history – Page 2 – I like to write junk…

“HAPPY JACK”

“Thanks to Deana, Karon, Renee, and Starr for helping me with this project.”

On the way to Kingman from Lake Havasu City, a little-used byway crosses over Interstate 40, named Happy Jack Road. A sign identifying it is visible on this overpass. Access to the Happy Jack Road bridge or overpass is via the Santa Fe Ranch Road exit, and then one must head east for approximately one-half mile on a side road that follows alongside I-40. This side road is a remnant of old Route 66.

I’ve been on Happy Jack Road numerous times, following it until hitting Happy Jack Wash and Sacramento Wash. A BNSF railroad bridge back there has quite the history. A story could be written about it alone. Loose sand and a steep rocky incline make getting to this bridge a bit tough unless you have a four-wheel drive.

Approximately one mile west of this railroad bridge is an abandoned railroad stop named Haviland. Today, trains park there, but they only remain in place for a short time until the tracks are clear. The area is popular with meteorite hunters.

I’ve often wondered who Happy Jack was. The Jacks I know for the most part are all happy individuals—at least the ones still living. This fellow must’ve been someone special for a road and a wash to get named after him.

I presented that question to a Yucca forum site and ended up with several valid answers. One individual thought that Happy Jack was a train engineer, with two others saying that he was a former rancher in the area who owned a large section of land. A forum member said that she had an old newspaper article dictating such. It took some digging, but I eventually found several articles. Thanks to Deana, Karon, Renee, and Starr for helping me with this project.

Henry Jack Bowman is the real name of “Happy Jack.” Moving to Yucca from Tombstone in 1881, he came to the area at the same time the railroad was being constructed.

Henry owned The Yucca & Signal Stage Line in Yucca and provided service to and from the mining town of Signal. This business also hauled the mail. Henry was also a successful ranch owner and miner, along with keeping burros either to be sold or leased to other prospectors. Signal is now a ghost town.

Newspapers paint a vivid photo of Henry Bowman. He had a partner in this stage and freight operation, Charles Wilson, but the two men eventually had a falling out and went in separate directions. Meeting on a trail one spring day near Yucca in their wagons—neither gave way to the other.

“Happy Jack” was shot in the arm by his former business associate and survived, with Charles Wilson eventually turning himself into Sheriff Robert Steen.

Seven years later, Bowman went on a mining expedition into the surrounding mountains, only for his burros to return to his Cienega Ranch without their owner. Charles Wilson was one of the first men to help look for him. Two weeks later “Happy Jack” turned up a bit weathered from the experience yet alive. He was definitely a tough old buzzard.

Having researched and written this short story, the next time I drive under Happy Jack Bridge on a sweltering 120-degree summer day in an air-conditioned vehicle, with a large Coke within easy reach, I’ll think of Henry “Happy Jack” Bowman sitting on top of his stagecoach with sweaty passengers inside.

How he and others survived back then is a testament to their strength, grit, and tenacity!

TIME MACHINE

“I no longer have to go to a library and search through microfiche cards or suffer eye strain watching flickering reels of fragile microfilm.”

I’ve read books or watched plenty of movies that involve time machines, yet always crave a new such adventure. The “Back to the Future” series with Michael J. Fox is perhaps my favorite. Following close behind is, “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. This 1991 comedy helped send actor Keanu Reeves to stardom.

In 1895, H.G. Wells wrote the most famous time travel episode of all, “The Time Machine.” At only 133 pages long, it’s condensed and full of adventure, yet to fully comprehend things, a reader has to go slow.

Within my blog pieces and published newspaper articles, I mentioned several times, for almost 7 years now, that I’ve been using newspapers.com to travel back in history for research purposes. Lo and behold, in conjunction with this valuable asset, I have a time machine of my own and I’m sitting directly in front of it right now.

Called a computer, I no longer have to go to a library and search through microfiche cards or suffer eye strain watching flickering reels of fragile microfilm. For those folks having spent hours doing this without food or drink, they’ll know what I mean. Like many seniors, I’m slowly forgetting things from the past, yet old newspapers stop fading once they’re digitized.

Newspapers.com is a superb tool for writing articles about events from long ago, yet it’s also great for genealogical purposes. Having spent most of my life in Alaska, just recently, two Alaskan newspapers from that timeline were added to newspapers.com.

Already having access to archived papers from other places we lived, like Florida, California, Alabama, and Texas, I’m now able to reconnect with segments of my life from the forty-ninth state that were captured in print.

