Black Bart the Poet Outlaw

            On Thursday when I got up my right hip muscles felt worse than ever.

I wrote another verse for my alternative version of Serge Gainsbourg’s “Frankenstein”. I still need a verse about the monster’s longing to be part of the DeLacey family’s life, another about how he learned how to speak and read from observing them, another about his final realization that no humans would ever accept him, another about his request of Frankenstein to make him a bride and Frankenstein’s refusal, and I already have the last verse when he kills Victor’s bride.

            I finally tackled the task of cleaning the area behind my desk. I pulled it further out, vacuumed all the cat hair, unplugged everything, washed the power bar and dried it with a hair dryer, and washed the floor. Two of the plugs were from two scanners that no longer work so I did not have to put those back in. I pushed the desk fully against the wall for the first time in years.

            I had the rest of some sautéed zucchini, onions and jalapenos with some fava beans and salsa for lunch.

            I did some exercises for my periforma muscles.

            In the late afternoon I rode to Freshco where I bought three bags of grapes, two half pints of raspberries, a tomato and a bottle of olive oil. “A bottle of olive oil” is a nice sounding phrase. I had the exact change.

            I boiled a potato, sautéed a zucchini with onion and jalapenos and heated a slice of roast beef with gravy for dinner. I watched two episodes of Stories of the Century.

            The first story was about stage robber Black Bart. He always worked on foot with a shotgun and an axe. It seemed odd that he would be called Black Bart when he wore a white flour sack as a disguise. He would have the strongbox removed and have the coach drive on. He would use the axe to open the strongbox. After emptying the box he would leave a poem inside. In one case he leaves a handkerchief behind as a bandage on a boy that had hurt his leg. The handkerchief has a laundry mark from San Francisco. The laundry is found and watched. Black Bart is apprehended. He calmly admits to being Black Bart. Of his shotgun he says that it was never loaded. The he’d left behind read, “I’ve laboured long and hard for bread / for money in large sums / but on my corns too long you’ve tread / you fine haired sons of guns”. He is sentenced to seven years. The judge in this story says that if he could convict a man for writing poetry he would have given him life.

            The real Black Bart was born in Britain as Charles Boles and came with his parents to the United States at the age of two. By 1854 he was married with four children in Illinois. He enlisted as a private in the Civil War and rose to first lieutenant by the end. While prospecting for gold, after an unpleasant encounter with some Wells Fargo agents he began robbing their stages. He came to be known as Black Bart the Poet, although he only left two poems behind. He was a gentleman bandit with a reputation for style and sophistication. He travelled on foot because he was afraid of horses. He never once fired a weapon in his years as an outlaw. He would carefully arrange sticks where he stopped a stage to make it look like there were rifles pointing at the coach. He would call out to the non-existent accomplices and tell them to shoot if anyone made a wrong move. On his last robbery he was shot in the hand as he got away. He left behind his handkerchief, which was traced, to the laundry in San Francisco. He was found in a boarding house where he lived and arrested. He was sentenced to six years and released after four but his health had deteriorated. He was last seen on February 28, 1888 and then disappeared. One of the detectives that arrested him was sure that he’d gone to live in Japan. The poem that was quoted in the story was really, “I’ve laboured long and hard for bread / for honour and for riches / but on my corns too long you’ve tread / you fine haired sons of bitches”. The second poem he left behind was, “Here I lay me down to sleep / to wait the coming morrow / Perhaps success, perhaps defeat / and everlasting sorrow / Let come what will, I’ll try it on / My condition can’t be worse / and if there’s money in that box / tis money in my purse”.

            The second story was about Sheriff Henry Plummer who runs a criminal organization while serving as sheriff. His deputies and other cronies are so numerous that they do not all know each other and so they tie their neckerchiefs with a sailor’s knot for easy recognition and so they know with whom to share information. Since Plummer has inside information about stagecoaches and what they are shipping he knows when and where to have his men rob them. He has one of the partners in a goldmine murdered and then frames the other partner. When the miner’s wife Mrs. Manning begs Plummer for help he tells her that he will keep her husband from being hung if she signs the mine over to his name and if she is physically friendly with him. But after she gives in he hangs her husband anyway. Detectives investigating the murder of a stagecoach driver discover that he has tied his kerchief in a sailor’s knot and think that he might have been trying to communicate something. The detective tries tying his own kerchief in a sailor’s knot to see what happens in town. He is approached by two men who begin talking about the guild as if he is part of it. He arrests them and gets confessions that finally incriminate Plummer. He is arrested and because his organization had murdered 103 people, he is hanged.

            Mrs. Manning was played by Kristine Miller who had been cast to play the female detective in the first season of Stories of the Century but because of pregnancy she had to back out. She was recast for the second season as Detective Margaret Jones. She was born in Buenos Aires and was the daughter of the Danish vice president of Standard Oil in Argentina. The family moved a lot throughout the world for her father's work and so she was fluent in both Danish and Spanish. She was nicknamed "The Viking Girl".

            In the real story of Henry Plummer he was elected sheriff of Bannack, Montana from 1863-1864. He was born in Addison, Maine and when he was 19 headed out to California for the gold rush. By his early 20s he had a successful mine, a ranch and a bakery in Nevada City, California, where he was also elected sheriff. In 1857 Plummer shot and killed an abusive husband and was charged with murder. He was sentenced to ten years at San Quentin but was pardoned after two years. After he killed an escaped prisoner the police allowed him to leave California because they didn’t think he would get a fair trial. He moved to Bannack, Montana where he became popular and was elected sheriff. He formed a gang of road agents that robbed stages and murdered those that resisted. A group of vigilantes was formed that captured members of the gang and hung them right away. Finally it all came back to Plummer and he was hanged as well. His actual trial happened after his lynching and the jury gave a split verdict.