Fingy Conners & The New Century

by Richard Sullivan

  Without warning a flash erupted and the man danced wildly as electricity coursed through his body. Then he collapsed on top of his motionless steed.

  Stunned by the sight of his first electrocution, Jim surmised there was nothing he could do for either man or beast, lest he himself be shocked. He continued along on his way avoiding the dancing sparks as the guilty wire writhed on the pavement.

  The Ellicott Square was warmly lit, the men made unawares of the intensifying storm as they sat cozily under the glass roof of the mosaic-paved courtyard. Nine or ten stories of solid building towering above surrounded and cocooned the men who sat in what could be best pictured as the bottom of a well, where the wind and flying debris would not reach, giving them little clue as to what was happening outside.

  Jim entered from Main Street and ran across the spectacular tiled floor to the foot of the grand staircase where the Alderman stood enjoying his glass, his company and his cigar, and leaned in to tell him the news. The Alderman immediately climbed up the stairs for a bit of height and called for the attention of the loose and jovial crowd.

  Jim then announced, “Gentlemen, it is imperative that you leave immediately and return to your homes. The storm is intensifying and it looks like it’s going to be a real doozy. Please go to your homes now, quickly. There is no time to lose.”

  The revelers were a bit stunned as alcohol and good friends do tend to slow a man’s reactions, but Jim wasn’t about to hang around to encourage stragglers any further.

  “I promised Annie I’d bring you directly home. So grab your briefcase, brother, and let’s get the hell outa here.”

  The brothers ran out onto Main Street and climbed into the police wagon. Jim made a U-turn to head south just as the giant McKinley-Roosevelt election banner that had been strung across Main Street between the White Building and the Ellicott Square was blown down and blew right into the terrified faces of the horses. This elicited intense alarm adding to that which the animals already suffered. Jim stopped and jumped out to pull the huge wrapper from around the shrieking steeds as the image of Teddy Roosevelt grinned at him solicitously from the banner.

  One advantage to living in the down-at-the-mouth First Ward was that it was located to the south, so none of the landed gentry would be trying to catch a lift from them. All the bigwigs lived north and west.

  As they galloped down Elk Street they were just in time to see the derrick that confectioner Albert Behrends had for years been trying to get disassembled crash down onto his shop roof, where he and his family lived at the back.

  “Jesus Christ! shouted Jim. We gotta stop!”

  The horses were panicked and hard to control, but Jim was able to halt and secure them to a rail in front of the shop. He ran down the side alley to the back, just as Behrends came out, scratching his head.

  “That goddamn thing!” he shouted above the howl of the wind. “I knew it was goin’ t’ come down on our heads at some point. I’ll kill them bastards!”

  “Is anyone hurt, Behrends?” asked Jim.

  “No, we’re alright, but there’s a big piece o’ sky where my roof used to be. What’ll I do? It just keeps gettin’ worse.”

  “Is the shop all right? If it is, then take you family into there for shelter, and keep away from the plate glass window and the display cases as best you might until this is over.”

  Several years previous, exploring for natural gas, test wells had been drilled at the rear of the saloon next door to the confectioner’s shop. But when the project found nothing, the site was abandoned and the derrick just left there to rust. Now it was half inside the Behrends’ kitchen.

  Jim ran back to see the Alderman trying to calm the horses while at the same time keep from being knocked down himself, as much by the beasts as the wind.

  “Let’s go,” Jim screamed above the whirling and crashing, and the two galloped down Elk to Hamburg Street, then straight home.

  “Holy shit,” cried the Alderman as they crossed the Erie Railroad tracks. Debris was flying everywhere. A roof, barrels, twisted metal, wooden planks, paper, shingles, scantling—all swirling around midair, the heavier things being pushed, skidding along the asphalt by the wind, adding to the deafening cacophony.

  Jim had planned to return to headquarters after he checked in to make sure Hannah and the kids were safe, but the increasing velocity and frightening scene as the Buffalo Union Furnace Ironworks glowed and crackled too close for comfort and sparks flew in all directions, its ramshackle out-buildings being torn apart causing him to abandon his duty to the city in favor of guarding his family.

