Those Deadly Newspapers

Part 5 of 31

They Found Another Body

There’s always degrees of happiness and sadness in comparing your own life to that of someone else. It's not usually a good idea if you can help it. And usually we can't.

It used to be that neighborhoods had a lot of consistency, stability. The same neighbors there for decades; they just evolved in place from spores. Of course the kids always moved eventually, even if it was just to the attic. This is probably still true in little places where there's no market for houses and no one remembers why anyone ever moved there. In the Big City, though, people are coming and going at all hours, a different pickup truck every morning. Where the previous residents go, it's not always good to know.

The guy in the illustration is reading the newspaper just like I read it. Except I shake it a couple times to straighten it out before saying, "Hmm, another tragedy. They Just Found Another Body Somewhere." Lying in the woods, crushed by a train, hanging in a dump site, or tied in the ditch. But nothing is as common as finding someone in the river. It's weird how I did a lot of fishing in years gone by and never saw one body. I remember going fishing with my dad and there was zero trauma. Now you show up and the first thing you see, There's somebody! Even the fish are huddled on the beach waiting for the cops.

It spurs some thoughtfulness for the guy when another guy bites the dust from mistreatment by his shrew of a wife, henpecking him to such a horrible degree that in the end, that's the end. Then dot dot dot. A different day, it might've been different. They might've found him by the chimney flue of the outhouse at the state park, a terrible place to find someone when he's got to go. He should’ve taken her to court and divorced her when he had the chance, and I'm no fan of divorce. But it’s better than messing with state property, ruining our outhouses.

“Imagine that…” Indeed, imagine that. We can hear his tone of voice. We also see the signs of reflection on the henpecking wife's part, ‘Am I really that bad?” Yes, Missy, you shouldn’t have done it. Greg was working as hard as he could to provide this love nest for you, and this was the thanks he got... Normal talking and conversation along with being constructively critical, to a certain extent, as long as you have affirming solutions, is one thing. But if it's nothing more than nag, nag, nag, dragging him down, pointless criticism, never grateful, carping, sniping, never happy, always riding him, detracting, cutting, nitpicking, bristling, the voice of constant ire, nasty asides, throwing things, muttering under your breath, and of course complaining, that's what everyone hates, and one other thing we hate, having a brother having to live through it...

OK, the marriage was never that great. And now, after her unfortunate demise, the guest room's open for renters. You can read about it in the paper. But remember, the newspaper you read could be the newspaper that sinks you. And imagine the headline the next day. Avoid the news, you're always happier living in ignorance.

Leaving My Blog Post at the Manger

I've always been impressed by the Christmas story, for many aspects of it. One of the greatest is the idea that each person who comes to behold the Child brings a gift, the best he or she has.

For the Wise Men, we know their best was gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Impressive. For the shepherds, they brought a couple of sheep. And for the Little Drummer Boy -- I like his most -- he had no other worldly goods except his drum, so he played for Him.

We've all heard the message, "What can I set before the King?" It varies from one person to another, of course. Maybe a watch or some other valuable thing. Maybe an animal other than a sheep, like if  you raise birds or cattle, whatever. Or something you can do and do well. For me, that has to be these blog posts. I'll be the first to confess, my talents in life are sorely lacking. I don't play the drums or piano. I don't raise animals. And I don't have any gold. But I do write blog posts. I guess pretty well. I don't get many complaints.

So this year, my gift at the manger is a continuation of my last blog post, starting where I left off, some of my old memories of the newspaper delivery boys we had in olden days.

In those days, when I was growing up, there were boys in town who delivered the newspaper every morning, and also evenings. (I don't remember any girls.) One paper came out in the morning, and there were two in the evening, except Sundays when it was just the morning paper. That's a lot of papers, but we read each one.

The good thing for those boys, obviously, would be, That's a lot of work! Giving them the opportunity to have spending money and also money to save. It also taught them, no doubt, important lessons on responsibility. I myself never had a paper route as a kid. Whatever responsibility I learned was more through trial and error, and, frankly, I'm still learning!

