Tales from the Morgue

Girl Students Earn Credits While Working

June 1, 1943

Homemaking students of El Paso High School are employed in business establishments and taking the place of men in work for the first time as part of their summer project.

The girls also are devoting many hours to Red Cross and other war work for credit in their projects, and are helping with housework and cooking at home. In several instances where mothers are employed they are “running the whole house.”

Carolyn Swindle spends time each afternoon in learning the technique of being a telegraph operator as her project. Elisa Joe is working in a Chinese wholesale grocery store. Eva Dove Perlmater attends to various minor duties in a local hospital giving invaluable aid during the present labor shortage.

Over 3000 meals will be planned and prepared by the 80 girls of the class during the summer in their homes, said Mrs. Oulda Kelley, head of the Homemaking Department in El Paso High School.

MANY VOLUNTEER FOR CHILDREN’S CARE

A number of the girls are volunteering their services for care of children in homes. Others are occupied in canning fruits and vegetables in canning centers and at home to preserve food for next winter’s use.

Some of the students are designing and making their clothes for next fall, and remodeling old clothes. One girl is remodeling her bedroom; another is planning the entire meals for her family. Others are working in Victory Gardens and attend to poultry at home.

Instructors Miss Ivella Jones, Mrs. Faye Maxwell, and Mrs. Kelley, will visit the students during the summer, check on their work, and give advice and consultations when needed.

During June, the students worked on a group project by assisting in the school cafeteria, helping to make choral robes for the school chorus, laundering curtains for the department, making new cup towels, hot pan holders, cleaning the department furniture and floors.

The group also made Red Cross bandages, and ditty bags. On other occasions they prepared cookies for USO and other service units

Sherman Blocks Angle Parking Move For Downtown Area

April 14, 1931

Traffic Department Instructed to Study Other Points Where Lights Needed

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Angle parking will not be restored in the downtown district at the request of merchants, it was decided at the city council meeting yesterday.

Lights and parallel parking will probably be resumed in Five Points, as soon as other outlying suburban districts are similarly equipped, R. E. Sherman said.

Giving his reasons why angle parking should not be restored, Sherman said:

“Not an expert has written an opinion, or an article, on the subject of traffic control in the cities but who state angle parking and lights would not work together. The model traffic ordinance worked out by the United States department of commerce, for the guidance of American cities, made the same statement.

Similar Views Here

“Our own traffic department coincides with that view; so does the local safety council.

“In my opinion a comparison of Five Points, where there are only two lights in one block and that had ever been under light control, with the entire business section is not a proper comparison.

“A proper comparison with Five Points is that business district at Alta Vista, the one at Dyer street near the entrance to Fort Bliss, the one at Alameda and Piedras, and the one at Piedras and Richmond.

“Five Points is an isolated district, located two and a half miles from the remainder of our traffic light system. The traveling public can dodge Five Points, but it cannot dodge the entire business district.”

Study Other Districts

Telegrams sent by the police department proved that no city with a street width comparable to that of El Paso is using angle parking with lights, Sherman argued.

“It will be the policy of the incoming administration to go forward, not backward,” said Sherman. “It will be our policy, as rapidly as funds will permit, to extend the lights, equipping other suburban districts, coincidentally with that to restore the lights at Five Points, and restore parallel parking. Then the question cannot arise of discrimination for any one section of the city as against the other.”

Traffic and engineering departments were instructed to make a study and report to the council on the priority of outlying points where the lights should be installed.

JAIL ESCAPE FAILS AS PRISONER BREAKS ANKLE

August 3, 1949

A County Jail prisoner, awaiting transfer to the state penitentiary to serve a life sentence under the habitual criminal act, failed Tuesday in an escape attempt.

The prisoner, 23-year-old Juan Valenzuela, of El Paso, broke his right ankle in attempting to climb down a rope made of blanket strips from the fifth floor to the third floor of the courthouse.

Deputy Sheriff Jimmy Hicks said Valenzuela and 19 other prisoners were removed from the tank on the fifth floor Tuesday afternoon to a sun porch to enable jailers to make their regular search of the tank for concealed weapons.

Hicks said Valenzuela broke a bar with a loose piece of lumber and began to climb to the roof of the third floor of the courthouse. His ankle was broken in the drop from the rope to the floor.

District Clerk J. C. Orgain notified the Sheriff’s Department when he noticed the blanket strips from the window of his third-floor office.

Valenzuela was under guard at City-County Hospital Tuesday night pending an operation on his ankle.

