Back to the future and blinded by science

“Brethren, we have a message from another world."

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com
Like any self-respecting city of its size, Colorado Springs has its own nutty professor story, and it is a good one.
Born in Croatia and educated as an engineer at Polytechnic School south of Vienna, Nikola Tesla could speak nine languages and had become quite popular in investment circles by the beginning of the 1890s. Having worked for Edison Machine Works, but unable to interest founder Thomas Edison on his ideas about alternating current (AC), Tesla formed his own company, Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing. George Westinghouse, seeing the promise in that work, bought Tesla’s patents and set him to work as a designer.
His efforts made him a celebrity in the United States and Europe and allowed him to participate in projects such as powering the 1893 Worlds Fair in Chicago, and by demonstrate wireless transmission of power by lighting bulbs with no wires attached. He believed wireless communication would be the wave the future, imagining first, such ideas as the basis for fax machines, cellular transmissions, garage door openers, radio and TV and cable. Unfortunately, though correct with his science, he was about 90 or 100 years premature with some of his ideas.
Here in Colorado however, his technology was successfully deployed with his AC transmission systems powering the mining camps of Cripple Creek and Telluride, as well as a hydroelectric plant at Niagara Falls that established his AC current as the dominant transmission mode.
“A friend and patent lawyer, Leonard E. Curtis, on being advised of Tesla's work, offered to find land and provide power for the research from the El Paso Power Company of Colorado Springs. The next supporter to come forward was Colonel John Jacob Astor. With $30,000 from Astor, the inventor prepared at once to move to Colorado and begin building a new experimental station near Pikes Peak. Joining Tesla were several assistants who were not fully informed of the inventor's plans,” according Tesla, Life and Legacy at PBS.org.
“The laboratory that rose from the prairie floor was both wired and weird, a contraption with a roof that rolled back to prevent it from catching fire, and a wooden tower that soared up eighty feet. Above it was a 142-foot metal mast supporting a large copper ball. Inside the strange wooden structure, technicians began to assemble an enormous Tesla coil, specially designed to send powerful electrical impulses into the earth.”
The experiments had their drawbacks however, including burning up the dynamo at El Paso Power Company and knocking out all power in Colorado Springs. Working for about nine months in his Colorado Springs lab, his popularity waned, as his findings were difficult to grasp for investors and others that followed his exploits. Increasingly, he was considered eccentric and perhaps a bit of a ‘nut job.’
Popular reports in the papers didn’t help at all to defuse that idea, as noted in the following account in the Rocky Mountain News in January of 1901 headlined “Tesla will talk with Mars from Pikes Peak.”
“… I have observed electrical actions which have appeared inexplicable, faint and uncertain though they were, and they have given me a deep conviction and foreknowledge that before long all human beings on this globe, as one will turn their eyes on the firmament above, with feelings of love and reverence, thrilled by the glad news:
“Brethren, we have a message from another world, unknown and remote. It reads:
One. One, two, three.” (signed) Nikola Tesla.

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Photo Information: Tesla's Colorado Springs Lab

