Harry Tracy

            My hip still bothered me on Friday morning but so much less than lately that it put me in a good mood. On top of that my guitar stayed in tune for most of song practice.

            This time of year the young, uncertain squirrels have a hard time traversing the power lines across Queen Street. They get to the junction for the jump from the east-west wires and then they change their little minds.

            It’s nice of the school bus driver to provide a public service for women that pee outdoors by parking his bus overnight parallel to the side wall of the Dollarama.

            I wrote another verse for the Frankenstein song. I might need about three more to complete the story that I think the song needs to tell to justify the last verse.

            I did some exercises for my hip muscles in the late afternoon and then took a short bike ride in the neighbourhood.

            I saw my upstairs neighbour David for the first time since he went back to Ethiopia to see his sister, who was on life support. He told me that she passed away. He said he cashed in an RRSP to pay for her to be moved to India for treatment but she died anyway. He said his sister is the one that paid for him to come to Canada. She was only 54 and she was also a journalist.

            I edited a video of me performing “Dead Autumn Leaves", my translation of Jacques Prevert’s "Les Feuilles Mortes" during my daily song practice on July 27, 2017. I trimmed the first part leading up to the beginning of that song and now I still have to trim the end before uploading it to YouTube.

David gave me a Samsung Galaxy Tab2 tablet but not a charger and the slot is wider than anything I have. He said he’d look for one but I doubt if he’ll find it. I managed to connect to the wifi downstairs but it seems weaker than my laptop. I found that right out on the back deck is the strongest connection.

David told me that the new things that he gets from the warehouse where he works are all destined to be destroyed because the companies have already gotten insurance payments for them. I don’t quite understand why perfectly good things would be thrown away like that but I guess maybe they are out of date products. I can understand that with electronics but not with the boots he gave me.

            I boiled some small potatoes, sautéed zucchini with onion and jalapenos and heated a slice of roast beef with gravy.

            I watched two episodes of Stories of the Century.

            The first story was about Bill Longley and begins with the killer already in prison and on a work crew. He and his partner kill a guard and escape. His girlfriend Mamie has been waiting for him and holding the $50,000 he stole. She’s a trapeze artist with the circus. When he connects with her she takes him to where she has the money hidden, in a package that a minister is holding for her. They go to the preacher’s house and get the package but a posse arrives. In the shootout Mamie gets shot. She tells Bill to run and he goes without the money but is captured. He comes back to hold Mamie as she dies. Before being hung Longely asks for a cigar. His last words are that he killed 33 men to get back at them but realizes now that revenge is only getting back at yourself.

            Mamie was played by Marlo Dwyer.

            The real Bill Longley was a fast draw and one of the deadliest gunfighters of the old west. When he was 16 it was just after the end of the Civil War. He dropped out of school and began keeping delinquent company. A year later he killed a former slave.  He drifted around Texas, gambled, robbed settlers and killed a former slave. He may have also killed a female former slave. He tried gold mining and then joined the cavalry. He deserted after two weeks; He was captured, imprisoned for four months, rejoined his unit and deserted again. He went back to Texas where he killed another former slave and a former schoolmate. He was constantly on the run and most of his Killings seemed to be over rivalries of one kind or another. Most of the 32 men he killed were black. There’s no mention of a Mamie Logan in the real story or any kind of circus performing girlfriend.

            The second story was about Harry Tracy. It begins with him having robbed and stolen a train. Tracy and his partner Dave Merrill are tracked to a cabin but the posse only find Merrill, who tells the authorities where to find Tracy. Tracy hijacks a stagecoach but it goes out of control and wrecks. Tracy is injured and captured. In prison he is learning to be a plumber and he puts some pipes together which he hides in the yard. He strangles a guard and he and Merrill escape using the pipe to hook over the wall and then climb up. They go to the home of an old lady named Mrs. Billings for whom Tracy used to work when he was younger. She takes them in, not knowing they are outlaws. A headline is printed in the paper revealing that Merrill betrayed Tracy the last time he was caught. Tracy kills him. Mrs. Billings sends a note with the grocery boy and a posse comes for him. He escapes but is found having shot and killed himself.

            In the real story Tracy is said to have been part of Butch Cassidy's Hole in the Wall gang. Just before he died a newspaper article declared that Harry Tracy made Jesse James look like a Sunday school teacher. After a gunfight with a posse in 1898 he was captured but escaped. Three years later he was caught again. When he escaped with David Merrill from Oregon State Penitentiary in 1902 they killed three guards and three civilians. He later killed Merrill in a duel. He set up an ambush for his pursuers and killed a detective and a deputy. He took several hostages in a residence and when a posse surrounded the place he killed two of the possemen. A month later when he was ambushed, surrounded by a posse and wounded in the leg, he committed suicide to avoid capture.