Tales from the Morgue

EP College Flight Class Gets Off Ground

October 3, 1972

Sgt. Sanford Mullis, attached to A. Battery 3rd Training Battalion, 1st AIT Brigade at Ft. Bliss, is learning how to fly in what he terms is the “easy way.”

He is the first person to enroll in El Paso Community College’s Private Pilot Flight Course which is taught in conjunction with Southwest Air Rangers at El Paso International Airport.

The program comes under the continuing education and adult services programs. Rudy Ortiz, director of the program, handles arrangements for the special career training course.

Ortiz said the private pilot ground school, which is required to obtain a private pilot certificate, is also available. The ground pilot course started Sept. 26 but interested persons can still enroll by contracting the college, 6601 Dyer.

The flight course is scheduled on individual basis depending on when the student can arrange his hours to take the flight instructions.

Sgt. Mullis, who is originally from Monroe, N.C., has been stationed in Ft. Bliss for the past three months and is excited of taking the course and being the first student to do so under the El Paso Community College program.

“This is something that I have always wanted to do,” said the Army sergeant who thinks flying is the best thing that has happened since the invention of the wheel.

The course itself starts with the airplane sitting on the ground and the instructor telling the student the safety procedures that are required.

The safety procedures are the most important factors of flying, said Robert Briggs who is a flight instructor for Southwest Air Rangers and the instructor for Sgt. Mullis.

Briggs, who is from Palo Alto Calif., learned to fly at Oakland International Airport and has been flying since 1967.

He arrived in El Paso in 1968 with the army and when he got out in January of 1972 he decided to make El Paso his home because he liked the weather and friendly people.

Some of the basic instructions of the course given to the student pilot include climbs, glides, turns plus straight and level flying training. Also how to take-off and land.

A private pilot license, which requires a minimum of 35 flight hours, can sometimes lead to a commercial aviation career which includes opportunities such as airline captain, test pilot, corporate pilot, air taxi pilot and professional flight instructor. Sgt. Mullis says he will use his to cruise throughout the world after finishing his service with the Army.

All flight training is done by specialists at an FAA approved flight school and instructions are given by FAA rated flight instructors.

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.