Indian Ice Delivery Trucks, Casper Wyoming

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Ice delivery vehicles. Pretty advanced for the time, in many locations this would still be done by horse drawn wagon for another two decades.

Ice was a big deal in this era. Refrigeration mostly wasn't. People kept "Ice Boxes" in their houses. My father stilled called the refrigerator the "Ice Box" well into the 70s, having become acclimated to that term in his early years even though he probably grew up in a house with a refrigerator.

Pay Scale, World War Two.

A pay scale table for the U.S. Army in World War Two. A thread on this topic is running on the SMH site.

Lots of interesting odds and ends an item like this brings up.

Connectivity

In the past couple of days, I have had instances in which I have been sitting in my office, with my computer connected to the net, and I have found it necessary to text message somebody using my cell phone.

Indeed, over the past year, not only have I found that it continues to be necessary (no surprise) to own a cell phone, but I am now text messaging on my cell phone as a work necessity. Text messaging tends to be associated with teenagers at the mall, but at least in my recent experience it's gone on to be a feature of at least the legal work place. Not all that long ago I found myself walking through Denver getting and receiving text messages pertaining to a deposition that was going on in Texas.

Here at my office, where I am right now (taking a break for lunch) I have, right where I am, a laptop computer, a telephone, a second miniature laptop, a cell phone, and an Ipod that's jacked into the computer, which allows me not only to send and receive email (including work email, and I've done that) but to keep my calendar and contacts electronically.

When I started this profession a little over twenty years ago, my office was equipped, as all our offices were, with a phone and a computer. The computer did not have net access. I don't really recall what I used that computer for, but chances are that I didn't use it all that much on a daily basis. I did write legal memos on it, and it had some programs that were used to substitute for casebooks we had in our library. It was probably three or four years after that when we purchased a computer that had net access, and we obtained West Law in our office for the first time. Before that, most local lawyers had a West Law account at the County Law Library, which was in the old County Courthouse. Having a good fax machine in that era seemed pretty neat. Now all this seems quite quaint.

It does make me wonder about the earlier era, however. Twenty years ago we were already on the cusp of a technological revolution. Even ten years before that we sort of were. But what about before that?

From probably the mid 1920s through to about 1980 the telephone was the only piece of connected technology any law office had. Fax machines hadn't arrived. If you wanted to send something, you did it by mail. Or if you wanted quick contact, you called. What was office work like then? It no doubt involved a lot of dictation of correspondence, and indeed we dictated when I first started out. Some people still do that. But we all did. And dictation in that era did place a bit of a premium on avoiding revisions, although we all revised. Revisions in that era were truly manual, and the result was, the further you go back, that the product had to be regenerated.

What about before 1920? At some time prior to that, most offices didn't have phones. How different office work must have been then. Quick contact just wasn't going to happen. Contact would have mostly been through the mail. Dictation would have been all direct. Everything was much more hands on and manual.

It'd be interesting, if we could, to go back to one of those offices, say an office of 1912, and see how they really worked, what somebody in our profession (assuming that there is a 1912 equivalent) actually did, on a daily basis, and how they did it, before communications became so instant over vast distances.

The speed of offical Justice, from Today In Wyoming's History: February 15

Today In Wyoming's History: February 15: 1933 President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt escaped an assassination attempt in Miami but which claimed the life of Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak.

The attempted assassin in this matter was Giuseppe Zangara, an Italian veteran of World War One who was fairly clearly in poor health and increasingly suffering from delusions to some extent. The wounded Mayor Cermak survived until March 6, 1933. By that time, Zangara had already been sentenced for four counts of attempted murder, and was given 20 years for each count.

That is, he had been sentenced in less than a month.

He was charged with homicide on March 8, 1933, due to Cermak's death. He plead guilty and was executed on March 20, 1933.

Cermak never contested his responsibility for the crimes. He was increasingly ill and suffering from delusions, but his statements made it fairly clear that he conceived of his actions as some sort of radical anti-capitalist action. What strikes me as amazing, however, is that he went from arrest to execution in a little over a month. Indeed, he went from arrest for homicide to execution in 14 days.

I am not noting this in order to make a comment about the death penalty. That's an entirely different topic and frankly addressing it in the context of 2012 in comparison to 1933 isn't really even possible. But what is really striking is that the criminal process played itself out so very rapidly. Now I would have expected a process of examination to determine if Zangara was sane or even competent to make a confession, and there's no way on earth that the process would have occurred so very rapidly

Some Gave All: Miner's Memorial, Rock Springs Wyoming

A look at mining, when it was horse powered:

Some Gave All: Miner's Memorial, Rock Springs Wyoming:

Visual memories of oil booms past.

Recently I took some photos for the Railhead blog we have, which is dedicated to all things locomotive, which really caused me to realize the extent to which a boom can alter the face of a town. More specifically, it caused me to realize how much the oil boom of the late teens and twenties has had an impact on the appearance of Casper, even though there's been multiple booms and busts since then.