  The Alderman ran inside No. 12 as Jim pulled the horses into the little barn at the back of his house next door, leaving the police wagon unattended on the street. This was against the rules, but he had no other choice. The world was ending.

  Bolting inside, Jim found a terrorized Hannah and Nellie in each other’s arms, but Junior and David sat calmly playing cards to pass the time. The electric lights were still on, surprisingly, at least for the time being. Conditions were much too unsettling for anyone to sleep.

  Jim had made the right choice. Even if he had gotten back to Headquarters in one piece there would be nothing for him and the other men to do but wait out the storm anyway. The forests of trees that lined virtually every street in Buffalo had brought down the wires with their amputated limbs. For some few hours it was 1850 all over again.

  By midnight the full storm was upon the city with sustained winds of 60 miles per hour creating a terrifying din. Whole blocks of street lamps were out. The police patrol system suffered severely, the storm cutting off communications between stations. At fire headquarters it was found that telegraph and fire alarm service was fully knocked out. By 3 o’clock the last of the electric lights went out and the city was plunged into complete darkness.

  The huge Great Lakes passenger ships en route to or from Buffalo were tossed about and wildly pitched and canted by the mountainous swells churned up by the hurricane. Aboard the ship Wyoming, there was much excitement when her cargo shifted and the ship listed dangerously. For a time she was beyond control and lay roiling in the trough of the sea with every wave breaking completely overdecks. Passengers aboard the lake luxury liners were vomiting and terror-stricken.

  Communication by telephone or telegraph was no longer possible. At 3:30, as families huddled terrified in coal cellars and interior closets, the wind reached its highest velocity, maintaining a blast of 78 miles per hour for a full thirty minutes, completing the job of imparting doomsday panic and wreaking havoc. It was widely agreed that no one had ever experienced anything like this storm.

  At Crystal Beach, the amusement resort’s pier was submerged and all craft in the area were broken and dashed onto the sand or beached inland.

  “The water rose fully ten feet,” said Manager John E. Rebstock later to a Commercial news reporter, “and at five o’clock this morning our dock was entirely underwater. All the small boats in the bay, forty or fifty, were completely wrecked. However, no one was hurt.”

  More than a few late summer vacationers were startled as boats ended up on the front porch of their beach cottages and campers begged those having more solid shelters to take them in.

  As the sun rose, the wind diminished to 40 miles per hour. Citizens emerged from ravaged homes, sleepless and dazed, their adrenalin keeping them going. Rumors of the total destruction of the Pan American Exposition sent thousands of citizens swarming to the area to have a look-see for themselves.

  The unsheltered and open site chosen for the Pan happened to be the windiest of places in Buffalo at any given time. No matter from which direction the wind blew, it had a full sweep across the grounds. From 3:30 until after 4 o’clock the fullest force of the relentless gale savaged the site, uprooting trees, destroying some buildings entirely and severely damaging others, filling the esplanade, the canals and the grounds’ streets and walkways with tons of construction debris and broken tree limbs.

  The Unit
ed States Government Building was totally demolished, a large part of it having been blown into the canal upon the bank of which it had been erected. The Electricity Building suffered greatly as well; one tower of this structure was broken off completely, while the other was damaged so badly that it would need to be torn down and completely rebuilt. On the Midway, the entrance gateway tower was destroyed. The Manufacturers and Liberal Arts Building and the Horticultural Building sustained great damage. Only one building in the entire exposition had been insured against such a storm.

  President Milburn of the Pan American Exposition Co. made light of the damage so as not to concern the thousands of entities who had invested heavily in the enterprise. His main objective, above all, was to preserve the Pan.

  Initially it was reported that only two people died, but as the week wore on, floating bodies were recovered from various waterways or pulled lifeless from collapsed Island shanties. Thousands of itinerants had recently flooded the city in hopes of finding work constructing the Pan, with no one to miss them if they disappeared, since many were squatters. When all was said and done, no official tally of the dead was published so as not to horrify.

