People stood on soapboxes, hung out windows and viewed from rooftops, colonnade pedestals, doorways, street cars, stepladders and wherever it was possible to grab a foothold. Women were almost as reckless as men in their selection of reviewing spots. Many of them were seen peeking over the cornices of tall buildings or hanging precipitously on fire escapes. Mortal danger along with all propriety were forgotten in some instances.
Firemen’s Day brought veritable armies to the city. It not only summoned the thousands of firemen from surrounding American states and Canadian provinces who marched in the parade, but also dumped the multitudes of the firemen’s friends, relatives and fellow townsmen. They came in special trains or in regulars that had anywhere from ten to seventeen cars, each loaded beyond seating capacity.
As the thousands of firemen marched proudly down Main Street, plain-clothesmen Detective-Sergeants Sullivan and Lynch noticed a well-dressed man acting suspiciously on Main near Court while the parade delighted onlookers.
The man didn’t appear to have any interest in the parade. He was busy working his way through packed throngs of women along the sidewalk. After he passed through a crowd, instead of continuing on in the same direction, he turned around and worked his way back again through the same crowd.
“That fellow’s a pickpocket,” declared Sullivan.
“I been watchin’ him myself,” replied Lynch.
The two detectives made their way as best they might among the parade-goers and approached the suspect, beckoned to him and drew him to one side. They assumed the jargon of street deuces.
“Dere ain’t nuttin in dis crowd; I been t’rough it once meself,” said Lynch to the stranger, glancing around cautiously, as would someone up to no good.
Sullivan closed in on the suspect’s ear and warned confidentially, “Yeah. We seen a fly cop right below here so yous best move up a ways.”
“Yeah, I think so too,” replied the stranger. “I ain’t made a dip. These here women are all dead ones. Most of ‘em are carryin’ their pocketbooks in their hands or have them stowed away in bags. Where are yous two hailin’ from?”
“We just dropped in from New York,” said Sullivan. “Ain’t nuttin here in this town. People’re too aware how close packed they are. They’re bein’ real protective o’ their valuables. In fact we read in the newspapers where they been tellin’ people to leave all their valuables to home, spoilin’ our fun. So we’re going to light out tonight for Chicago. Hey, yous should come along wit’ us.”
“Nah, I think maybe I’ll make one more rustle. To tell yous the truth, I’m dead broke and gotta raise something or else I’ll be picked up and vagged.”
“Aw, come on,” urged Sullivan. “Say, let’s all go down and flag Headquarters and get a line on them fly cops.”
The stranger agreed. The trio departed to walk down Main Street, then turned over Swan Street toward Police Headquarters. On the way the stranger confided to the detectives that he came from Cleveland and had been so hard up for two months that be was forced to degrade himself by getting a job as a waiter in an all-night restaurant.
“I coulda got plenty o’ watches but I’m leery of such things, so’s I make a habit o’ never touchin’ nuttin but cash,” confided the stranger.
“Well, I got me some friends in the pawnshops who don’t ask no questions, so’s I take rings, watches, pins—anythin’ I kin rustle away from them there pigeons,” laughed Sullivan.
When they started across Franklin Street toward Police Headquarters the stranger suddenly realized what was afoot. He stopped in his tracks and said, “You’re a couple of fly ones, you are—but you won’t be findin’ nuttin on me, and the best you can do is vag me.”
“Yeah? Well, we’ll see about that!” boasted Lynch.
At Police Headquarters be gave his name as Charles F. Conkling, 32 years old. And he was right. All they could do was vag him.
Sullivan and Lynch returned to the parade. They were standing on the outskirts of the crowd at almost the same place as before when a woman not ten feet away screamed and began to throttle a man near her with her umbrella.
“You thief! You villain!” she screamed.
The fellow did his best to escape, but the crowd penned him in like a sardine. The indignant woman beat him mercilessly over the noggin until the detectives interfered. So angered was she that she was also distributing errant whacks upon innocent members of the crowd, much to their protest.