Give me one more for the ditch

I am old enough (just barely), to remember when hunters in the state from points south and east, would load up their trucks upon returning home, with cases of Coors beer because they couldn’t buy it back wherever it was the wandered in here from.
Coors was at one time a very regional beer. That makes it somewhat interesting to see how much dissing the brand gets in micro-brew circles.
In the early eighties, when Anheuser-Busch was trying to get approval in Fort Collins to build a brewery, some beer-addled friends of mine worried that another major brewery would somehow displace ‘Colorado Kool-Aid’
The friendly competition only fermented a major micro market there in Fort Fun, and the emergence of heavy hitters like New Belgian, O’dells and others. Colorado became the number one beer-producing state in the nation and the home to hundreds of breweries.
Today -- in an age when Coors has merged with Molson, and then again with Miller -- and boutique beer batches appear on every Colorado corner, it makes you think fondly about the old days of two-port, press-top cans and ‘stubbies’ from days of yore.
Naturally, the marketers have some ideas on how to capitalize on that nostalgia bent.
So let’s make beer like they did before Prohibition.
“Batch 19, being test-marketed in five cities, is a throwback to a pre-Prohibition lager. Coming from the large beer factory in Golden, the beer is surprising for its hoppy character and its carbonation. If it every reaches the general market, it should be a great success,” writes Dick Kreck in the Denver Post.
According to Kreck’s report, “Brewmaster Keith Villa found the recipe for the Coors pre-prohibition brew stashed in the company’s basement archives and was immediately intrigued by what he found.”
Only one drawback, the five cities it is being marketed in are; Chicago, San Francisco/San Jose, Washington, D.C. and Milwaukee. Oh yea, Colorado can get a little taste by taking the ‘short tour’ (or the long one) at the tasting room in Golden and it will be featured at Great American Beer Festival in Denver in September.
The name is supposed to evoke the idea that with Prohibition becoming the law in 1919, and beer being outlawed (except for medicinal purposes) until repeal in 1933, this brew will take you back.
The only problem, as I see it, is that Colorado, along with five other states, went dry three years earlier than the rest of the country, in January of 1916.
Details, details, details. But isn’t that what the brewing art is all about. Somehow, for marketing purposes, “Batch 16” just didn’t have the right ring to it.
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The pick, pick, pick of the Knockers

Knockers, were departed spirits of miners who had passed from this life, on to the next

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Here in the hard rock camps of Colorado, where the mountains are full of riches, the stories of "the knockers" will be found below.
The Cornish, miners for at least a thousand years, arrived in droves during the 19th century in the American West as the copper and tin played out in their native Cornwall.
Often labeled "Cousin Jacks," reportedly because mine owners valued their knowledge and experience so much, they were always asking "don't you have cousin, back in Cornwall that would like to come here to United States and work for us?" The miners seemed to always have a cousin 'Jack,' back on the Celtic Sea that wanted to relocate.
With them, came their peculiar way of speaking, ancient stories and traditions.
The language of the mines was heavily influenced. The Cornish word 'shaft' described a vertical hole. Horizontal tunnels were 'levels' and 'winzes,raises, and adits' all derived from Cornish origins.
As did the lunch pail, the miners candlestick, "Cornish pump" and the signal code for communicating to the hoist operators in the mines.
In the dark, strange underworld of the hard rock mine, it is easy for your imagination to run away with you and the stories.
"Knockers," according to lore, were the departed spirits of miners who had passed for this life and on to the next.
If you were miner trying to earn living beneath the earth, the knockers could be for you, or against you, dependent largely on how you treated them. Unlike the aliens of Stephen King horror novels, most knockers of Cornish legends were generally thought of in favorable terms.
Like the Irish Leprechauns, the knockers were wee people and the creaks, drips, groans, knocks and other sounds of underground work were often attributed to them and given special meaning.
"Miners hear eerie sounds working underground. Sounds made by the earth moving along fault lines, miners in distant tunnels setting off dynamite charges, and whirring machinery echoing off tunnel walls - all could be attributed to Tommyknockers," wrote Tim Willoughby in recent column in the Aspen Times.
"Sounds of dripping water, braying mules and creaking mine cars were compounded by total darkness."
Some miners tried to be nice to the knockers by leaving offerings of left-over lunch, fashioning small clay figures of the spirits to please them, avoiding whistling while working (because it was said to bother them) and speaking only in positive terms on their behalf.
Any deviation from said course could bring on a round of bad luck in the form of cave-ins,'dry holes,' missing tools, and deadly accidents. Being nice to them could result in their help finding the 'mother lode' or warning you away from a dangerous cave-in or other accidents.
The dwarf-like, tapping creatures were often heard in the depths of the mines but seldom seen. In fact, it was considered an ominous warning if you were to catch a glimpse of the little fellows. Seeing them in the mines could bring on more misfortune than a red-headed woman's presence in the mine (red-haired women were considered omens of death.)
Also called Bucca, or Bwca by the Welsh, the knockers origins are sometimes referenced as ghosts of Jewish slaves, brought to mines in Cornwall by Romans to work in the Iron age.
But here in the West, the knockers took on legendary status as illustrated by following poem penned in 1910 by Anthony Fitch.

