Category: random

The eastbound Central Pacific passenger train pulled into Colfax, California, Sunday afternoon, July 27, 1873. Passengers disembarked, walking to the Wells Fargo Depot, where the stage ran twice a day except on Sundays.

Driver Bob Scott soon pulled up, and 13 passengers boarded. Wells Fargo Agent William B. Storey loaded more than $7,000 in gold coins into the strongbox.

Aboard the stagecoach, rode prominent passengers W.R. Tully, E. Black Ryan, Thomas Bard McFarland, newly elected U.S. Senator Aaron A. Sargent. Not so important was mail-ordered bride, 22-year-old Miss Eleanor Berry.

As the stage approached Sheets Ranch, five miles from Grass Valley, Scott jerked his team to a halt. Four armed men had stepped into the roadway, blocking their path.

With a floursack over each head, holes cut out for their eyes, gunnysack-cover boots, three of the bandits carried shotguns, the fourth a six-shooter.

“What do you want?” Scott called out, Ryan adding, “Yes, boys, what does this mean?”

“We want that treasure box,” came the reply.

“It’s on the other stage,” Scott lied.

“Well, we’ll keep you until the other stage comes up,” declared the leader.

His bluff called, Scott told the highwayman, “It’s no use fooling any longer, this is the only stage tonight.”

“That’s what we thought,” the robber replied. “Climb down from there and unhitch your team.”

As the passengers stood against a roadside fence and with the strongbox about to be blown open, Berry protested.

“Gentlemen!” she cried out. “My trunk, which is on the deck of the stage, will in all probability be blown to pieces. It contains all that I possess in this world, and while its destruction will not benefit you in the least, it will be an irreparable loss to me. I beg of you to take it down.”

“Certainly, miss, with the greatest pleasure,” the head robber said.

Berry then saw the scar on the back of his hand.

The blast ripped through the stage, exposing the cache of gold coins. Soon, the four highwaymen disappeared.

The explosion blew the strongbox lid through the stagecoaches roof, shattering the walls and floor, but the running gear survived. Soon Scott had his team hitched up, the passengers back aboard, and was en route to Grass Valley.

After alerting police to the robbery, Scott drove Berry to Nevada City and her destination, a small rented cottage. Earlier in the week, Lewis J. Dreibelbis had rented a room for her.

The landlady explained to Berry that Dreibelbis, the man she was to marry, had been called out of town but would soon return. Though still rattled, Berry remained determined to go forward with the wedding.

Soon Dreibelbis, her senior by 37 years, arrived at the cottage, where the pair were married. Berry believed his voice to be familiar as he recited his wedding vows.

Upon seeing his scar as he signed paperwork legalizing their marriage, she ran from the room. A few minutes later, Dreibelbis left the cottage.

Berry spent the night locked in her room. She only told the landlady, preacher, and a few neighbors that Dreibelbis was “not so well fixed” as she had expected.

The following day, she boarded the first stage, leaving Grass Valley without further explanation.

Meanwhile, local lawmen were busy hunting the robbers. A posse led by Nevada County Sheriff Joe Perrin pored over the robbery scene and began tracking them.

A half-mile-long trail led to a mask, giant powder and percussion caps, and two miners in a cabin, whom they arrested. Later that day, officers picked up two more suspects, including Ormstead Thurman (alias Charley Thompson, alias Bill Early.)

Sentenced to prison in 1865 for robbing a stage in Maricopa County, Thurman murdered another convict for foiling an escape plan. He had been released from San Quentin six weeks before the latest stage robbery and seen in the company of local one-armed saloon keeper Jim Myers.

The four men appeared before a Justice of the Peace on July 31. After giving their alibis, the judge released three of the suspects.

While Myers claimed Thurman had been drinking in his saloon when the holdup happened, Scott and one of the passengers identified Thurman. He was held over for trial.

Deputies searched for the other bandits for more than a week. Then, on Aug. 9, Wells Fargo Chief Detective James B. Hume got word that a man named Rob Walker in Colma was drinking heavily and spending freely.

Hume learned Walker had deposited $1,000 in gold coin and a bar of bullion with the hotelkeeper, claiming to be a former mining superintendent at Ophir in Placer County. But when Hume telegraphed Ophir, he found that no such man named Walker had ever worked there.

Traveling to Coloma, Hume examined the coins and gold bar, which matched those stolen in the robbery. Hume arrested Walker and took him to jail in Placerville.

“I told him I thought I had a strong case against him,” Hume later recalled, “That the condition of his coin clearly indicated the effects of the giant powder explosion of the Grass Valley treasure box.”

Walker finally broke, confessing to both the Grass Valley robbery and the June holdup of a stage near Downieville. He also admitted to being an ex-con and that his real name was Lewis J. Dreibelbis.

Saying he was tasked with ‘guarding the passengers,’ only. Hume soon matched the description of Dreibelbis to that of the leader.

He also learned that Dreibelbis had severely cut the back of his hand during the Dowmieville robbery. It was this scar that Berry had noticed after their abbreviated ceremony.

Dreibelbis eventually identified Ormstead Thurman, George Lester (aka George Lane), Nat Stover, and saloonkeeper Myers as the other gang members.

Hume and Perrin soon rounded up the rest of the bandits. They picked up Myers at his saloon and found Stover at a mining camp near Grass Valley.

Both confessed, and Myers led them to the spot where he had buried his share of the gold. Stover also led the officers to his cache, but a ‘soiled dove,’ named Nellie Gassaway made off with his loot.

