Veda Ann Borg

            On Wednesday morning my butt muscles felt a lot better.

            I still hadn’t heard from Facebook since they unpublished my Serge Gainsbourg page the Friday before. They sure are taking their time. It seems to me they have more important issues to deal with in fake news pages rather than harassing someone that’s simply running the fan page for a songwriter.

            I did my laundry in the late morning. There was a new old guy managing the place. I needed change for a $20 but he was busy very slowly going through a bag of clothing and putting things in separate piles. There was another old guy standing and watching him and from time to time the attendant would hand him something, which he would hold up to see if it would fit. When the other guy noticed me he said something in what I assume was Chinese to the attendant that I thought was probably something like, “The guy behind you wants some change”. But the attendant responded indifferently with something that I thought might be, “Well, he’s gonna have to wait till I’m finished”. The other guy went next door to the Salvation Army thrift store. I waited until the attendant had almost gone through the bag and then he turned and seemed surprised to see me. He said, "You should speak up!” and gave me my change.

            After my things were in the wash I went next door to the thrift store to look for yoga mats. I found two. One was a smooth vinyl one something like mine but reddish purple and sticky on one side. The other was a reddish pink knit vinyl mat.

            After I got home I took my laptop to the cafe across the street. The night before the donut shop beneath me had very weak wi-fi and it was only enough for a torrent to finish downloading but I couldn’t check my email or go on any websites. That happens from time to time but fortunately the café across the street has a pretty strong signal overnight and all I usually have to do is switch my adaptor to the window and switch tom that network. But last night, for the first time in years the password didn’t work, leaving me with no functional connection all night. So I went to the café across the street to buy a coffee and find out their new password. When I asked I thought the guy behind the counter said the password was “Password” but I guess he was indicating where it said “password" on the blackboard followed by a colon and the word "INTERNET" in all caps. I tried it and it worked but it went off several times.

            When I went back to the Laundromat the attendant was talking to a customer about the Raptors about why they lost the game on Monday. The attendant declared, “It’s a business!” He seemed to be almost implying that either the Raptors threw the game or the referees manipulated their calls to extend the playoff so everybody makes more money in ticket sales.

            While my clothes were in the drier I realized that I’d forgotten to wash my big towel and so I washed it by hand in the kitchen sink and put it out on the deck to dry. I also washed one of the yoga mats.

            After coming back with my laundry I washed the other yoga mat before lunch.

            I had a toasted English muffin with old cheddar, cucumber and lettuce.

            In the afternoon, since I’d already ridden back and forth to the Laundromat three times, I didn’t take a bike ride. I tried out one of the yoga mats. I’d thought it was dry but the sticky side is spongy and had absorbed a surprising amount of water. Also the mat had been tied up with packing tape and the bath I’d given it hadn’t removed the adhesive. After I did some butt muscle exercises I took a cloth with some detergent on it and washed all the glue off while the mat was flat on the floor, and then I put it back outside to dry.

            When I studied to be a yoga teacher we didn't have vinyl mats. I looked it up online and found that the spongy side is supposed to be facing the floor.

            I went out back to check on the mat that was drying. It seemed dry I decided to leave it out longer to make sure.

            My next roof neighbour Taro was sitting outside his place drinking beer. He informed me that the people at the front of his building that had protested the noise of me playing guitar in the morning had moved out. It had been a guy that had complained but apparently he was just the boyfriend of one of the two female roommates. I doubt if I was the reason they left but it might have been the noise from Queen Street that contributed to it. So now I don’t have to flip my couch futon on its end to cushion the vibrations anymore.

            I started Movie Maker project with the video and sound recording from my July 28, 2017 song practice. I’ll be making a video of Serge Gainsbourg’s “Jeunes femmes et vieux messieurs”.

            I had a fried egg and a toasted English muffin with a beer and watched two episodes of Stories of the Century.

            The first story was about Kate Bender and her brother John. Kate and her brother have a place just off the stage route and they offer it as a stop off for travellers. Their cousin Jake tips them off if anyone rich is on the stage. In this case John burns down the bridge so the stage will have to stop for the night. John sounds like a hillbilly while Kate sounds like she from the east. While Kate is reading Charles Ward’s fortune John sneaks up behind and bashes his head in with a hammer and they take his wallet. The next day while John is digging in the garden Kate tells the driver that Ward bought a horse from her and left early. Charles is the son of a railroad executive who sends detectives looking for him. When Kate finds out she has John kill Billy the driver but the detectives find Billy's diary that lists his passengers and where they stopped. When the detectives arrive John is shot but Kate escapes in a wagon. She ends up falling while tied up in the reigns and gets dragged to death.

            Kate was played by Veda Ann Borg, who started out in New York as a model in 1936. She got a contract with Warner Brothers and worked a lot in films from 1937 to 1938. In 1939 she was in a car accident that left her requiring full facial reconstruction. She got her face back and went on to make over 100 films but rarely as the star. She usually played tough, upwardly mobile man-eaters.