No other prisoner attempted to escape, Hicks said, but the building was surrounded by sheriff’s deputies after the first alarm.

WILL STOP SALE OF NOXIOUS PEYOTE BEAN

August 20, 1919

MEXICO AND UNITED STATES WILL CO-OPERATE

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Strange Intoxicant That Has Sometimes Fatal Effect to be Suppressed

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The American and Mexican governments, it is learned from a Mexican official, are about to cooperate in an effort to stop the sale of the peyote bean and to eradicate the plant. The bean is a powerful narcotic and intoxicant – more powerful in its effects than opium and whiskey, and more injurious. It is found only in a small section of country in the state of Nuevo Leon, forty miles from the town of Nuevo Laredo in Mexico and a small area in Texas near Laredo, Texas. Indians and lower classes of Mexicans have become addicted to its use and it is gradually extending to the whites. The bean is chewed and the juice swallowed. The first effect is complete unconsciousness. The subject for several hours enjoys delightful sensations and visions. This is followed by several hours of wild intoxication. Complete prostration and sometime death ensues. Whole families of Mexicans and Indians may be found under its influence at the same time.

The peyote is produced from a cactus that grows in the form of radish with indented center. An inch of the top is cut off and dried in the sun, when the blossom becomes cottony in appearance and to this circumstance the peyote, a caterpillar, owes its name.

1924: NEW $180,000 JUAREZ BRIDGE OPENS TODAY

October 14, 1924

Gid Miller, motorman on the first street car run across the old international bridge by the El Paso Electric Railway company, January 10, 1902, will be at the controller when car No. 82 rolls over the new $180,000 concrete Stanton street bridge this morning at 6 o’clock.

M.H. Filey, conductor on the first car across the bridge in 1902 and who still has the first nickel collected, according to Supt. Alves Dixon, will be conductor on the first car over this morning.

Assignment of the two employes to this honor will be the only formality attached to the opening of the new bridge to street car traffic.

Open to Vehicles Thursday

The bridge will be opened to vehicles and pedestrians Thursday if plans are carried out. Customs and immigration authorities have been given notice to that effect.

Mayor P.M. Fierro of Juarez and his councilmen will be the first to ride over the bridge in an automobile. They will be accompanied by Mr. Dixon, Mayor R.M. Dudley and his aldermen will accompany the party back to Juarez, after which the bridge will be thrown open to general traffic.

Two-way traffic over the Santa Fe street bridge will no longer be necessary. Juarez-bound vehicular traffic will move over the new Stanton street bridge. El Paso bound traffic will move over the Santa Fe street bridge.

Work on the new bridge was started last spring. The old wooden bridge was wrecked after a temporary trestle was constructed for street cars.

Ornamental lights

Concrete piling was driven into the rive bed and it was on these that the steel and concrete structure rests.

Ornamental lights add to the beauty of the bridge. The toll collector’s house and the customs station have been designed and finished to conform with the general plan of construction.

The railway rests on a standard road-bed, the section for vehicles is paved and there is a concrete walk for pedestrians.

Crews were at work last night cutting in the track.

A New Enterprise

February 14, 1893

The El Paso Gas, Electric Light and Power company, is making arrangements to put in a number of gas stoves for cooking and heating purposes and will be able to make it so cheap to consumers that the project is regarded as feasible. The company has decided upon the following rates and will soon have the stoves here on the ground. If fifty consumers are obtained the price will be $1.90 per 1000 feet; if one hundred and fifty consumers, $1,75; if two hundred and twenty-five consumers $1.50. Coal is being sold by the dealers at 10.50 per ton, and the gas stoves, which are better and more serviceable, will reduce the cooking and heating expenses to every household fully two-thirds. These stoves are fast taking the place of coal stoves in all the cities where gas can be obtained cheap.

12,000 At Christ Statue Dedication

October 30, 1939

Devout Pilgrims Climb to Peak For Ceremony

Barefooted, with shoes under their arms, women with infants in arm, men, women and children, some 12,000 of them – they marched for hours up the sinuous path to the top of Mount Cristo Rey to honor Christ the King, to witness the dedication of the great monument in His honor, and around again His words spoken to another multitude on a mountain, 2000 years ago – “Blessed are the Peacemakers.”

The pilgrims began the ascent shortly after noon, and five hours later, when the dedication ceremonies were over, they still formed a chain up the mountain slope, passing those descending.

