Tales from the Morgue

1911: El Paso’s Electric Signs Make City’s Nights Bright

10/07/1911

Slowly but surely El Paso is becoming more brilliant and is adding to its reputation as the best lighted city of Texas. In addition to the street and gooseneck lighting which is paid for by the city and the merchants, the individual sign lighting is rapidly becoming a potent factor in the Illumination of the business district. New advertising signs are constantly being added to the skyline of the night city. He big American National bank sign has been turned on and the entire top of the building is illuminated by the sign and the eagle which surmounts it.

Hotels Have Big Signs

The Sheldon hotel is having illuminated signs paced at the Oregon street, Mills street and Pioneer plaza entrances to the lobby. These will be turned on next week and will add to the already brilliant illumination of the plaza and Oregon street. The St. Regis hotel has one of the most artistic signs in the city. It is the hotel name in script as it appears n the stationary and menus, and is supported by a large battle ax.

El Paso Herald a Pioneer

The El Paso Herald was one of the pioneers in the illuminates gin field. The upright Herald sign, which stands on top of the building and shows from almost every part of the city, is one of the largest in the city. It may be seen from Mexico and East El Paso, and is arranged for an additional sign to show to the northwest. The electric light company was another pioneer firm in the night illumination of the city. The Use Electric Light sign on the Trust building has been shining for the heavens for more than two years now. The entire front of the building is also being decorated with strands of electric lights swung from the cornice. These strands are now being strung from the Stanton and San Antonio street sides of the building, which will be called the electric building in the future.

Fifty-Three Large Signs

Lighting engineer Joseph Neu, of the electric company, has prepared an estimate of the amount of lighting which assists in the night illumination of the city without an added cent of cost to the cit government. There are now 53 large illuminating advertising signs, not counting the new “heart of El Paso” sign which is to be erected on the roof of the Calisher building and which will be outlined in red lamps. These signs represent a total of 7406 four candle power lamps, or 29,624 candle power lights.

Vado's founder walked from Georgia

02/13/2010

An Oct. 26, 1975, article by C.R. Giles tells the story of Vado and the Boyer family.

In the late 1890s, Francis Marion Boyer was incensed by the slaying of a black barber and the subsequent trial, in which the barber's killer, a white patron, was acquitted by an all-white jury that took less than 10 minutes to decide the case.

Boyer recalled stories of a valley out West told to him by his father, who had served as a civilian wagoner with the U.S. Army during the Mexican-American War in 1847.

Henry brought supplies to soldiers stationed in the Southwest. He told his son about an area south of Las Cruces that had head-high grass and was filled with antelope, buffalo and whitetail deer.

The article says, "In 1899, Francis Boyer and a man by the name of Dan Keyes set out on foot for the promised land. It took them a year to walk the 2,000 miles across the southern United States. When they stopped, the place was Roswell, N.M. For Boyer, it was home. Keyes continued to walk on down the road into historical obscurity, relays fourth-born child of Francis M.

Boyer, Hobart Boyer, 76, another enduring relative of the pioneer."

In 1900, Francis Boyer, a college graduate, took his first job in the Southwest. He worked as a cook on a chuck wagon for about three months. His next job was as a ranch hand on the Chisolm "spread."

"It was almost a year before he sent for his family and settled them near Roswell in a place now known as Blackdom," the article says. "The town still stands, but like Vado, began to decline after its promising start.

"Francis and Ella Boyer had by now seven of the 10 children they would have. They homesteaded on 16 acres in the Pecos Valley for the next 21 years.

"It was 1921 when they finally moved over into the Rio Grande Valley, into what is now Vado,  ccording to Hobart Boyer.

"As Hobart recalls, 'We were the first coloreds to move into this area and the first to farm in Dona Ana County. My dad was renting about 250 acres when he came across the Barite Land and Development Co.

"A man in the company asked him if he would like to buy some land. My dad said, 'I don't have the money to buy land.'

" 'The man replied, "I didn't ask you about no money." My dad listened,' Hobart said. 'The man went on to make a deal that if my dad would buy the land in 10-, 20- and 40- acre tracts "in the rough," he could pay for it as it was convenient for him.'

"The settling by blacks continued. The cotton had lured the people to the valley, and with the gentle yet powerful persuasion of Francis Boyer, they had been convinced this would be a good place to settle."

Boyer busied himself establishing the Valley Grove Masonic Lodge No. 9, a Prince Hall affiliate, the Auto-Literary Society and a church.

In 1924 a branch of the NAACP was formed in the Las Cruces area. The small chapter fought the School Proposition that "subscribed to the separate-but-equal doctrine."