Just as Sullivan reached out to grab him the fellow ducked, upsetting a boy vendor with a basket of peanuts, sending him and his peanuts flying. The young boy began to cry hysterically. He had no money to replace his wares. The peanuts were crushed and ruined beneath the shoes of the tightly-packed horde. The pickpocket made his way through the crowd and across the parade route with as much skill as if he had been a center rush on a varsity football team.
Sullivan and Lynch took after him, but the passing West Seneca Volunteer Firefighters Brigade got in their path just at that moment and the firemen refused to have anybody breaking through their proud ranks.
The result was that the pickpocket was half a block ahead of them and running like a scared dog up Mohawk Street before the officers succeeded in getting through the marchers and across Main Street. It was the first time in a long while since Jim Sullivan had been called upon to do any high speed sprinting. Detective Lynch, who had gotten a good start on him, called back to Jim to just stay where he was.
“Just have yerself a comfy seat there, old man. I’ll deliver him back to ye lickety-split!” he teased.
If that damned Jerry Lynch thought for one moment that he was going to show up the only slightly older Jim Sullivan then he had another few wishes coming. It took Sullivan about five seconds to really get underway, but once he did get going, he managed to pass Lynch and set a pace which threatened to distance them before Washington Street was reached.
The pickpocket continued racing up Mohawk, then turned left on Ellicott Street and crossed over to Chippewa. He had just reached the bustling Chippewa Market when Sullivan caught up, stepped on the heel of his boot, and sent him flying headlong into a vegetable wagon, scaring the life out of its old mare.
Detective Sullivan then sat down on a crate to cool off and wait. As Lynch caught up, Jim checked his pocketwatch and shook his head in disparagement. He turned his prisoner over to Jerry-come-lately.
“Jesus, we’re gettin’ too old for this shit,” admitted Lynch with a wink.
“Didn’t mean to shame ye so bad back there, Jerry,” Jim said, patting Jerry on the back consolingly. “Couldn’t be helped though. It’s so sad to see you humiliate yourself this way in public.”
“Go get yerself good an’ fooked, Sully,” smiled his hard-breathing partner.
The victim gave her name as Mrs. Kate Kocklinski of Coit Street. She declared that she had detected the object of her wrath in the act of picking her pocket. He had taken her pocketbook containing 32 cents.
Kindhearted parade-watchers took up a collection and presented $5 to the boy vendor so he might replace his peanuts.
Sullivan and Lynch took the pickpocket to the police station where he gave his name as John McCullough. He said he was 22 years old. He smiled for a couple of sweet photographs to add to the station’s collection. He was locked up on a charge of grand larceny in the second degree. The pocketbook and money were returned to a grateful Mrs. Kocklinski, but her umbrella was ruined.
Giuseppe Martino was walking jauntily along Main street in the afternoon and swung his bamboo cane right into Henry O’Connell’s right eye. O’Connell extricated the ferule from his optic and landed a right-hand punch on Martino’s eye. There wasn’t much to choose between the two men’s eyes: Detective Sullivan called it a draw. O’Connell broke Martino’s cane into bits and called it square.
The Hamburg Fair Airship
◆◆◆
Rather than attend the Firemen’s Parade, Hannah and Annie decided to gather up all the children, board the
trolley out front, and attend the doings at the Erie County Exposition at the Hamburg Fairgrounds on Tuesday morning. School was scheduled to begin the following day, Wednesday, but with Old Home Week’s congestion and its roster of dozens of daily events and extravaganzas, it was questionable how successfully a school year could begin amid such pandemonium.
Time would tell, but regardless, on the last official day of summer vacation it was traditional to attend the Erie County Fair, the largest in the nation. This year, because of Old Home Week, the Hamburg Fair had planned special attractions and events to draw people away from the Old Home Week competition.
All the boys were especially excited to see the airship ascension. As the families watched with mouths agape, Elmer Van Vranken’a airship rose occupantless from the Hamburg fairgrounds, poked a hole in the clouds, and flying high and fast, disappeared.