The Tommy Knockers

'Av you 'eard of the Tommy Knockers
In the deep dark mines of the west
Which the Cornish miners 'ear?
an 'tis no laughin'jest,
for I'm a Cornish miner,
An' I'll tell you of it today,
Of the 'knock-knock-knock" of a tiny pick,
As we work in the rock an' clay.

We go down in the skips with our buckets,
With 'earts which nothing fazes,
Each man with a candle to light the way,
Through the tunnels winzes an' raises,
An' the stale air smells of powder,
An' the mine is full of sound,
But 'tis only the noise of a Tommy Knocker
Which makes our 'earts rebound.

"Pick...pick...pick"
Someone be 'ind us knocked,
Pick...pick...pick
'tis souls of dead miners
For they're locked in the earthen wall,
Those that found death down there.
An' tis the "knock-knock-knock" of their pick
W'ich makes on end stand our 'air.

So we leave the 'aunted place,
(For we won't work where they be)
An' we 'erever we'ear them knockin'
We sure will always flee.
For it means w'oever 'ears it
Will be next in line,
The pick, pick, pick, of the Knockers
Is a last an' awful sign.

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Applauding our heroes as they go by

World Champion Greco–Roman Wrestler William Muldoon influenced great men and befriended the giants of the time

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Will Rogers is credited with the idea that we all can’t be heroes.

“Because somebody has to sit on the curb and applaud when they go by.”

Several times over the last few years, I have written about a character from the early days of organized athletics that I have found fascinating, not only because of who he was, but because of who he came into contact with, who he influenced, and the public perception of this fellow.

World Champion Greco–Roman Wrestler William Muldoon influenced great men and befriended the likes of Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Teddy Roosevelt, Jack Dempsey and Ralph Pulitzer.

Apparently others share my fascination.

“We had read Muldoon - The Solid Man of Sport, while researching William, a few years ago. I and other members of St. Patrick's Church, in Belfast, N.Y., at the time were attempting to gain state recognition of the Sullivan Training Barns, at the time still located on our church property. This effort fell thru due to our bishop's unfounded fear that such a move might have an adverse effect on the church property the barns stood on,” wrote John Nangle, in an email to me recently.

After completing research on William Muldoon and reading his biography, (with a forward by Jack Dempsey,) Nangle noted that Bill Muldoon devoted an entire chapter to his "combat" experiences while serving with the 6th N.Y. Cavalry Regiment.

“We pursued this by finding a book of the history of said regiment and found that, while there is no record of William serving in any capacity in that regiment during the Civil War, his brother, John, did and valiantly. He was singled out as having captured an enemy flag and two prisoners while seriously wounded at the Battle of Royal Front, Virginia. John subsequently died of his wound in 1873. Wm. did not make his first claim to Civil War service claim until at least 10 years after John died and followed this up in 1928 in his biography.

“John's name is prominently displayed on our Belfast Civil War Monument along with other area residents who also served in that conflict. William Muldoon's name is only conspicuous by its absence and is no longer a matter of a curiosity as it has been for years.”

According to Nangle, there is no record of our William ever having served in any other regiment in any capacity during the Civil War in the Adjutant General Civil War records.

“The few living relatives of Wm. we were able to contact all agreed that he would have been at home on Muldoon homestead during that conflict and never served in said conflict in any capacity.”

Nangle says the 1865 N.Y. State census contained the question as to whether the listed had or was in the military service. Of the Muldoon family, William, age 12, at home, and only his older brother, John, was listed in the affirmative.

“Our Bishop sold the Sullivan Training Barns to the Bare Knuckle Boxing Hall of Fame, who in turn had the barns move locally in Belfast where they stand today. We believe that the spokesman for the B.K.B. Hall of Fame has maintained a deafening silence about Muldoon's claim to Civil War service only because we posted a photograph of Muldoon at his brother's grave in a local newspaper and made note of Wm. not being a veteran of that conflict. This was in Dec. 2008, and our findings have not been challenged or rebuffed by the Belfast B.K.B. Hall of Fame spokesman. Our original intent was never to damage William Muldoon's credibility or integrity, but I guess that anything might be expected once Pandora's box has been opened.