"Although Francis Boyer didn't live to see the results of his efforts in the civil rights struggle," the article said, "the chapter was hailed in 1969 by the national office as the branch that had the strongest influence on desegregation throughout the nation."

In 1925 the Paul Lawrence Dunbar School was built in Vado. The school had four large rooms and housed 175 children.

"The Ku Klux Klan was a rather watered-down affair in the valley, and response to organize any sizable kleagle was unsuccessful in 1925," the article said. "A large part of the unsuccessful campaign could be attributed to the dense Mexican population in this area.

"Another reason the Klan was not able to wage a full-scale campaign was a New Mexico state law enacted in 1929 that forbade the wearing of '... masks, hoods and robes on public streets, alleys, highways or thoroughfares. ...

"Francis Marion Boyer had tried five times to settle towns. Four of those times, for varied reasons, the dreams he had for the town were stymied. These places were Afro, Fla.; Camps, Ala.; Ham City, Ga.; and Blackdom, N.M. It almost came to completion for him in Vado.

"When asked how his father stood the disappointment, Hobart replied, 'Well he settled four towns in the past, so he knew what he was getting into.' "

1911: The Calliope Recital A Success

April 3, 1911

A Great Crowd Hears Prof. Wills Play All Popular Airs on Steam Piano

“Ah-medite-ly aftah the pee-rade – there will be a free conce’t in front of The Herald building on the plaza. Free-free to evera-one!”

Circus day, a bit frappe for El Paso, but circus day just the same, is this day and date in this city and state.

The Maderos are here for peace negotiations, congress opens Tuesday and Sarah Bernhardt is coming. But the circus, Sells-Floto circus, is here and now.

THE PARADE

On time to the minute, the women hussar trumpeters heralded the approach of the medieval and modern pageant as it did a figure around the Mills building corner, rumbled through Pioneer plaza and down El Paso street. Nifty, a bit slangy, but all the more apt, fits the Sells-Floto shows like a rubber glove. No moth eaten uniforms and bedraggled banners were to be seen in the passing show. Every uniform was as bright and sparkling as an industrious and over-worked wardrobe woman could make them. Even the pony boys were dressed in jaunty auto caps and coats and everything connected with the one and only western circus spelled ready money.

The livestock were combed and curried within an inch of their lives, and the little ponies had removed their winter underwear with the assistance of the machine clippers. Even the lazy looking elephants had received a shiny coat of oil and a good rub down before the parade, and their trappings were spanking new.

A CIRCUS IMPROVEMENT

Circus parades are as standard as a free lunch. The Sells-Floto parade was all that the others have been with variations, additions and improvements. Bands on the hurricane decks of eight horse chariots, more bands on six horse chariots, roaring lions open cages, grinning hyenas, a snake charmer, the only known on in existence who is under the age of 50, a fire engine with steam up. These and much more composed the ensemble of the free street offering which Messrs. Sells and Floto have to offer to a circus loving public.

The clown contingent was there with caps and bells on. There were clowns on bicycles and clowns on foot, clown Jamison, the king of clowns, was there in his chariot of state with a retinue of clowns and clownlets, who grinned an inviting invitation to see them perform their newest and most novel antics at 25 cents per head, gold money. The customary clown band was perched on the customary pole wagon and played the customary discordant music from their badly battered instruments.

THE CALLIOPE CONCERT

And the calliope-pronounced cal-iope, accent on the end, please, was the last and best. Harry Wills, not professor, but the real thing, did things on that boiler shop musical instrument that would make the boy with the lion-like mane go back to his spaghetti shop. Notes as big as walnuts, to quote friend Abe Martin, were emanating from that calliope like the balloons from the roof of The Herald building with the free tickets attached.

“The Holy City,” “Every Little Moment,” “Casey Jones,” and all the other popular airs were played and the crowds that literally packed and jammed Pioneer plaza in front of The Herald building, cheered and applauded. Harry Wills, is without a doubt, the real kind of calliope player. He doesn’t come from Indianan, like most circus men, but from Illinois, and he plays just like an Illinois senator talks in defending himself from graft charges; he is there very minute and then some.

Circus day is as much a part of American life as election day or the cornerstone laying of the new town hall. This is circus day, the four flushing rain has ceased, the wind has promised to be good and the street cars are running to the circus grounds. A ticket, plus a bag of peanuts, and what more could one wish for the makings of a holiday.

THE AFTERNOON PERFORMANCE

The big tent was well filled for this afternoon’s performance and the applause was enthusiastic and warm. How the Sells-Floto people can give such a show for 25 cents is a mystery.