Paper delivery in those days had an additional important aspect to it, collecting. The boy had to collect the subscription fees by himself. We didn't mail it in. That could be challenging, even though my parents were prompt in paying. Others, regrettably, would be short of money, and so they'd "not be home" or just blatantly putting him off. I can see a lot of frustration in that arrangement.

Now everything's changed. We have a guy in a truck who tosses the paper out the window, then roars off. He doesn't have to collect. We never even see him, unless we just happen to be up and looking out the window and he's there. In his truck roaring off. Instead of paying him directly, we mail our subscription in on an annual basis. That's a lot of money to come up with all at once, close to $200, but we want the news, so we cut back on food (or whatever) and get it accomplished.

A lot has changed over the years. Certainly newspaper delivery isn't what it used to be!

That's a pretty good gift to leave at the manger, I'm sure you'll agree. It'll give them something to read while they're just sitting there.

Seriously, Stars Should Be Big News

It surprises me that the stars aren't bigger news than they are. It's been a long time since I saw a decent article in the paper about the stars, that they're there and anything else about them.

When I take my dog out for her business, sometimes it's after dark or dark in the early morning hours. Each time, if the sky is clear, I look up at the stars and feel kind of amazed that they're there and about some of the things I know about them. Then, amazingly, I don't see much news about them!

The little bit of study I've done on the stars was a year or so ago. Since then, I've forgotten a lot of what I learned. But there for a while I knew the names of maybe 15 different ones. Still, anyone can look up at them and enjoy them, which I do.

The grouping that has Orion's Belt is the one that always catches my eye, in the times of the year that I can see it. It has Betelgeuse in it. This is an interesting star, in that it's expected sometime to blow up. Seriously. An interesting thing about it is that when it does blow up, it will have blown up something like 600 years ago. Meaning, by the time we see it blow up, if it does in our lifetimes, that will mean it blew up like 600 years before. Because even though the speed of light is totally fast, it still takes quite a while to get here if the source of light is extra distant! To me that's big news!

I don't have a good view of the northern sky, but that's where the dippers are. Sometimes I can see the Big Dipper, which I always enjoy. I see it only sometimes because it's busy, from our point of view, going around in circles. If you look at the top (sometimes bottom) edge of the dipper and extrapolate out from those two stars with a straight line, they lead you to the northern star every time. To me that deserves a story!

Then there is the immensity of the stars, which should be big news. Because there's nothing bigger, except black holes and various distances. We think the Sun is enormous, and it is, but a bunch of these stars in the night sky dwarf the Sun. They're immense ... and so far away that -- I haven't tested this -- even a pair of binoculars doesn't make them seem any closer.

I hesitated posting this article about the stars. Because it's a little too much a straightforward serious science article and not something humorous, which I prefer posting. Call it a big complaint I have, though, and sometimes I simply need to use my huge soapbox on the internet to agitate for progress. If you agree with me that the stars are getting the short end of the stick in the news, please contact your local newspaper and tell them you want more.

I really don't think the papers have it in for the stars or anything. That would be ridiculous. What I think it is, is the stars are always there and we take them for granted. Like trees or Dairy Queens. So we're not giving them a second thought. But when we do, ah, things are different. The fact that they could blow up any minute, 600 years ago, is really something. The fact that they point to the northern star, and thereby to the cardinal direction north, is unbelievable but true. And the fact that they're enormous and very distant is a bit of trivia -- truth -- that ought to be more generally known.

They're so busy reporting everything else, the newspapers ... how about giving the stars their due?

Major Spill -- When Walter Comes Marching Home

The life of Walter Spill had elements of the ordinary and the extraordinary. He was a military man, a family man, and a big wheel in the community. He wheeled and dealed himself into a dizzying life as an entrepreneur, making a lot of money and friends along the way. Then, like anyone who lives long enough, he died, with his bones gathered up and laid to rest with honors in Memorial Cemetery.

Was he summa cum laude or magnum cum laude in school? No, he was just an average guy, with, as it turned out, a potential far exceeding average. His nation called and he answered, working his way up, about as far as a man can go, to the office of Major. Major Spill was a leader of men and a friend to all. He was the kind of guy you could count on to not desert you when the going got rough ... as it always does.