Mothers led toddling youngsters. Fathers carried infants. The aged and infirm labored up the graded path, pausing at the Stations of the Cross lining the way, to rest and to pray. One elderly woman, with her shoes inconspicuously wrapped in paper walked barefoot and smiled in reply when asked if her feet hurt. “Malisima de as piernas,” she said, and continued on her way, hoping this penance would help to affect a cure of her rheumatic legs.

Behind the first thousands to make the ascent came the formal procession of clergymen, religists, veterans of American Legion Post 36, and the pilgrims, parish by parish, singing hymns and reciting the Rosary. The procession wound into the heavy shadows of the mountains and out into the glaring sunlight of early afternoon.

Pilgrims Are Blessed

Most Rev. A.J. Schuler, S.J.D.D., L.L.D., Bishop of El Paso, who officiated at the dedication, carried in the sidecar of a motorcycle up the slope, passed through the pilgrims blessing them as he went.

Soon after 3 p.m., the rocky summit of the mountain, westward of the 40-foot monument, swarmed with people, seeking points of vantage to view the ceremony at the altar at the base of the cross. The salute of Christ was on the other side of the monument, overlooking El Paso, and Mexico to the southeast; but on that side the mountain fell away too precipitously to hold the great mass of people for the services.

It was the sixth annual pilgrimage up the mountain in honor of the Feast of Christ the King, which comes on the last Sunday of October. Six years ago the first cross, a wooden one, 12 foot high was placed on the summit.

Amid the awesome grandeur of rugged mountains, low mesas and desert sweeping more than 100 miles away, and almost 1000 feet below, the throng knelt before the glaring white cross as Bishop Schuler raised the golden Monstrance, containing the Blessed Sacrament, afire in light of the setting sun, and blessed them then turned toward Mexico and blessed that country.

Presents National Emblem

Dr. Ralph Homan, of American Legion Post 36, presented the National Emblem of the monument. It was raised on its staff by Sgt. Leo Camplin, another veteran, his chest heavy with medals won in the World War. Rev. Father W.A. Swinburne, assistant pastor of St. Patrick’s cathedral, said the invocation.

Bishop Schuler accepted the monument from a delegation of 12 workers, headed by the foreman. Domingo Placentia, representing the 125 workers on the project. Rev. Father L.F. Costa, of the Smelter Church, and Urbiel Soler, sculptor, completed the unveiling, and Bishop Schuler blessed the monument.

Father Costa read a poem, written by himself, honoring Bishop Schuler, who Saturday observed the 24th anniversary of the appointment as a bishop. The poem also thanked the bishop for his interest and making the monument possible.

Rev. Father Emeterio Diego, assistant pastor of Guardian Angel Church, spoke on the history of the Feast of Christ the King, who always advocated peace among men. The new monument, near the international border, he said, replaced the 25-foot statue to Christ the King on Mount Cubilet, near Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico. That statue was destroyed in 1926 by an aerial bomb upon the order of the Mexican government, he said.

During the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, Bishop Schuler read “The Act of Consecration to the Sacred Heart” in English, and Rev. Father G. Garcia, S.J, assistant pastor of St. Ignatius Church, read it in Spanish.

The Franciscan Choir, composed of nine priests and 23 scholastics from St. Anthony’s Seminary in Austin Terrance, sang a hymn to Christ the King.

Bishop Schuler officiated at benediction and was assisted by honorary deacons, Rev. Father J.M. Llovet, C.M.F., pastor of Gordian Angel Church, and Father Garcia.

At the foot of the cross during benediction were Sisters of Loretto, Daughters of St. Vincent de Paul, Sisters of St. Joseph, Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, Sisters Catechists, Christian Brothers, 25 priests and the Franciscan Choir.

The committee of the Monument to Christ the King Diocesan Project included: Bishop Schuler, chairman; Father Costa; A.J. Slogeris, engineer; Cleofas Calleros; Urbiel Soler, sculptor; the late Right Rev. Monsignor Salvador Uranga, former pastor of the Juarez Church, who died in Canutillo six months ago, and Very Rev. J.C.M. Garde, S.J. vicar-general.

The committee requested that the many persons who took photographs during the ceremony telephone Mr. Calleros, at Main 7262 or Main 2764. The committee would like copy of the photographs, or the loan of the negatives, so that prints can be made from them. A complete photographic library of the project is being made. More than 5900 pictures have been filed already by the committee.