The Sells-Floto people have gathered together a magnificent aggregation of attractions. They have broken away from the old time honored circus traditions; kept what was lasting and what pleases, and eliminated many of the acts which were popular years ago, but which are not so attractive now as they were when father was a boy.

The most radical break made by the Sells-Floto people – and one that is making a tremendous hit all over the country, is the price of admission, which is this season, and was last season, placed at the almost ridiculously low price of 25 cents.

The Sells-Floto people have broken all the rules of the game and violated the most sacred traditions of the profession. They give a really high class show at a very moderate price of admission; they live up absolutely to the letter of their advertising, and appear straight and square with the public in every particular.

A REAL BIG SHOW

But the big show itself. There were the lion and the unicorn; the blood-sweating behemoth of the Nile; elephants that executed the Salome dance and did everything else except light a cigaret and blow the smoke in your face, to say nothing of the two baby elephants at their prayers and performed many other wonderful stunts; horses that did about everything that a horse can do; acrobats, trapeze artists and beautiful women in the gorgeous spangled costumes and clowns – if there is anything funny that they don’t do, it hasn’t been heard of in these parts up to date.

MORPHY, THE SINGER

In every way the show is a big success. From the time that Bert Morphy, “the man who sings to beat the band,” came forward and took the big audience into his confidence, to the end of the show, when the really excellent hippodrome races brang down the curtain, there was not a dull moment or a mediocre act.

To single out any of the performers for special mention would hardly be fair to the others. Each one in his line was far above the ordinary. Perhaps the act which caused more thrills and quivers and shivers and gripping of seats was that of Omar, the equine aviator, ridden by Miss Arline, who, standing upon a small platform made in imitation of an airship, was raised to the top of the tent and left suspended in midair while a fireworks display was set off, completely covering horse and rider with a shower of glittering sparks.

Mention should also be made of Bert Morphy, to whom is largely due the fact that the performance gets off to a good start, and the audience is put in a good humor to enjoy the balance of the show. Morphy has a really remarkable voice, which fills the big tent so that everybody can plainly hear every word of his songs.

It is not only a children’s show, but a show for the old folks, too-and this afternoon there was no scarcity of grownups.

Angry mob captures Night Stalker suspect Richard Ramirez

September 1, 1985

El Paso Times -

El Paso native Ricardo Ramirez, charged with murder in connection with California’s “Night Stalker” slayings, will be held without bond until a court hearing, probably Thursday, authorities in Los Angeles said Saturday.

Ramirez, 25, was captured and beaten by a mob of angry people Saturday morning in Los Angeles after he allegedly tried to pull Angie De La Torre, 29, from her car to steal the vehicle.

It began when shoppers at a liquor store reported they saw Ramirez pick up a newspaper, look at his photo on the cover and run, police said.

As residents and police gave chase, Ramirez at one point approached the woman and tried to pull her out of the car, authorities said. Her husband, Manuel, 35, saw what was happening and attacked Ramirez with a fence post. A crowd gathered, and as Ramirez tried to run again, they gave chase. An hour after it started, the mob caught up with Ramirez and began beating him.

Police launched an air and ground search as calls continued, saying the man was seen crossing the city line into unincorporated county territory, where he finally was arrested.

“It seemed like alert citizens were reporting the suspect every step of the way,” Police Cmdr. William Booth said.

At one point, Ramirez ran through back yards, where at least one man struck him with barbecue utensils, Booth said.

As Ramirez ran, neighbors emerged from their homes and joined in the fight, police said.

As the crowd beat Ramirez, witnesses said, he shouted, in Spanish: “It’s me! It’s me! It’s me! I’m lucky the cops caught me.”

Deputy Sam Jones of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said Ramirez was not hurt badly, although he did suffer head wounds and was treated by a fire department paramedic at the scene.

Law enforcement officials Friday had identified Ramirez as the prime suspect in the string of 16 “Night Stalker” slayings and in 21 other nighttime attacks since February that had spread fear from Southern California to San Francisco, 600 miles to the north.

Sheriff’s deputies took Ramirez for questioning to the Hollenbeck Police Station, where a surging crowd of about 500 jeering people gathered outside, shouting “Kill him! Kill him!

More articles

Father blames drugs for son's trouble

'Stalker' suspect's sister complains about coverage of family by media

Ramirez’s sister says his lawyer won’t let him plead guilty

‘Night Stalker case goes to jury

Ramirez’s dad questions verdict in ‘Night Stalker’ murder trial

'Night Stalker' attracting a slew of women visitors to jail

2009: El Paso veterans remember D-Day

06/06/2009

By Zahira Torres
El Paso Times

EL PASO -- Most of them were teenagers.