Muldoon military Civil War service was modified in most of his obituaries to that of having been only a drummer boy, in his obituaries, though up to a year before his death he still doggedly maintained he served as a soldier in that conflict, says Nangle.

“William had been inducted into quite a few other halls of fame in recent years, all espousing his Civil War feats, some as a drummer boy and others as being a combat soldier in the 6th Cavalry Regiment. They surely must read each other's websites and it is difficult to understand, under the circumstances, why they have not done at least some very basic research to verify or disclaim Wm.'s alleged military service.”

Nangle says William Muldoon in his biography falsely gave his birth as being May 25, 1845, when it was, according to the Muldoon family Bible, May 25, 1852, which is verified in the 1860, 1865, and 1870 censuses.

“Wm. made a monumental blunder in choosing the year 1845, because his sister, Mary, is listed as born May 16, 1845, in said family bible, also verified by the above censuses,” writes Nangle.

I guess information such as this is important to consider when you are sitting on the curb and applauding your heroes as they go by.

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It is a small thing but baseball is not right

Orioles, Tigers, Twins and, of course, Yankees.

 By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Little League baseball came to Dolores the first year I was eligible to play — when I was eight-years-old, and about three-feet tall.

Four teams, new uniforms and practice fields ripped out of the alfalfa patches on the upriver edge of town characterized that first season. New dugouts at the high school diamond were built out of plywood and 2” x 4s,” painted with green-colored paint and the floors lined with new sawdust and wood shavings. Most fathers and (a lot of mothers) around town picked up hammer and saw, rake and shovel, brush and fence tool to make that first season happen.

Empire Electric, Nielsons, Inc., Dolores State Bank and others ponied up the cash to pay for the new uniforms, and as a result, had the company logos sewn on to the back. But the new unis didn’t arrive until late in the season, just in time for the parade at the annual celebration. Fungo bats, regular ‘Louisville Sluggers” from 28 to 32, chest protectors, catchers masks, boxes of balls, and ‘special’ gear were provided for from either Howard’s or Jerry’s in Cortez. A concession stand was built and schedule set for parents willing to work it to raise more money for more improvements.

Orioles, Tigers, Twins and, of course, Yankees.

Some kind of draft, based on age, ability, siblings? … I’m not sure what all … was conducted and the aspiring hall of famers donned blue, black, navy or red caps.

I ended up a Yankee, which is good, because my Grandma (who spent a lifetime following Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle and the like) always wanted me to be a Yankee. Fortunately, I didn’t disappoint.

Most of us were new to baseball and it showed. Couldn’t hit, couldn’t catch, couldn’t throw, and in some cases couldn’t stay out of the way. That first summer, as an Oriole, I believe, Bill Butler sported one of the meanest, purple and black, puffed-up shiners I have ever seen (before or since) when he caught a pop fly with his eye socket, rather than a glove, in practice one day. Others displayed various ball- or bat-induced maladies as well.

In time, we learned most elements of the game and could put on a passable show four days a week at 5:30 sharp with alternating schedule. It was competitive (It is not baseball without competition) but encouraging, for the talented and others. The older players saw more playing time but rules required that others make an appearance as well.

As an eight year old, I was very fortunate, because of my unique talent, or trait.

Yankee Coaches Earl Carver and Ray Stevinson, must have been James Thurber fans, or perhaps followers of the St. Louis Browns, because right from game one of that season, I found myself not only starting in right field for the Yankees, but in the line-up as lead off batter.

Reasoning was tied directly to the 1941 short story by Thurber, “You Could Look It Up,” and indirectly to the strange case of Edward Carl “Eddie” Gaedel.

Thurber's story was about a midget’s appearance in the big leagues, and Eddie Gaedel gained immortality in the second game of a double header between St. Louis and Detroit on Sunday, August 19, 1951.