Cut-up mayor leaves some fit to be tied

June 12, 1985

By David Crowder
Times staff writer

The temperature has pushed over the 102-degree mark for four of the past five days, and some people are wondering if it’s getting to Mayor Jonathan Rogers who, ever-armed with his trusty scissors, is escalating his attack on ties.

“He’s gone on a binge,” West Central city Rep. Suzie Azar said Tuesday, referring to the mayor’s latest tie-chopping antics. “He used to ask permission, but lately he’s gone berserk.”

Rogers, who has gained nationwide notoriety for enforcing his ban on coats and ties at City Hall, insists he is fine and that the heat may be going to other people’s heads, but not his.

“Not me, he said, I’m cool and comfortable in my guayabera,” referring to the loose-hanging, Mexican-style sport shirts he wears.

Azar said people became noticeably nervous and started removing their ties when the guayabera-garbed mayor, scissors in hand, showed up Sunday at the victory party for El Pasoan Laura Martinez Herring, who recently was named Miss USA.

“There were people disrobing right and left,” Azar said. “I think he will settle down when the temperature drops.”

As a precaution, the dapper East Central city Rep. Orlando Fonseca, who rarely appears without a coat and tie, has issued a warning some might take as a dare.

“Cut my tie, get a black eye,” Fonseca said.

Rogers’ victims this week have included County Judge Pat O’Rourke, convention bureau Chairman John Folmer and Roy Zuloaga, an account executive with a Dallas advertising firm.

Zuloaga, who handles advertising for McDonalds’s, was fit to be French fried, Fonseca said, when Rogers snipped off the silk garment between the second and third button Monday.

“He said, ‘I don’t care what his policy is, that tie cost $30. It was my favorite yellow tie,’ ” Fonseca reported.

Rogers said he warned Zuloaga in advance.

“I told him what was going to happen if he wore one,” Rogers aid, adding that he had a good reason. “Ronald McDonald, the clown, told me to cut it off.”

Zuloaga, he said, accepted his tie’s fate and probably will show it as a business expense.

The question going now is, “Who will be next?”

1947: Boy Who Cared For Hurt Dog On Mountain Will Get Medal

January 13, 1947

The love of a boy for a dog should not go unnoticed. And for that reason John G. Work, Jr., 15-year-old son of Mr. And Mrs. John G. Work, Sr. of Van Buren Avenue, has been awarded a bronze medal for his fidelity to his injured dog, “Spud,” by the American Humane Association.

The medal will be presented as soon as the medal is prepared.

John spent a cold night last Nov. 16 on the foothills of Mount Franklin after “Spud” was injured and cut chasing a wild animal to such an extent he could not return under his own power. The youngster was unable to carry his dog down the mountain, so he built a fire and spent the night. They were found en route home by searching parties the next morning.

Credit for calling attention to the deed of bravery and fidelity goes to Mrs. Mildred Johnson, 2219 North Stanton Street. Mrs. Johnson, a recent arrival in El Paso from New York, where she was a solid backer of the American humane Association, mailed a clipping form The El Paso Times which told the story to association headquarters in Buffalo, N.Y.

The association wrote her in reply the matter had been referred to its committee on award for consideration.

After verifying facts of the story with Dr. Thomas A. Bray, president of El Paso Humane Society, and Mrs. Bray, secretary, the awards committee voted the medal to the lad.

The medal is now being struck and engraved, and upon completion will be sent to El Paso society, which will have charge of the presentation.

Sad aftermath of the story is the fact that Spud proved to be paralyzed after a few days. One of his injuries was a fractured or injured vertebra.

The eight-year-old Chesapeake retriever has recovered somewhat and now is able to roam the back yard of the Work home, but still does not have free use of his rear legs.

John Jr. romps with “Spud” much of the time, but when the youngster leaves, “Spud” sits at the gate with big tears wailing up in his eyes.

During El Paso’s recent cold wave “Spud” has found a soft, warm bed with his young master.

1929: Arrested Man Asks For Chance To Fight Duel With Constable

October 10, 1929

J. W. Winebrener, El Paso constable, had a chance to “shoot it out” here yesterday. The constable was challenged to a duel and the would-be duelist wasn’t drunk.

Winebrener arrested Juventia Garcia, 706 South Kansas street. Garcia’s wife said he had been whipping her. Garcia’s brother-in-law accompanied the arrested man and the constable to Judge A. J. Wilson’s justice of the peace court where assault charges were filed.

“I’d like to shoot it out with both of you,” Garcia told the officer and his brother-in-law.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t have, an extra gun,” Winebrener told Garcia, “and I could hardly let you have mine.”