What caused me to ponder this is that I took some photos of the walkway that's been put in across Casper on the old Chicago and North West line. That rail line is now long gone, and the old rail bed is now a walkway through downtown Casper, and a trial that stretches all the way out of town towards the East. It's an impressive effort, but of course for most of its course it is basically unimproved. Not all of it is scenic by any means, but the downtown portion is pretty neat.

In walking it, it occurred to me that a tremendous amount of what a person sees on it was built in the teens and twenties. Not everything, by any means, but an awful lot is. And some of what does not appear to be only has a more modern appearance as new facades have been added.

This in turn caused me to ponder how many other buildings in downtown Casper remain from this era. While Casper does not have an extremely well preserved downtown, like some towns do, it does show a remarkable impact form the World War One oil boom. Fire Station No. 1 remains, now in use as a private office, having been built in 1921. The Townsend Hotel also remains, and I believe that it may stretch back that far. It's now a courthouse. The Consolidated Royalty Building, still in use as an office building, was designed by the same architect as The Townsend Hotel, and was built in 1917. It was originally the headquarters for an oil company. I don't have any pictures of it, but Natrona County High School, still in use, was built in 1923.

Just off downtown, several impressive churches were built in the same era. St. Anthony's is one example. First United Methodist is another, in that it was added on to during this era. First Presbyterian was built in this time frame. A new St. Mark's was built. All of this was no doubt occurring as people were moving into town, indeed the town became a small city in this era, but it probably also reflects that the oil activity had increased people's fortunes, and they were generous with their added wealth.

Casper has certainly suffered recessions and depressions since then. One of the buildings mentioned above, the Townsend Hotel, was abandoned for a very long time as a result of one of them. A few older downtown buildings have disappeared, after have sat empty for awhile. Nonetheless, the impact of the oil boom that came about due to World War One and which lasted into the Roaring Twenties has left quite a visual impact.

Life Span, old age, and statistics

The issue before last of the National Geographic featured an article on the Teenage Brain. This past issue, which arrived last week, included a letter to the editor from a reader who somewhat grumpily suggested that the teenage brain might be the evolutionary norm, because, he suggested, back in our early days as a species, we didn't live much longer than that.

Oh yes we did.

The suggestion of the letter writer was that human beings live longer than they used to. This is a common belief, people state that all the time, but it simply isn't true. People live the same number of years that they always have. That number of years varies by population and culture, but it's generally between 60 and 120 years. Extreme old age generally seems to cap out at an absolute maximum of 120 years, a span that's actually mentioned in the Old Testament, interestingly enough. The longest any human in modern times has been recorded to have live is 122 years. There are claimed examples of people living in excess of this number of years, but they lack verification and tend to be subject to serious questioning. This is not to say, of course, that anyone can live to 120 years. Far from it. Only a tiny minority of people shall ever approach that age. But instances of advance years in any one era are quite easy to find. Chief Washakie, for example, lived to be 99 or 100 years of age and was not the only Native American of that to have done so. Adams and Jefferson lived into their 80s. And so on.

Well, if people are not actually living longer, why do we tend to think that we are? That's because life expectation is increasing. That is, average life span, or life expectancy, is increasing.

Well, isn't that the same thing? Not at all.

Life expectancy or average life span is a statistical figure. It doesn't mean that all people live to that age. No, by its very nature it means that most people will have died before that age or after it. It's the statistical medium.

But if that's the case, wouldn't it still mean that people are living longer? No, what it means is that people aren't dieing as young.

That sounds like semantics, but it isn't. When you look at what killed people in prior eras, it makes sense.

For one thing, and a huge thing at that, an enormous number of people died at (and in) child birth prior to the mid 20th Century. And this was in European and North American societies. Infant death was very common. Childhood death was also distressingly common. A large number of people died prior to age five.

The reason for this is varied, but disease and the stress of birth explains a lot of it. But what it also means is that if a person passed their fifth year, their life expectancy jumped enormously. Indeed, if you take out the number of infants who died prior to age five, and the number of women who died giving birth, life expectancy for the most part would begin to look pretty recognizable for most European or North American cultures.

They would not, of course, be identical. But that's easily explainable as well. Diseases of all types were enormously dangerous prior to the late 19th Century. The germ theory of disease itself was only discovered in the mid 19th Century. There were an awful lot of diseases that, if you acquired them, your end was nearly guaranteed, where as this would not be the case now. Heart attacks, cancer and strokes basically killed. Diagnosing dangerous diseases prior to their last phase was often impossible. None of this is true now. And accidents tended to be much more lethal in any era prior to the one we're living in right now. Work, for males, was much more dangerous in prior eras.

And, of course, warfare was very prominent in earlier eras. Most European nations were constantly at war in the 18th Century. When the Indian Wars are included, the US was basically at war from 1776 through the 1880s. And wars have become less lethal in modern times in comparison to prior eras.