They were drafted into the military or joined to help turn the tide of World War II.

Sixty-five years ago today, on June 6, 1944, now known as D-Day, many of them had their first taste of combat.

"I slept about halfway to Normandy, and when the plane started rocking and moving every which way, then I knew that we hadn't been trained correctly," Lower Valley resident Angel Romero, 84, said as he remembered the German gunfire that met American airplanes as they approached the French coast.

Then 19 and a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division, Romero said no training could approximate combat.

"They never told us that we were going to be shot at by such good people," he said. "The German was a tremendous adversary. He wasn't a dumb Joe."

The United States entered World War II after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Though battles were won against Japanese forces in the Pacific and Allied forces had defeated Italy and pushed Germany out of Sicily and Naples, the United States military was relying on D-Day to win the war.

America and her allies sent an estimated 5,300 ships and landing craft, 12,000 planes, and 150,000 soldiers to Normandy's 50-mile stretch of beaches to fight German soldiers.

It was a turning point in the war, but those fighting did not know it. More than 9,000 Allied soldiers died or were wounded on D-Day.

Maynard Beamesderfer, then 21, was part of a small group of Pathfinders from the 101st Airborne Division. They parachuted in shortly before midnight June 5 near the town of Carentan, a German stronghold between Omaha and Utah beaches. They were to set up for thousands of Allied soldiers expected the next day.

The paratrooper remembers a warning issued to the troops by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower over a loudspeaker.

He told the 350 Pathfinders that their early entrance could leave them in the dangerous position of fighting thousands of German soldiers if the invasion was called off.

"We were only there for four to five hours ahead, but those four to five hours was, oh, it was bad," Beamesderfer, now 85, said as his eyes turned toward the floor. "There was machine-gun fire continuously and we were on our bellies, crawling, soaking wet. It is hard to explain how it was. How we did it. I don't know how we did it, but we did it."

On that day, Beamesderfer received his first of three wounds during World War II.

A bullet grazed his shoulder, and he received a concussion from English explosives that he and other soldiers were using. Later, as the fighting moved to Holland, he was bayoneted and shot. More combat in the Battle of the Bulge left him paralyzed from the waist down for more than a year.

The Santa Teresa resident received a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and three Purple Hearts.

Beamesderfer, though, dismissed his injuries as "scrapes" compared with what happened to comrades.

"You see one of your friends, you are looking at him and, after all, half his head is blown up or he was shot in his stomach, is holding his stomach and knowing he can't live long. I mean things like this, you just can't explain to people how it really is. It's no picture."

But explanations from these brave men are crucial, said Bob Patrick, director of the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress American Folklife Center. It is working to record personal history accounts of veterans of all wars and conflicts.

Patrick said stories like those of the El Pasoans who shared memories of D-Day with the El Paso Times are important to how people remember history.

"It is an event like D-Day that reminds us what they did," he said. "They saved the world."

About 1,000 World War II veterans are dying daily. Many have kept stories of the war, its casualties and their experiences closely guarded.

Some don't want to relive the images of fellow soldiers shot dead, or they don't want their grandchildren to hear about the atrocities at Nazi concentration camps.

Others haven't been asked, or they simply believe they were doing what everyone else was doing -- fighting and trying to survive.

One of those veterans is Ray Burchfield, who was a soldier in the 90th Infantry Division. Burchfield, 93, a Northeast resident, has shared little about the 11-day trip by ship from the United States to Utah Beach.

He does not talk about riding to shore on an amphibious military truck on D-Day afternoon, nor does he discuss how he became part of a makeshift rifle company that formed as soldiers on the front lines were killed or wounded.

He was one of the few left in his unit after D-Day who knew how to use a bazooka. Given that, he became a scout to alert other soldiers of what to anticipate as they marched ahead.

"I just more or less wanted to forget it," said Burchfield, who was 27 years old during the war. "I don't regret it. It just wasn't very pleasant to talk about. I didn't really care to see all those bodies on the side of the road. One of the boys from my company was in charge of putting them there, and it was a lot of them those first couple of months."

Burchfield's first child was born while he was at war, and he still recalls the sound of gunfire ringing in his ears.

Still, he is quick to list soldiers who had it tougher:

The ones at Omaha Beach, who saw more casualties. The first wave to face the Germans at Utah Beach. The pilots who shot down German planes before they killed more soldiers in the water and on the ground.