I spoke with one of the old-timers of town about Walter Spill, Dr. James Molar. One day they had a newspaper article about Walter in the Daily News, otherwise I probably would have never heard about him. (For copyright purposes, I will not quote from the newspaper account, but will simply do my best to paraphrase the key points of his life story as they come to mind, as well as my poor memory allows.)

The old-timer was a man who served with Major Spill, going back to his war service. The old veterans hate to talk about their military service, like pulling teeth, but if you pry diligently enough, going for all the angles, getting leverage, etc., finally you can loosen up the toughest molar. Anyway, this old boy, now frail and walking with a cane, bent with age, granted me a sit-down. We were at a particular cafe, a neutral site.

"So you served with Major Spill?" "Yes, that's right," his old friend, Dr. Molar, struggled to say, rasping, with each word a struggle. "You were together those years?" "Yes," he said with slight impatience, "That would appear to be what I carefully delineated a moment ago, with no excess verbiage added to the mix that might confuse you." I thought, "OK, I've got it..."

"What kind of leader was Walter Spill?" "A good leader," Dr. Molar managed to say, simply. But I dug deeper. "He was good, you say?" "Yes, good. By that I mean he excelled as a leader of men, prompted by some powerful inner source of fortitude and determination that is rare by any measure. The odds were against us, and as these things go, of course you have no guarantee of tomorrow. But the Major was fearless, prompting all of us to call forth our own bravery, till then an unknown presence."

"The newspaper said there was one battle where next-to-no one came out alive." "Yes, it was bad." "On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad was it?" With that, Dr. Molar struggled to his feet and left the room, and that's the last I saw of him. Leaving me to surmise that Major Spill and the others went together into battle with heavy odds against them, no doubt attributable to a larger or stronger contingency arrayed against them, with only one man of this side's force able to reemerge, that man being Major Spill himself.

The newspaper, just summarizing here, also told of Walter's poker-playing skills, Dr. Molar being their likely source. Just briefly, he had one hell of a poker face. Beyond that, quoting, "Of course all the other aspects of poker as a game, and the Major's keen gamesmanship at it, had to factor in, including his ability to read other players, his ability to compute the odds at any particular moment, along with that intangible thing we simply have to call luck."

After the war, Major Spill -- Walter -- came home and settled right here, back in his hometown. It was the post-war years, when new neighborhoods had to be developed. Walter settled into a career combination of city-planning, real estate, and cheap architecture. By now, of course, he was simply Mr. Walter Spill. There was a large profit to be made, with men coming home throughout those boom years.

Again, from the newspaper: "Socially, we were going from a more centralized arrangement of tight traditional neighborhoods toward the city's outskirts and beyond. It wasn't exactly sprawl, with the negative connotations of that word, but a natural widening of the local parameters, a thing of pride at the time. You annex, you pave, you make winding roads through the neighborhoods, you plant the same tree. At first the cheapness of the houses was a virtue, but naturally they quickly go to pot, after many years of hard use." As above, I take it Dr. Molar was the source of this quote as well.

My Picnic With Death

April's always iffy. We've had some really cold days and some really hot ones. So you take what you get, especially if it's nice, and make the most of it.

I was hanging out with my new best friend, Death [links below], on one of the hot days a couple days ago. We were just lounging around, he wasn't in a big toot for official business, it seemed, so why not get out of the house for a picnic? Sounds good, huh? Take the day off, have a good time, and spare the world at least those few minutes of pain.

I like packing up stuff and going out to one of the town's great parks on a day like this. For this picnic we chose the one with the old Air Force jet. Death and I actually went over and sat in it, messing around with the steering wheel. It's still substantially there, the fuselage, etc., although of course kids over the decades have left the control panel and every gauge totally destroyed. But that's life, bad things happen.