Traveling back to 1954, the year that I was born, a birth announcement from the “Pensacola News-Journal” in Pensacola Beach, Florida, was uncovered. From there, jump ahead 9 years to April 9, 1963, and my name is mentioned in the “Selma Times-Journal” as belonging to the recently started Cub Scout Pack 133 in Selma, Alabama.

April 9 is my birthday and I find it very interesting the article was published on that very Tuesday I was having cake and ice cream. Within that short composition, it’s mentioned that our group was going to the Cub and Boy Scout circus in Montgomery. I vaguely recall this, as only one month later, my family moved to Lubbock, Texas.

Very little is mentioned in Texas newspapers about me, other than belonging to the Boy Scouts there and winning an award and prize for reading the most books during the summer of 1964. My prize for this event was a non-fiction adventure manuscript called “Kon Tiki” by Thor Heyerdahl. Although the book is quite tattered after one of our dogs got hold of things, it now resides in a safe place.

Two Alaska newspapers, “The Anchorage Times” and “Anchorage Daily News” contain quite a bit of my history starting with high school graduation, wedding announcements, birth announcements of our children, their graduation and nuptial announcements, obituaries of family and friends, and a smorgasbord of “letters to the editor” written by me. Thankfully, a slew of speeding tickets during the earlier years were never published.

That’s not all of my Alaska history. In the classifieds sections, I came across an ad for a 1968 Dodge Charger that I purchased for $1200, including a 1968 Plymouth GTX for $600, and a 1971 Polaris TX795 Starfire snowmachine for $550. Entering our home phone numbers in a search for other such records, I was able to view items such as furniture that we sold through both newspapers. Old phonebooks provided me with the phone numbers.

During my research, I found archived articles on newspapers.com mentioning American Civil War veterans that were directly related to our family, including news regarding my long-departed great-grandparents, great-aunts, and great-uncles.

Specific events include a tragic fire in 1943 involving an uncle I never met, and horrible accidents that Mom and Dad were involved with. One of those was a car crash near Victorville, California, on July 9, 1957. On that day, my father was riding in a 1957 Corvette driven by a friend who swerved off a curve on Route 66 and flipped. Dad’s leg was severely damaged and he walked with a limp for the rest of his life.

I came across a bunch of wedding and birth announcements for family and friends. I’ve relived life through newspaper articles, regarding tornadoes, floods, and world atrocities such as the 1963 assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

The cost for a subscription to newspapers.com is minimal, and best of all, it can be had for 6-month subscriptions. For writing purposes and for genealogical research, I couldn’t do without my time machine. Quite often, when bored, I fire things up and take a literary journey back to when life was simple.

Yes—living in the past can be a blast!

WOKE MENTALITY

“Records show that neither George Washington nor Martin Luther King Jr. were perfect, much the same as Christopher Columbus.”

Americans recently celebrated Columbus Day. Some “woke folks” have tried to change the name to Indigenous Peoples Day, but it’ll always be Columbus Day to me and others. For those illogically thinking members of society constantly wanting to change history—they should create another day to have American Natives honored besides the second Monday of October. There’s plenty of room for additional federal holidays on the calendar—354 open slots to be exact.

Columbus Day was created in 1892 by President Benjamin Harrison, as a way to memorialize the lives of 11 Italian Americans killed in New Orleans by a vigilante mob on March 14, 1891. Nine of the Italians were lynched with two of them shot. The massacre created quite a rift between Italy and United States relations, with President Harrison attempting to calm the tension with his declaration. This bit of history is never brought up by those trying to remove Columbus Day because undoubtedly, they know little of the history.

For political leaders to now try and erase Columbus Day is a blunt insult to Italians throughout the world, especially those immigrants and their ancestors having settled in America. It’s no different than 50 years down the road, a group of self-described “do-gooders” deciding to change the holiday names of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, or Washington’s Birthday, after delving into their lives and discovering morally questionable behavior.

Records show that neither George Washington nor Martin Luther King Jr. were perfect, much the same as Christopher Columbus. Why punish these guys eons after they were placed in the grave?

Getting back to the definition of “woke.” I hear this word all the time regarding a certain group of thinkers, and it makes me visualize a mass of half-asleep people trying to make decisions when they’re not fully awake. It’s evident that those trying to erase Columbus Day—still need to wake up and smell the coffee!