Gaedel, who was 3 feet, 7 inches tall and weighed 65 pounds, was the shortest to ever play the game in the major leagues. He appeared at the plate only once and walked on 4 consecutive balls. A pinch runner replaced him on first. His jersey, with the number 1/8, now is displayed in the baseball hall of fame.

Gaedel, who had worked as a riveter during World War II because he was able to crawl inside the airplane wings, was secretly hired by Browns owner, Bill Veeck.

In a promotion for Falstaff Beer, the small player came out of a cake between games and his appearance was first considered a major disappointment until the first pitch of the second game, according to ESPN’s Darren Rovell .

“But before Cain could throw the first pitch, the P.A. announcer introduced a pinch-hitter, No. 1/8 -- Eddie Gaedel,” wrote Rovell.

“Umpire Ed Hurley questioned Gaedel's ability to play, but Taylor came out with Gaedel’s contract in hand. Gaedel got in his crouch. Veeck, in his autobiography, said he had instructed Gaedel to make his strike zone as small as possible -- about 1½ inches -- but Gaedel was excited and stood up a bit.Gaedel did follow the other important instruction, though. "Eddie, I'm going to be up on the roof with a high-powered rifle watching every move you make," Veeck wrote. "If you so much as look as if you're going to swing, I'm going to shoot you dead.

"Ball. Ball.

"(Bob) Cain is laughing so hard that he's practically falling off the mound with each pitch," Bill Christine, a Browns fan in attendance during the game, told ESPN.

"Ball. Ball."

According to Rovell's story, all four pitches sailed over Gaedel's head.

That was pretty similar to my experience in that first season in Dolores Little League. Although I don’t think they ever threatened to shoot me if I were to swing the bat.

But they did have extensive instruction on how to tell a strike from a ball.

Baseball is not right, I thought to myself. Everybody knows a man with four balls can't walk.

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GIs jam state's schools after World War II

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

"Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity."
__ Aristotle, 4th Century B.C.

Returning veterans flooded into Colorado institutions of higher education after World War II

With the G.I. Bill authorized by Congress in 1944 and signed into law by Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 22 of that year, returning veterans flooded into Colorado institutions of higher education after World War II. The Serviceman’s Readjustment Act, as it was officially labeled, provided for college or vocational education and a year of unemployment compensation.
My father, graduating from high school just as the war was ending, tells of a freshman year sleeping in the Field House on College Avenue in Fort Collins. The building had been set up as a makeshift dormitory at Colorado A & M (before it was Colorado State University) because the influx of returning soldiers.
“All told, some 117,000 Colorado veterans took advantage of the opportunities the nation offered them (both World War II returnees and, later, those returning from the Korean conflict) to study at college or a university,” according to “A Colorado History,” by Carl Ubbelohde, Maxine Benson, and Duane Smith.
“But this was only a part of the story. Another 9,400 veterans received vocational rehabilitation training; another 77,800 used the home loan benefits provided; 5,200 qualified for similar facilities for purchasing farms, and 2,200 for business loans. The impact on the state’s economy, its educational facilities, and on the returning veterans themselves, stands a marked contrast to the earlier experience of the month’s and years that followed the Armistice of 1918.”
At Colorado A & M, the school switched from a semester to a quarter system to expedite the enrollment of former servicemen and the enrollment almost doubled in a single year. About 1,040 students began in the fall of 1945 but by spring, 1946, 1600 were enrolled and two thirds of the new student population was veterans in need of immediate place to stay. By late 1946, 3,500 students jammed the institution and in an effort to provide quick and cheap housing, Quonset huts had been set up at the corners of West Laurel and Shields Street. A trailer court also appeared beside Veteran Village in the fall of 1946. Additionally, the school lost nearly 50 faculty to other colleges and universities that were able to attract them away higher salaries as they struggled with their own swelling student populations brought on by the same circumstances across the country.
The University of Colorado at Boulder also experienced doubling of its enrolled population and they established a similar Quonset hut village.
“Trailers, followed by 60 Quonset huts purchased from the Federal Housing Authority, were installed on land at the corner of 24th (now Folsom) and Arapahoe for married students and their families; the area quickly became known as ‘Vetsville,’” according to Coloradan, The University of Colorado alumni magazine.
“Vetsville Council, children’s holiday parties and P.H.T. (Putting Hubby Through) commencement ceremonies for supportive wives helped establish a close-knit community. To the regret of students who paid only $62 rent each month, the Quonset huts were demolished in 1973.”
There was still a few remaining Quonset huts on campus in the early 1980s in Fort Collins when I attended Colorado State University, though I think they were used for storage, rather than housing. With only 400 square feet of living space, cold steel walls, and the odd rounded corners to deal with, former students I’ve spoken with who lived in them (though they appreciate the experience and the low rent at the time) tell me the understand why they were abandoned.
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Ceremonial silver spike missed getting hammered