I was tending the meat at the grill. I'm sorry, I like it done right. We had a full picnic basket, with beans, potato salad, chips if we wanted some, celery sticks, baby carrots, some small snack cakes for dessert, and a six pack of Pepsi. What a great day, very little wind, and only a few other folks in the park. I worked while Death messed around with a Frisbee, throwing it against a tree.

That wasn't all he was doing. He was sulking a bit. He wanted to do the cooking, but I wasn't trusting the meat to just anyone; I wanted to do it myself. So he messed around with the Frisbee, and wandered off a time or two ... for who knows what. Clear his head probably, and maybe cuss me out. But his official story was: One, he needed to make a call. Two, he forgot something in the car. And three, which I didn't need to hear, he took a piss behind a tree. After a while, with all this excusing himself, I felt like a solo act, but on the bright side the burgers were doing great.

Later, then, we're busy enjoying the picnic, the fruits of my labor, our plates full of great food and all the fixin's. The only thing spoiling it was a bunch of sirens. There was some kind of commotion. "Wonder what's going on?" I asked. Death said, "Great question, sounds like something big." But I didn't know what, and apparently he didn't know. So what else to do, but enjoy the fun, food, and beautiful day.

Next, we saw ambulances going by, coming from the north ... very unusual! I said it had to be something big, because those are ambulances from out of town. Other towns were pitching in, part of the good neighbor policy the county has. There was a steady stream of them, their infernal sirens starting to give me a headache.

Imagine my horror, then, the next morning, when I saw the news: What?! "70 PERISH IN FLAMES AT HOME FOR AGED." The details were terrible! Destruction, panic, a horrific end to so many dear souls. A few of them from The Greatest Generation, no less. And it all went down at the very same time we were having our damned picnic! 

Death was just getting up; he was sleeping on the couch. He came toward the table and saw me reading the paper and turned around. I called him back, "Stop it right there, mister!"

He looked guilty as sin. "What the hell? I thought we were having a great time. The meat, the chips, the Frisbee... And this is what you were up to all along!? Killing 70 old folks while eating my celery and carrots!?" He had a concerned look on his face, but gathering up all the boldness he could muster, blurted out, "I told you I wanted to grill..."

I have to say, that took my breath away for a moment, and I could only shake my head in disgust. But you know me, Mr. Mercy, I can't stay mad at him for long. Especially when you think it over, that's who he is! That's what he does...

CONCLUSION: Yes, the picnic was messed up by Death's terrible behavior, actually killing 70 dear old folks at the home for the aged. But one thing we can still be thankful for. It was April, it was a picnic, and there wasn't an ant in sight.


Dead Links:
Death -- I Now Pronounce You Dead
Out Drinking with Death
Death Goes to the Dentist with Me
Death -- When Your Number's Up
Walt's Suicide -- Death by Water
The Gaping Maw of Death (Woof! Woof!)

Buckets: An Incredible Synchronicity

I've never been one to see meaningless coincidences. Only a few times. Once a guy said to me, "I don't believe in coincidences." And I said, "What a coincidence! I was going to say the same thing!" Usually I just think, It's a big world. The same things happen to everyone. Of course there's going to be similarities and parallels.

But then, like it or not, it starts getting creepy. You've got on a blue shirt, some other guy has one. Your brother gets a speeding ticket, someone else you know gets one. And maybe there's a real kick in the pants: Your electricity goes out and suddenly everyone in the neighborhood's off, too! At some point, even the diehard skeptic has to admit something's going on...

Is it evidence of the Divine working in our midst? I'm not willing to say that precisely, not quite yet. Because, frankly, the trivial nature of many coincidences keeps me from it. Still, it's something to examine. Maybe my reticence comes from having too big an image of the Divine, so the problem's with me. If the Divine, let's say, being eternal and therefore ageless, is still like a cosmic one-year-old, through no fault of its own, then a lot of immature bullshit tinkering with people's heads wouldn't be out of the picture. It's something to consider.

Instead of that, I'm more open to a reexamination of the theory of synchronicity, one of the famous theories C.G. Jung stole from The Police, inspired as he was by their great album. The theory states, basically, there is a discernible connecting principle between apparently unrelated phenomena that happen simultaneously or nearly so in time. Along with this, it can be apart from any cause and effect relationship that we usually posit, being therefore termed "acausal."