Van Vranken had already made one successful flight from the fairgrounds that morning. He had been circling in the sky overhead looking for a Buffalo breeze when the steering gear in the rear of the airship got out of order. Scrambling high in the air along the spider-web framework which serves for a car, Van Vranken gradually brought the big bag to the ground, and alighted.
Freed of his weight, the car rose slightly, but was held in check by a light rope. Van Vranken then attempted, by using the rope, to move the machine into a better position before putting it down to fix the rudder. The crowds were unsure. Jim Jr. watched Van Vranken’s clumsy attempt to corral his flying steed, and gauging the flimsiness of the rope, looking no more substantial than a five-cent backyard clothesline, he thought he saw it all coming. Jim Jr. bet his cousin Thomas a quarter that Van Vranken would lose control of his ship.
A gust of wind carried the car over some telegraph wires, and the nose of the machine pointed into the sky. The greater buoyancy lifted Van Vranken clean off his feet and up into the air. The crowd gasped. Women screamed in horror. The boys laughed.
Van Vranken was dangling at the end of the rope when it was cut clean in two by the telegraph wires and the unfortunate Mr. Van Vranken plummeted to the ground, slamming into the earth hard. The cousins only interrupted their laughter for as long as it took to cringe, then resumed as the aeronaut stirred. Dazed at first, the pilot quickly gathered himself and jumped up with bones intact just in time to see his machine rocketing skyward. The boys were in stitches on the ground. Jim Jr. collected a quarter from his cousin.
Some in the crowd who viewed the ascension from a distance did not know he had made it safely to earth and feared he was still aboard the runaway ship. The spectators who were close by gathered in on him. “There goes a thousand dollars and all my engagements for this autumn!” he despaired. A million questions were fired at him. With a rare good nature he answered all that he could.
“When will the ship come back down?” inquired a concerned old man.
“I don’t know. Whether it will be one hundred miles or one thousand miles away depends on how hard the wind blows. It will be a miracle if the car isn’t smashed. The bag probably can be saved.”
Van Vranken sent frantic telegraph and telephone messages to towns eastward to keep an eye out for his phantom airship. Since the airship’s escape brought an early finish to that particular event, the fairground crowd’s interest in the scheduled baseball game was newly revived. South Buffalo would beat the Milburns 2 to 1. Others in the crowd headed over to watch the horse races. The Sullivan women, both of whom kept a vegetable garden, wanted to see the produce exhibits and the blue ribbon winners. Hannah expressed some curiosity in seeing the poultry exhibit assuming that one way or another Fingy Conners’ entries from his mammoth poultry farm in Angola would have won the blue ribbon. Everyone’s lack of interest in Fingy caused her to rescind that idea. The troupe of Japanese acrobats engaged for the fair had not yet arrived, and once rain began falling the family thought it best to just call it a day and head back home on the streetcar a bit early.
Some time later at East Pembroke in Genesee County, George Christie, Ward Mook and Alexander C. Beanfield caught themselves an airship.
About 40 feet of rope dangled from it. The airship was sailing low and the men reached up, seized the rope and pulled the craft down. It had not been injured at all. Not knowing about the escape at the Hamburg Fair, the captors, finding nothing to show who might own the airship, haltered it securely in Harry Tupper’s barn and notified the Sheriff at Batavia. Mr. Van Vranken was quickly notified that he could get it back in time for another Hamburg Fair exhibition as early as he wished.
The Bubble Parade
◆◆◆
Downtown, the detectives were knee-deep in the celebrating crowd, keeping themselves busy keeping order. Louis R. Jones was sassy to Detective-Sergeants Sullivan and Lynch at Main and Chippewa Streets later that evening. The officers had reproved some young men who were trying to force their acquaintance upon innocent young girls. Jones took a hand and wanted to know by what right the detectives thought they could interfere with citizens. Detective Lynch sought to quiet Jones, but the latter wanted to fight, and took a boxer’s stance against the former, unsteady with alcohol as his bearing might have been. He was soon subdued in a cell for as long as it might take for him to sober up, but be would not give his address. He was released within a few hours.