Population would have left the place to the coyotes

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Angelo Donghia is credited with the idea that “Assumption is the mother of the screw-up.”
Maybe so, but intoxication is often the other responsible parent.
And so it was, in the case of the missing silver spike intended to mark the completion of the Denver Pacific Railroad on June 24, 1870.
Most of Denver’s nearly 5,000 residents at the time, marked the occasion by lining the streets from 15th Street and Larimer to 19th Street and Wazee, helping to usher in the first Colorado railroad.
“Late in the fall of 1869 the road had been completed from Cheyenne to Evans, a distance of fifty-eight miles, and was being operated with three locomotives, two passenger cars, and a dozen freight cars,” wrote a reporter for Denver Republican in a story 25 years later in which Colorado Governor John Evans, the former president of the railroad, recalled the festivities.
“The Denver Pacific was formally accepted at June 24, 1870, though the first Locomotive, named the D.H. Moffat, arrived with the construction train on the 15th. The driving of the last spike was deferred until St. John’s Day, June 24, and made a great public event, all the Masonic bodies participating,” according to the Denver Republican.
“We had a great time that day,” said Evans. “The terminus of the road was about four blocks north of the present Union Station. We had built a neat, two-story brick station, which stands there today, and it was in front of this that the ceremonies took place. The miners from Georgetown sent down a big spike of pure silver, 6 inches in length, which was presented to me, on behalf of the people of Georgetown,” reported the Republican in 1895.
Or was it.
The mines of the Georgetown area had previously agreed to provide a spike made pure silver for the celebration, wrote Ken Jesson in his 1994 book “Bizarre Colorado: a Legacy of Unusual Events & People.”
“Billy Barton, proprietor of the Barton House in Georgetown, was given the responsibility of safely delivering the silver spike. When the day of the celebration approached, Barton and his friends left Georgetown for Denver. On their way through Golden, they stopped to quench their thirst. In the process, they got royally drunk. To keep their party alive, the needed to purchase more booze and pawned the spike. They then slept off their binge and the next day failed to rise in time to reach Denver for the ceremony,” Jesson wrote.
According to the story, Evans was able to retrieve the spike later and kept it as a souvenir.
The former governor admitted that the silver spike had never been driven that day, according to Denver Republican story 25 year later.
“Here the venerable ex-Governor produced the same silver spike from the drawer in his desk, explaining the spike that was driven that day was a common one of iron wrapped in paper, so that the crowd thought it was a sliver one.”
The ex-Governor fondly recalled that day when talking to the Republican’s reporter.
“I didn’t make much of a speech,” he said. “I just drove the last spike and we had lots of music and cheering. All the prominent men were there — Moffat, the Claytons, Eicholtz, and others whose names I can’t remember. It was a great day and it was the beginning of an era of prosperity which I had predicted, and which has been gloriously fulfilled.”
It was certainly a watershed for Denver.
“Till this first railroad connection with the outside world was consummated, it was a question of whether Denver would ever make a town, and had the road not been built, through the strenuous efforts of such men as Evans, Moffat, the Claytons, and others, the population would have left the place to the coyotes,” according to the Republican story."
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