  Lehigh Valley Yard detective Ed Moylan was surprised to receive a telephone call at the Tifft Farm two days following the storm after the wires had been strung back up. It was John Rebstock over at Crystal Beach. He was luckily alone in the office when the telephone rang.

  “Hey, Moylan, they tell me you recovered from your fall an’ are doin’ just fine.”

  “That’s right Mr. Rebstock. I’m back in the rail yards still keepin’ the hoodlums in order ‘round here.”

  “So how’s about you come over this weekend and have a look at the scenic railway. It was beat up pretty bad in the storm.”

  “Well, to tell you the truth Mr. Rebstock, I’m not so sure I wanna be climbin’ around on that thing right about now,” replied Moylan.

  “Ye ain’t gotta be a-climbin’ Moylan, atop nothin’. Yous just gotta be lookin’ and tellin’ others where to climb. You know, supervise. You built the goddamned thing. Who better’n you to have a look-see? I can’t trust nobody else. Kin I be expectin’ yous this Satraday mornin’?”

  “No sir, I work at the Tifft yard Saturdays. I can get over there early Sunday though, bright ’n’ early.”

  “But we need you sooner, Ed. I don’t want to go ahead with any of the work without you inspectin’ it first.”

  Ed could have had his Saturday off if he wanted. Since he lost his arm, even though he’d proven to everyone at the Lehigh that he was as capable as before the accident, they were always urging him to go a little easier around the rail yard. He would have liked to, truth be told, but now he feared he had more to prove than ever, and didn’t want to risk missing even a day, or accept any special treatment. He was sure at the first sign of weakness they’d can him.

  “Sorry Mr. Rebstock. Can’t do it.”

  “Oh. All right. We’ll have to wait then. We still got a good month of decent weather ahead to put things back in order. Best to make hay while the sun shines, right?”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” laughed Ed Moylan. “I’ll be there first thing Sunday morning, Mr. Rebstock.”

  Pickpockets

  From the Buffalo Express:

  A stylishly dressed woman of middle age and a pretty miss were elbowing their way through a crowd of shoppers in a downtown dry goods store yesterday afternoon, when the experienced eyes of Detective-Sergeant James Sullivan fell upon them.

  “Aha,” exclaimed the sleuth, mentally.

  “So these are the birds who have been flying away with the pocketbooks.”

  As The Express told exclusively a few days ago, many purses have been stolen from the pockets of the shoppers in the large dry-goods houses downtown, and it was suspected that a contingent of expert pickpockets had arrived in the city to be here for the Pan American Exposition. Day after day the best detectives of the force, who had been detailed to watch for the sleight-of-hand crooks, have been patrolling the stores where the crimes had been committed without getting a clew.

  Detective Sullivan’s heart bounded with surprise and delight when he recognized in the woman and the girl a pair of professional pickpockets and shoplifters who have been arrested dozens of times or more. They were Mrs. Anna Kurtzmann and her daughter by her second husband, Miss Clara Bork.

  Sullivan followed them as they forced themselves through the crowded aisles. He watched their every movement. He paid particular attention to the actions of their hands. They carried shopping bags of robust proportions, and the detective was willing to gamble those receptacles contained stolen goods.

  When he had seen them fumbling at the goods on several counters and crowding close behind well-dressed women, so close that their hands were invisible, he thought it time to arrest them. They started when he stepped up close to them and spoke to them, but then laughed when they recognized him.

  “What do you want us for? We ain’t done nothin’,” said Mrs. Kurtzmann.

  “Yous fly-cops are altogether too suspicious,” said Miss Bork, saucily.

  When they were searched in Asst. Supt. Cusak’s office their shopping bags were found to contain a pair of shoes, three dozen handkerchiefs and a number of pieces of silk and dress goods. Later it was learned that the shoes were stolen from Forsyth’s store on Seneca street and the handkerchiefs from William Hengerer & Co.’s. The other goods have not yet been identified.