For example, let's say there's Horse A in Florida, Horse B in Oregon, and Horse C in Maine. Each horse is sick on Tuesday, well on Wednesday, sick on Thursday, well on Friday, sick on Saturday, and finally put down on Sunday. At first glance there's nothing obvious to our limited sensibilities indicating a connection or any cause and effect relationship (with the distance between Florida, Oregon, and Maine), so it simply seems like a pure coincidence. But looking deeper I think we can make an excellent case for a meaningful synchronicity, because what are the chances of three horses in a single example being called Horse A, Horse B, and Horse C? There's a clear pattern.

With that in mind, imagine how freaked out I was yesterday when I saw the newspaper's headline: "SUMMER BUCKET LIST." The day before (Sunday) I had my post, "I Pour Contempt On All My Pride," involving buckets. Then yesterday (Monday), the same day as the newspaper, I was working on my post, "My Great Memories of Buckets." The timeline went like this: 1) On Sunday I had no knowledge what the Monday paper would say. 2) On Monday I was working on the post, then saw the newspaper, then went to finish it up.

How does stuff like that happen? And what does it mean? I haven't seen anything freakier since the day I was imagining what Johnny Cash's funeral would be like, and the next day I read online that he died. Meaning that my imagining of his funeral was happening literally as he was dying! That's odd, yes, but this bucket thing blows my mind!

Please, help me. If you have a thought on this issue, an opinion, some kind of good counsel, please leave me a comment. If you don't, who knows, maybe I'll start imagining ... imagining ... imagining ... and it'll be you who kicks the bucket.

Honoring Ned Hogan, Great Criminal

Today, we're honoring one of the great criminals of the past, Ned Hogan. When pictured here peeling potatoes at the end of 1922, he had been in jail in Milwaukee a record 117 times.*

Hi, Machine Gun Ricky Wayward writing in honor of our fine brother in crime, Mr. Ned Hogan, 76 years old in the picture, and a native of Milwaukee.

As you will see in this brief tribute, Ned was so often drunk that he couldn't handle his affairs and needed a place to flop. That may not sound like great crime, but we honor it, because it is likely that Ned tied up the system enough -- taking the time of jailers, judges, and the cops -- that other criminals had freer rein.

The Milwaukee Sentinel of Dec. 24, 1922, (easily found on Google) profiled Ned, calling him a bum, derelict, and prohibition fighter. In addition, they said he was a vague and shadowy character.

In earlier times, he worked at the circus grounds in Milwaukee, and also did any odd jobs that would bring him a dollar. But the paper said the nearest thing to a regular occupation he ever had was unloading coal boats. Ned was what they called a dock walloper. It sounds like honest work, but we're very glad he left it, or we wouldn't be honoring him today. Since we don't care about dock walloping.

Alfred O. Wilmot, court reporter at the time, who knew Ned when he, Alfred, was a kid, remembers that Ned was all right when he was sober. The newspaper paraphrases Alfred: "Unless he was waylaid down in the lumber yards and got a pony of beer, he took his savings home to his old mother. He is not a thief. With all his arrests, he has never committed a real crime."

It was after Ned stole a tire that Alfred said, "Except for his lack of culture, Ned was a gentleman. I have heard him give a fellow a lecture for insulting a woman on the street. He was never brought in on a charge of anything but vagrancy until this last time. And this larceny charge was just a ruse of Ned's. He didn't want to steal. He had no use for the automobile tire that he walked off from a garage up near Eighth and Wells street. He only took it so as to furnish an excuse to get arrested. He went right down to the Rescue Mission with it and sat there until the police came."

Ned greeted the officer by saying, "Well, it took me two hours to get arrested this time." At first he had tried to get arrested by taking some bandana handkerchiefs from a dry goods store. There were even hanging out of his pockets in the store. But that plan failed, so he resorted to taking the tire.

