely wouldn't want to use one who was described by a contemporary as having a face "as fair and smooth as a woman's, with high cheekbones," and a "mouth with a firm, but somewhat sad expression."

No, you would want to start with a larger-than-life character possessing a colorful persona, who could boldly stride into the history books. In fact, that is exactly what John D. Fremont had in mind when he traveled to St. Louis in 1842 to hire the well-known guide, Andrew S. Drips, to lead an expedition into the Wind River area. Fremont knew his guide would need to be strong, rugged and courageous. But chief among the things he needed to be was there. And, unfortunately, Andrew Drips was simply not there...and nobody seemed to know how to locate him.

Settling for a replacement, Fremont turned to a young man he met by chance on a steamboat leaving St. Louis - Christopher "Kit" Carson. Although Kit definitely didn't fit the typical frontiersman mold, Fremont saw something in his "fair and smooth" face that convinced him Carson could do the job. During the years to follow, millions of Americans would also become convinced, as Carson explored the untamed wonders of the West. From the soul-chilling blizzards of the Rocky Mountains to the burning sands of the Mojave Desert and the ravaging waters of the Columbia River, Kit Carson let everyone know he was anything but just another pretty face.

Before he satisfied his restless spirit and retired from the wilderness, Carson's name would spring from the lips of nearly every schoolchild. His exploits, both the real ones and the far-fetched dime-novel versions, would incite dinner-table chatter among Western frontier families and Eastern city-slickers alike. Kit Carson, as it turned out, wasn't just a substitute piece, he was the perfect fit.

Carson's early childhood, like his unassuming personality and stature, wasn't exceptional. Beginning life in a small Kentucky cabin on Christmas Eve of 1809, Kit passed pleasant days hunting with his father and older brothers as he quietly learned the ways of a frontiersman. Sadly, that serene existence shattered when he was only nine. His father was killed by a falling tree limb as he cleared a field. Suddenly, young Kit found himself sharing the role with his brothers, of provider and protector for the family. "I was a young boy in the school house," Carson would relate in his memoirs, "when the cry came, 'Indians!' I jumped to my rifle and threw down my spelling book...and thar it lies."

In spite of a lack of formal instruction, Carson continued his education, eventually becoming fluent in Latin, French and a host of Indian dialects. He never learned to read or write, but loved to have his friends read to him from biographies and books of poetry. In addition to his self-schooling, he pursued a life of moderation, drinking little and avoiding curse words. When Carson was listening to a friend read the biography of William the Conqueror, he found that William's favorite oath was by the Splendor of God. The saying soon became his personal favorite. "That was the closest thing to profanity," one biographer noted, "anyone ever heard Kit utter."

Despite his smooth face and equally smooth demeanor, young Kit was eager to experience the rough-edged life of the frontier. Apprenticed to a saddle-maker in Franklin, Missouri at the age of fourteen, he soon found that the safe and comfortable life paled in comparison to the call of the wild. When Carson was growing up in the 1820's, Franklin, Missouri served as a jumping off spot for mountain men headed west. As young Kit worked away at their leather saddles, their vivid stories worked away at his imagination. Within a couple years, he ran away from his apprenticeship to create escapades for his own stories.

Those accounts wouldn't be long in coming as Carson found work with various trapping expeditions. Ranking high among his adventures, was an 1834 encounter with two grizzly bears. He had been hunting elk when the grizzlies crossed his path and chased him up a tree. Not content to give up and lumber away from their intended prey, one of the bears began to shake the tree with the hopes of dislodging the frightened Kit. "The bear finally concluded to leave," Carson would later dictate to a biographer, "of which I was heartily pleased, never having been so scared in my life."

Fear, however, was only a fleeting companion for Kit Carson. As soon as he joined with Fremont, he began making history. Safely guiding his 1842 excursion from Missouri to the South Pass, Carson impressed his boss so much that Fremont hired him for two more treks. The second one continued west from the South Pass through the Great Salt Lake and Sierra Nevada range to the Columbia River, mapping out the wilderness that would later become the Oregon Trail. On their third and final expedition, in 1845, they explored the expanses of the present-day states of California and Oregon. Fremont's reports of the excursions, provided glowing accounts of his young guide's courage and abilities.

While his countrymen excitedly read about Carson's real-life adventures, they were also treated to exaggerated versions of his bravery and abilities, in the popular dime novels of the day. Using fanciful prose, the writers transformed the mild-mannered five-footer into a robust mountain man fighting off wolves with one hand and vengeful savages with the other. Despite the literary exaggeration, it did indeed seem that Fremont's second-choice selection had created the ideal wild-western Kit.