  The prisoners were silent as clams when questioned as to their doings during the last few weeks. It was thought to be a good plan to go to their house and search it. They live at 469 Sherman street. Detective-Sergt. Sullivan went there, accompanied by Detective-Sergt. Wright. It was a profitable business. About $500 worth of property of all kinds was found stored away in one of the rooms. It consisted of silverware, velvets, ivory knives and forks, corsets, pieces of dress goods, silks, cut-glass, imported dishes and a score of other articles.

  The detectives also found about 26 tickets on different pawnshops representing articles which had been pawned; diamond rings, overcoats, clocks, lamps, suits of clothes, a sealskin cape and other property.

  All the goods were taken to Police Headquarters. The women will be tried as soon as the property can be identified. They are old-time shoplifters and pickpockets and their pictures are in the rogues’ galleries. It is believed they are responsible for some of the thefts of purses in dry goods stores lately.

  The Pabst Beer Pavilion

  “Just you behave yourself, Junior. That’s all I’m going to say on the subject. I don’t want you ever comin’ home to this house drunk. You hear me?”

  The Alderman rolled his eyes at Hannah’s warning. Her overprotective nature was understandable but not appropriate regarding such a good boy. She was giving last minute instructions to Jim Jr., who was readying himself to be off to the Exposition grounds for his first day of orientation training at the Pabst Beer Garden.

  “Leave the boy be, won’t you Hannah? He’s sixteen and anxious to get on with living his life,” interfered the Alderman.

  “Just how much training does one need to be at the beck and call of ignoramuses the likes of those from Saskatchewan and Tennessee?” sniffed Nellie, needling her brother. “You bring food and beer from the kitchen to their table and set it down in front of them, then jump back before all hell breaks loose. That’s it. I’ve been doing the exact same thing right here in this very house since I was about five and nobody ever had to ‘orient’ me,” she declared.

  “Nellie!” exclaimed her mother. “Fourteen-year-old young ladies do not use that kind of language!”

  “Well,” responded Junior to his sister, “if they happened to be hiring finely brought-up lady swells much like yourself to do this kind of important work at the Pan, then I’m sure the likes of me would be plumb out of a job.”

  The large Pabst On The Midway Pavilion occupied a prominent corner on the North Midway, just inside the decorative Midway entr
y gate, a true crossroads of humanity if there ever was one. Its splendid watchtower shone two powerful spotlights after sunset, panning and beckoning the Pan’s nighttime crowds with the Pabst’s reasonable prices and ample accommodation. Located right next door was Barnes’ Diving Elks attraction with its massive antlered mascot perched atop the building three stories up. Visible for a mile, you couldn’t miss it. Around the corner, the other face of the Pavilion sat directly across from the building housing the Wonderful Mutoscope.

  It was April 26, and a very cold wind was blowing off the Lake. The unofficial opening of the Pan was set for May 1, just five days away. The exposition would then be opened to the public. This interim was designated a “dry run,” a period in which all the wrinkles and problems could be worked out for the official Grand Opening on May 20th. Already the Pabst restaurant doors were open to crowds of curiosity-seekers who had been visiting daily since ground was broken. On Sundays, these paying previewers numbered in the tens of thousands, and not having foreseen this bonanza, the Pabst had to scurry to be up and running earlier than expected.

  At the Pabst’s busy lunch and supper hours an orchestra was scheduled to serenade its guests who were expected to number at their peak, 1200. At first glance inside the arched entry, Junior nearly turned and ran in terror, unsure how he could possibly enter this maelstrom and function capably as he had promised. The place was a veritable sea of tables and chairs. How could he keep track of his customers? The pavilion was largely empty of patrons now, but its vastness struck fear into his imagination as to how he could uphold his false claim at having accumulated broad experience waiting tables.

  He saw a gaggle of boys and men congregated at the far side of the open dining area. He walked over to join them. They numbered half a hundred or so. A Prussian, Gustav Schutkeker, called for order. The Hessian had only a light German accent; his manner painted him as fair and capable.