So what does all this mean? Perhaps not that much, but the common modern assumption that we're living longer is simply incorrect. Things aren't killing us before we reach our natural end of life. That's what is occurring.

Railhead: Rails to Trails, Casper Wyoming

Railhead: Rails to Trails, Casper Wyoming: Casper is presently served only by the Burlington Northern Railroad, whose rail line separates North Casper from the rest of Casper. But th...

Today In Wyoming's History: January 27

Today In Wyoming's History: January 27: 1943 Contact was reestablished with Jackson after the town had been isolated due to a snowstorm. The period of no contact was six days.

This was not really an unusual event at the time. Prior to advancements in 4x4 vehicles, brought about due to World War Two, it was nearly impossible to remove significant amounts of snow from mountain passes, and towns located in mountain valleys were routinely cutoff from contact with the outside for days and even weeks. This was particularly true for Jackson. Indeed, this was so much the case that a book written in the 1950s, by a screen writer who lived in the town off and on during the 40s and 50s, maintained that the "Cocktail Hour In Jackson Hole" was the entire winter, as the town was completely cutoff from the outside during that time and engaged in one huge party all winter long. No doubt that was an exaggeration, but there was some truth to the statement.

Less romantic, an irony of the situation is that up until 1970s Jackson was not regarded as a particularly desirable place to live. This was very much the case prior to 1950. Prior to 1950 agriculture, together with government agencies, formed the economic base of the town, but even there the homesteads that had been filed there were very late ones and were not the most enviable to have, as the ranches in the valley had to combat the weather and were so extremely isolated. It is only the modern 4x4 snow plow that has made Jackson the winter vacation spot it is, and by extension the home of many wealthy people.

Holscher's Hub: Sheep

Holscher's Hub: Sheep: My father took this photograph of sheep in a pen, but I don't have any of the other details and can't quite tell where it is. It's clearly on a railroad, and the building in the background makes me suspect that it's near Glenrock, but I don't know for sure.

Railhead: Out the train window.

Railhead: Out the train window.: Somewhere in Wyoming, mid 1950s. That's a highway next to the power line.

In the Star Tribune, when there was passenger service between Lander and Casper

An interesting look at when there was rail passenger service between Casper and Lander.

Holscher's Hub: Flying from Casper, Wyoming to Salt Lake City and ...

Holscher's Hub: Flying from Casper, Wyoming to Salt Lake City and ...:

These photos were taken in one set, I think. I know that the Salt Lake to San Francisco photographs are part of a set my father took on a journey that ultimately went to Japan, with stops at Hawaii and Wake Island. I suspect that the first few photographs, showing a Western Airlines airliner at the Natrona County Airport, are part of this set.

The end of horse artillery.

A really interesting thread about horse artillery logistics in the U.S. Army in World War One.

This topic closely relates to some others here about the end of the horse era. Given the exploration about horses in urban and agricultural use, this topic may be particularly interesting in the context of the topics we try to explore here.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 1. New Years Day

Here's the January first entry from the Today In Wyoming's History companion site.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 1. New Years Day: 1863 Daniel Freeman files the first homestead under the newly passed Homestead Act. The homestead was filed in Nebraska.

While the original Homestead Act provided an unsuitably small portion of land for those wishing to homestead in Wyoming, it was used here, and homesteading can be argued to be responsible for defining the modern character of the State.

As noted, the Homestead Act has had a huge, and continuing, impact on the State's history. That's probably self evident to most students of history. But it occurs to me also, for some reason, that the Homestead Act is more representative of a bygone age than perhaps we'd care to imagine.

At the time the Homestead Act was passed, in 1863, obtaining land on the cheap, indeed nearly free, had been the American rule since Jamestown. What the Homestead Act really formalized is the granting of Federal Domain in an orderly fashion, seeking to encourage people to move West. It says something about the Union that it could afford to take this step during the Civil War, which in 1863 was only at its mid point. You wouldn't think that the country would be encouraging some of its citizens to pull up stakes and move West at that time, but it did.

The Act, or rather various Homestead Acts, continued on in force until 1934. The peak year for homesteading was 1919. But even the demise of the Act in 1934 did not mean that land was unavailable.

That's really changed. It'd be difficult, if not outright impossible, for the poor or nearly poor to take up farming today. Indeed, it isn't easy for the Middle Class to do so, or at least not in a serious manner. That's an enormous change in the nature of the country.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 2. The Legendary Blizzard of 1949

Nobody who lived through it ever forgot it. Whenever my father and his contemporaries turned towards discussing the weather, it came up. The Blizzard of 1949, which started on this day, and lasted for a month in one form or another.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 2:

1949 Beginning of the Great Blizzard that struck the Northern Plains this year. In Wyoming, the storm started on this date and lasted until February 20. Snowfall in some areas measured up to 30". The storm halted all inter town transport of all kinds within the state within 24 hours. Seventeen people died as a result of the storm. 55,000 head of cattle and 105,000 head of sheep were lost.