Of course all the old cops knew Ned. When he wanted to be taken in, they accommodated him. Younger cops weren't so nice, saying, "Get about your business. You haven't done anything for me to take you in." To which Ned would retort, "You better take me in. If you don't I'll do something so you will have to pinch me." Ned's oldest friend on the force, Ed Baivier, chuckled, "He would, too. He has been known to pick up a brick and heave it through a window when the patrolman was stubborn."

Milwaukee's Judge Page said, "Ned is an old figure around here. He is getting old now, must be nearly 70. He manages, by sleeping on park benches, to get along in the summer, but when cold weather comes he needs a more comfortable place. As sure as the thermometer drops we can expect to see Ned in the bull pen next morning. As you know, it was pretty chilly the night before his last arrest a few weeks ago."

Roy E. Briggs, assistant superintendent of the Rescue Mission, said of him, "His mind is so run down from drink that he is 'rum dumb' as one of our men puts it. He has lost control of his power to think, but retained enough mind to know it. He wants to go right but can't quite reason out the way if left to himself. So he voluntarily puts himself where someone will make him do what he should."

So there you have it! We proudly honor Mr. Ned Hogan, one of the great criminals of the past. To summarize, he got drunk a lot, broke windows, and stole a few bandana handkerchiefs and a tire.

My Name Shows Up In The Daily News

OK, Daily News, we get it: You hate crime! Which is a little hypocritical, because you don't have any qualms about playing it up with big garish headlines and profiting from it! Huh? Did I hit a nerve?

MURDER RING PROBE ON -- Oh, really? A few bozos get killed and they need to do a whole probe? Oh yeah! It's ON, their word. And they call it a "Murder Ring." LOL, that might be a bit overblown, but anything to sell newspapers, right, Daily News?

I might be a little sensitive, I realize it. I'm still fairly new at being a criminal, so I'm touchy. It's the first time I've ever seen my name in the paper in connection with a crime. But there it is, big as life:

Police are seeking the whereabouts of Machine Gun Ricky Wayward in connection with the murders, and other clues as to his background and identity.

It turns out there aren't any Waywards in the area. They must have checked around. "Have you ever heard of Machine Gun Ricky Wayward?" "No, I've never heard of him." They probably looked it up in the mugshot book, and of course I'm not in there. At this point, I'm probably safe. I doubt if the Tastee Freez had video surveillance, and probably the funeral homes were cool too.

To me, though, the most obvious thing in the world would be to Google me! Although, thank God, they'll probably never think of that. I mean, really, what's the chances I have a blog that I update virtually everyday? And a blog that I've had since 2008 at that, with my grandmother's picture and name, as well as my real name, always featured prominently? If they thought of that, they'd catch me in no time... Ouch! As for my recent whereabouts, which the "Police are seeking," the idiots, I've written right here that I'm staying in the hotel downtown, of which there's only one! LOL, the dumbasses will never catch me!

As for the Daily News, they're not helping matters. Who knows? Could someone there really be intrepid enough to Google me? That's definitely conceivable, now that I think of it. Getting warm, I'm starting to perspire a little. I guess my defense on the murders will have to be, It was all just bluster, I didn't really do it! Someone else hacked into my account and wrote all that! Everything I blogged about, it was for entertainment purposes only! Anyway, search me, you won't find the gun!

LAKE IS DRAGGED FOR GIRL -- I don't know one damned thing about it! And the less said, the better...

BARBECUE CAUSES DEATH -- This is one I do know about. The meat was fine when I put it on the grill. Hell, I was even eating it, picking at it, when it was almost done. All I know is, I had to go back to the kitchen to get a platter. And someone else might've gotten to it in that little bit of time. Whether someone spritzed poison on it, or whatever, I don't know. And it might've been meant for me, perish the thought! The next thing I know, the girl takes a few bites -- suddenly no one else was hungry -- and collapses. How she ended up in the lake, if indeed that's where they took her, I, Machine Gun Ricky Wayward, have no clue...

11-11-11 In 1911

From The Syracuse Herald, Syracuse, NY, Nov. 11, 1911, page 6.

From Hutchinson News, Hutchinson, KS, Nov. 6, 1911, p. 10.