All three were convicted, with Dreibelbis providing testimony against each of them. They each received long terms in San Quentin.

George Lane was indicted but managed to escape. Hume found him in Virginia City, Nev., the following year, returning him to California to stand trial and where he received a 15-year prison sentence.

For testifying against the others, the state dropped all charges against Dreibelbis. Hume bought him a one-way train ticket home to Iowa, where he lived quietly on his farm in Scotch Grove until his death on Dec. 12, 1888, aged 75.

Berry moved into the home of Gilroy pioneers John and Sophia Eigleberry, where she dared not reveal that she had married a highway robber. Instead, she explained that the mail-ordered groom had been a failure, yet rumors of her strange affair spread like wildfire.

With the truth out, and a month after the robbery, Berry survived an attempted suicide using chloroform. What became of her afterward is unknown.

The war vet lay on the park bench beneath his woolen blanket, half-frozen, half-asleep, and all in on a night terror. Above him in the bare branches of a tree, ink-black feathers reflecting the full moon’s shine roosted two-dozen crows.

“What should we do?” the veteran screamed as his mind drew him through some unimaginable imagined horror.

The largest crow looked down, “How’s about we commit us a murder?”

The surrounding crows cackled and cawed at the dark inside joke.

While putting on a shirt I hadn’t worn in a while, I found this ditty I wrote on my birthday in 2020. Each line is three syllables, so with 20-lines, it adds up to 60…

sixties child
turns sixty
dirt roads to
internet
gen-Tang drink
to moonshine
fat chance
to skinny tv
heroes gone
whiner near
Downey fresh
A Calgone
destress moat
regress, no
depress, go
in slow-mo
jus’ today
oh my how
life spreads
out so long

My Cousin Elmo says, “I still don’t understand how two-faced people sleep without suffocating.”

He’d been crossing the prairie for eight days. Jordie Keller figured he had another couple-dozen more to go before he’d reach Fort Bridger.

Head down, he didn’t see it as he trudged up the incline. It was near the top that he saw that he had inadvertently trespassed into an Indian burial ground.

Remembering the Old-timer’s stories, Jordie began walking backward, stepping in his tracks as he worked his way back down the incline. Once at the bottom, he dug out his tobacco pouch and offered four healthy pinches of the shredded brown leaves to the four corners of the earth.

His final offering was given as he turned around.

That’s when he discovered that he had an audience: three Braves, two armed with spears and a third with an arrow nocked and aimed at him. Jordie Keller didn’t understand their words as they spoke rapidly between themselves.

“Did you see that?” one of the Braves with a spear asked.

The other spear-armed Brave answered, “Never. It’s a good thing. Honorable.”

With a scowl on his face the third Brave, the one with the bow and arrow, replied, “Fools, he’s still a White man,” as he let the shaft fly.

“Wonder when the train’s coming by?” he asked the mule, chuckling at himself for talking to a dumb animal.

He thought of the Sunday school story about the ‘ass’ who spoke to its master while trying to protect the man from a vengeful Angel. He wished an Angel would arrive or that the mule would talk.

It had been days, endless cycles of dark and light. He had no idea what time it was.

“Used to be able to tell the time, that train was so regular,” he said.

The mule wasn’t listening and would never again. It was dead.

Quietly over the years, the six richest men in the world purchased millions of acres of land throughout the country. They did this with so little distinction that no one noticed.

Those who did notice were often self-congratulatory for having such well-known and wealthy neighbors. They never once gave it a second thought beyond this fact.

Then, following the same unassuming steps they had taken in making their purchases, all six men sold their land-holdings to the government. That same government used the tax-payers money to make the purchases.

Now, those millions of acres are off-limits to all unauthorized humans.

We have a problem known as ‘cancel culture.’ Recently actress Gina Carano was fired from her job and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s social media platform permanently shutdown.

This isn’t the first time. The tech giants have ‘canceled’ President Trump, several of his supporters, and cut power to several ‘right-wing’ platforms like Parler.

In Carano’s case, she tweeted, “Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors….even by children.”

She went on: “Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?”

The now-former LucasFilm employee’s post included a picture of a bloody ‘Jewish’ woman, clad in underwear, trying to outrun kids chasing her with sticks. I’ve seen the photo before and always thought that the woman was French and a Nazi collaborator, which doesn’t excuse the children’s behavior.

At any rate, Carano’s point was made, making her ‘cancellation’ all the more ironic.

And while I’m no fan of Kennedy, Instagram, a Facebook product, kicked him off after they discovered he was posting personal anti-vaxxing opinions. The son of Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy, had over 800-thousand followers when the ‘plug was pulled’ on his account.

See the problem? They’re ‘canceling’ everyone who doesn’t conform to ‘correctthink.’

If you want to delete or block me, that’s fine, but that decision ought to be yours and not up to a tech firm. We need to come together and destroy this ever-growing oligarchy.

My Cousin Elmo says, “They call it a ‘seat warmer,’ because ‘rear defrost’ was already taken.”

The struggle for liberty wasn’t real to people when masks were mandated or when social distancing was approved, and self-isolation was lauded as the ‘new normal.’ The struggle didn’t seem to matter to one-half of the nation, as it learned that there were ‘election irregularities,’ and discovered that national elections could be rigged in favor of one political party over another.

And once the Internet was shut down, the struggle for liberty became even less of a concern. The sudden disruption of online interconnectedness became a mental health crisis, with mass suicides.

The Oligarchy had finally assimilated the entire population.