            In the real story of the “Bloody Benders” Kate was only one quarter of a family of Kansas serial killers that consisted of John and Elvira Bender and their children John Jr. and Kate. But John Jr. and Kate might have actually been married rather than siblings. They were Spiritualist homesteaders. The front part of their house was set up as a general store but also as a dining room to serve travellers and they offered lodgings as well. John and Elvira could barely speak English and Elvira had a reputation for being unfriendly. Kate set herself up as a psychic and healer. She gave lectures on Spiritualism and advocated free love. There are conflicting histories as to whether the Benders were even related. John and John Jr. may have come from either Germany or Holland. Elvira might have been from the Adirondacks and Kate might have been her daughter. In 1871 bodies started to be found along Drum Creek with their heads bashed in and their throats cut. A man and his infant daughter disappeared while travelling on the same trail and when a doctor friend of that father went looking for him he disappeared as well. The two brothers of the doctor organized an all out search with fifty men interviewing homesteaders along the trail. After hearing that a woman had fled the Bender’s after Elvira threatened her with the knife investigators came to the home. Elvira may have only been pretending to not be able to speak English. She communicated that the woman she’d chased away was a witch who’d cursed her coffee. Kate offered to use her clairvoyant abilities to find the missing doctor. A warrant was obtained to search every homestead along the trail. By the time they got to the Bender home it was learned that they’d fled several days before. When the home was searched a bad odour was traced to a trap door under a bed. In a room below the house, clotted blood but no bodies were found. It was in the orchard nearby that the doctor’s body was found. Several more bodies were dug up. A Bible was found in which a not had been written in German, “Big slaughter day, January 8”. Detectives found the Bender’s wagon abandoned and harnessed to a starving team of horses. They had bought tickets to Leavenworth. John Jr. and Kate split from John and Elvira and travelled to an outlaw colony between Texas and New Mexico. They were not pursued because the area was dangerous for lawmen. John and Elvira went to Kansas City and then St Louis. Many claimed to have killed the Benders but no one tried to collect the $3000 reward. In 1884 an old man matching John Bender’s description was arrested for having bashed a man’s head in with a hammer. He cut off his own foot to escape the leg iron and bled to death. By the time a deputy arrived that could have identified him as Bender his body was too decomposed. In 1889 a Mrs Almira Monroe and a Mrs Sarah Davis were arrested. Sarah said that Almira was Elvira but that she was Kate’s sister. Almira accused Sarah of being Kate. They were put on trial but it could not be proved that they were Elvira and Kate and so they were released.

            The second story was about Cherokee Bill. It begins at Carlyle College in Pennsylvania, the most renowned school for Native Americans in the United States. The dean is running down a list of reasons why he is going to kick Bill out of Carlyle. Bill attacks the Dean. Next we see Bill on a train being escorted by an Indian agent back to the reservation. The agent tells him that when they get back he’s going to lock him up until he cools off. Bill quietly pulls a knife, kills the agent and leaves the train. Bill goes to his mother who is living off the reservation because she married a white man. She tells Bill that’s the only way she could leave and she says she can always get rid of him. Every indigenous person living on the Cherokee Strip is about to be given $300 to leave so homesteaders can settle there. Bill’s mother tells him of a plan to steal the money while it’s being delivered. She says Jim Cook has the biggest gang in Oklahoma and he’s willing to help out for a cut. Suddenly the marshal arrives and Bill escapes. His mother tries to hold them off with a shotgun but Bill is caught. Bill is sentenced to 45 years by a hanging judge that considers the sentence merciful. Shortly after that Bill is on a work crew when he kills a guard and escapes. Bill’s stepfather rats on Bill for the $2000 reward. Bill is hiding out with Cook’s gang. Bill’s mother comes to warn him that his stepfather would have talked. The posse comes and Bill escapes but his mother dies in the shootout. Bill kills his stepfather. The cavalry delivering the money for the payoff detours through box canyon. Bill and the gang follow them in but it’s a trap and most of the gang are killed. Bill is captured and sentenced to hang. On the scaffold he says he’s sorry about killing people and “let’s get it over with”.

            Bill was played very well by an actual indigenous American actor named Pat Hogan. He was a member of the Oneida Nation that had been forced to relocate from New York State to Wisconsin. He served in the US Army until the early 1950s and immediately started working in film. He worked a lot in film and television but died young of lung cancer at the age of 46.

            Cherokee Bill’s real name was Crawford Goldsby. His father was a cavalry sergeant and his mother was a Cherokee freedman.

In 1861 the Cherokee held about 4,000 black slaves. During the Civil War the Cherokee Nation was divided. At first their main chief John Ross sided with the south but after his capture he switched his alliance to the north. Stand Watie, a wealthy landholder, became the main chief of the southern Cherokee. He became and officer and was the last Confederate brigadier general to surrender. In 1863 the Cherokee Nation officially emancipated all slaves but very few were freed. After the war, it took a long time to enforce emancipation and many descendents of freed slaves have still not been fully accepted into the Cherokee Nation.

Crawford’s father was part black and in Texas there were problems between white cowboys and black soldiers. They did not like seeing black men with guns. Crawford’s father went AWOL, abandoning his wife and son. Crawford’s mother left him in the care of an elderly black woman. She cared for him until he was 7 and then sent him to an Indian school in Kansas for three years. He then went to the Catholic Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He returned to Fort Gibson at 12. His mother had married a white man with who he didn’t get along. He became an outlaw at 18. He joined a gang with Jim and Bill Cook, who were mixed Cherokee. They robbed banks, stores and coaches and killed anyone that got in their way. He was captured and sentenced to hang in 1895. While waiting for his execution date he made two violent attempts to escape. He was hung in 1896. His last words were, “I came here to die. Not to make a speech.”