With the fall of dusk huge crowds lined the street in anticipation of the Illuminated Parade Of Buffalo Bubblers. No one knew exactly how many automobiles there were in the city until this night, and it is doubtful if anyone could ever have guessed what multitudes would turn out for the illuminated automobile parade.
The illuminated automobiles that competed for prizes were the least of it all, as far as numbers went. The bulk of the motorists who descended on the parade route thought it much wiser to use their cars for grandstands. A solid line of motor cars stretched along the west curb of Main street not ending until Luna Park, where the auto parade turned into the gateways of the amusement resort to be judged by a committee headed by Wilfred P. Davidson.
Such beauty of illumination, harmony of color, and disregard of expense had never been seen in an automobile parade in the city. If there was to be any other spectacle of the Old Home Week celebration that might exceed the automobile parade, then it would surely have to go some.
Just after 8 o’clock pots of red fire were set ablaze all along Main Street and the procession began. All trolley cars were stopped until the parade had passed. Down between two solid masses of jostling humanity the cars moved, much to the thrill of the assembled packed crowds.
Shortly after 9 o’clock a burst of applause from the park grandstand heralded the arrival in Luna Park of the first cars, and still the line outside loudly honking for admittance seemed to be no shorter. The assembled motorcar parade numbering 400 vehicles was headed by boyishly handsome Grand Marshal Seymour White, President of the Automobile Club of Buffalo.
Twenty-five prizes were awarded. The entry from Buffalo’s Thomas Motorcar Company, Mr. Thomas’ own personal car, the winner of the heavy touring car class, was topped with an immense illuminated eagle as a symbol of the famous Thomas Flyer. Mrs. John Clawson, the wife of Old Home Week’s President, had her car decorated in facsimile of the colonnade on Main Street, with four columns ablaze with electric lights. A. Babcock’s electric touring car from Buffalo’s Babcock Electric Carriage Company, the second prize in its class, was trimmed in white with a mass of electric bulbs. It excited much comment. Al Poppenberg’s car, the winner of the light runabout class, was rigged up as a yacht, with a mast fifteen feet high. The mast was so tall that Poppenberg’s car couldn’t fit under the gates and the judges had to go outside to judge it.
There were more varieties of decoration and illumination than the judges could possibly count. C. P. Smith of the Imperial Motor Company had a home-made car constructed of hickory; Ralph Sidway’s car was rigged as an airship, its bag lit from within; additionally his Ford runabout was trimmed with hundreds of electric bulbs. The Empire State T
ire Company’s car carried a miniature Old Home Week cabin made of bark with a warm welcoming glow radiating from all its little windows and the porch complete with hickory stick furniture and miniature kerosene lanterns lit electrically.
The multitudes milled between and around the cars to an ongoing chorus of oohs and aahs—with some concern by their owners as to inflicted scratches and nicks on the paint.
At the same time that evening the nightly automobile parade along Main Street’s Luminous Lane was choked with sightseers throughout its mile of length while a string of streetcars packed like sardine boxes reached almost without a break from one end of the colonnade to the other. With well over seventy thousand people participating, including watchers and participants, Buffalo was jammed downtown more tightly than at any time in its entire history. With each succeeding day, the crowds continued to grow in volume.
The big stores downtown stayed open as late as the crowds were happy to mill about and spend money but merchants’ happiness over increased sales was offset somewhat by nervousness about shoplifters. Crowds in the aisles of Flint & Kent, AM&A’s, Hengerer’s, Hens & Kelly and other department stores, as well as the smaller drug stores and cigar stores, were as thick as on the streets. Even normally honest people impatient with jammed aisles and slow service might have been tempted.
Jim Sullivan, while in a sundry store packed with people, the detective observing where individuals were keeping their hands as they browsed candy, chewing gum and the like, noticed the North American Review, September 1907 issue, on sale. On its cover was emblazoned “New Chapters From Mark Twain’s Autobiography.” Jim bought a copy, curious to read if the boy he once was might have made enough of an impression on Sam Clemens to rate an appearance in Twain’s own history. Even as he paid, Jim thought to himself, most likely not.
Murderers, Scoundrels and Ragamuffins Page 35