Yet that day was just the beginning of an arduous campaign that would continue to Holland and end with the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium's Ardennes Forest.

"The Battle of the Bulge was worse than Holland and D-Day put together," Beamesderfer said. "We didn't have the proper food, the proper clothing and our equipment was so poor. Sometimes you were so hungry you took the food off the dead, off of their rations or something, but you had to get it some way."

Yet the hunger, the wounds from battle and the memories that sometimes veterans wish to forget do not overcome the importance of what was accomplished in World War II, Angel Romero said.

A recipient of two Bronze Stars and three Purple Hearts, he said that when he is asked whether the war was worth it, he shows his questioners pictures of Nazi concentration camps.

"When you smell that ... ," Romero said, his voice trailing off. He could not finish his sentence as he pointed to a picture with the bodies of Jewish families piled atop each other.

After gazing at the picture for a few seconds, he continued.

"The pictures are erased but the smell never goes away," he said. "The stench of human beings."

2011: Truckloads of Ataris, games buried nearby

02/19/2011

By Trish Long
El Paso Times

I received an e-mail this week from Josep Capel, producer of the radio program "Generació Digital de Catalunya Radio," on the Catalonian national radio in Spain.

He wanted to know if there was any truth to the Internet rumor that hundreds of "E.T." Atari game cartridges were buried in the El Paso desert.

He wrote, "More than a legend, it seems to be a fact. A few months ago I had the opportunity to interview Mr. Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, and he confirmed that the legend is true. At the same time the Internet is full of references, but you know, it is not always reliable; the rumors are based on hearsay, which in turn are based on more rumors."

Capel is making a TV version of the radio program and wants to confirm the accuracy of the rumor.

The rumor is based in fact, but it wasn't hundreds of cartridges -- it was thousands. And they weren't buried in the El Paso desert, but in a landfill in Alamogordo.

In 1972, Atari introduced "Pong," a coin-operated video game. A home version of "Pong," which attached to the user's television set, was marketed in 1975. In 1977, the Video Computer System was introduced and offered interchangeable game cartridges.

Atari opened an El Paso factory with 30 employees in September 1979 in an unused building in the Farah Manufacturing plant at 5645 Beacon.

By 1981, the factory had 350 employees and was the largest manufacturing operation outside of the company's headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif.

In March 1982, Atari Inc. officially opened a $7 million manufacturing plant at 11440 Pellicano, but it had started operations in August 1981.

By September 1983, Atari had laid off 380 of its 660 El Paso employees when the company "re-aligned its manufacturing operation." The plant went from manufacturing home video game cartridges to "remanufacturing," or repairing faulty merchandise returned by vendors.

In 1984, the El Paso Atari plant was closed for good, putting the remaining 300 employees out of work. El Paso's remanufacturing work was moved to Sunnyvale, and the software production to Taiwan.

It was a September 1983 event that prompted the rumor, as well as a decision by the Alamogordo City Commission to adopt an ordinance prohibiting dumping of trash generated outside the city limits in the city's landfill without the city manager's approval.

Atari said it sent 10 truckloads to the Alamogordo dump, but a representative of Browning Ferris Industries, which operated the dump, said the figure was closer to 20 loads. Each trailer carried 100 cubic yards of game cartridges, consoles and instruction booklets.

Atari sent its own security guards to prevent pilfering, and at the end of the six-day operation, the crushed material was buried under dirt and then covered with 50 cubic yards of concrete.

Bruce Entin, spokesman for Atari Inc., told the Times, "We wanted to make sure it was entombed in the landfill." He also said that he didn't know the value of the discarded equipment and that the equipment had been accumulating since the El Paso plant was converted from manufacturing new equipment to repairing it a year earlier.

In 2005, Shelley E. Smith of the Alamogordo Daily News, reported, "So started the legend, which has escalated to international acclaim, of whether this did, or did not, occur. Some are calling it the 'Atari Titanic' and comparing it to the legendary Stonehenge or Roswell's extraterrestrial experience.

"Bruce Snyder recently came from Fort Worth, Texas, to visit friends and to do research on the Atari landfill incident.

" 'If you go on the Internet. there is a lot of international interest in this from the United Kingdom, Japan and Europe,' Snyder said.

"Snyder said, 'Some people are having thoughts that it might be fun to try and come out here and dig it up, but in reality it is not a feasible idea. They are treating it as a treasure hunt, just to see where they are at and maybe find some items that were in the Atari warehouse that got buried along with the millions of extra copies of 'E.T.' and other games. You could call them video game fanatics, or digital Atari archaeologists.' "