Outlaws and Inlaws

Richard Hickok and Perry Smith (on left);  Robert Blake and Scott Wilson (on right)

On August 14, 1965, Richard Hickok and Perry Smith were hanged in Lansing, Kansas for the murders of Herb and Bonnie Clutter, and the Clutter's teenage kids, Nancy & Kenyon.   On November 15, 1959, ex-con's Hickok and Smith murdered the Clutter family after breaking into their rural Kansas home.  Falsely believing Herb Clutter kept a lot of cash around his farm home, Hickok and Smith fled the Clutter home after the murders with what they had hoped would be $10,000 and headed to Florida with what turned out to be only about $40 they had found in the Clutter home.   Truman Capote's 1966 book documenting the horrendous crime, In Cold Blood, put the Clutter's hometown of Holcomb, Kansas on the map in an unenviable way.

A little known fact is that I have a tie to the In Cold Blood killers by marriage.

On December 19, 1959, another horrendous crime took place in Osprey, Florida.  Cliff and Christine Walker, along with their two young children, were murdered in their Osprey home, located not far from Sarasota.  Though Smith and Hickok were captured in Las Vegas later that month, witnesses placed them in Sarasota on the day the Walker's were murdered.

Last week, the bones of the In Cold Blood killers were unearthed in Kansas.  Though it didn't mean much at the time, evidence found Walker home in 1959, including hair follicles and semen, can now be matched against DNA samples taken from the killers bone fragments last week.

In 1967, Truman Capote's In Cold Blood book chronicling the sad tale of the Clutter murders spawned a movie by the same name.  In that movie, Robert Blake portrayed Perry Smith and Scott Wilson portrayed Richard Hickok.  Thankfully, THAT is my distant link to the killers.  Actor Scott Wilson is married to Heavenly Wilson, one of my wife's cousins.  Though Scott and Heavenly live in Hollywood, I met them in 2005 when they traveled to Missouri to film Saving Shiloh, the third in a series of movies featuring a precocious beagle named Shiloh.  In  that movie, Scott played Judd Travers, a grouchy, tobacco-spitting codger who didn't want Shiloh on his property.  (Insiders note - no real tobacco juice was spat in the film. Scott chewed black licorice instead, which produces a very tobacco-juice realistic stream of saliva.)

Throughout the years, Scott has appeared in dozens of well-known movies and TV shows, including In the Heat of the Night, Pearl Harbor, G.I. Jane, Monster, and The Last Samurai. He also played a casino owner in CSI-Las Vegas, a show my wife rarely missed. 

Scott is currently starring in a TV zombie show, The Walking Dead.  On that AMC drama, Scott portrays Hershel, a recovering alcoholic and farmer who is one of only a few survivors of a zombie apocalypse.  (My gosh, these days if the Mayans don't get you, the zombies will!)

So . . . as Scott stars in The Walking Dead, the bones of Perry Smith and the real Richard Hickok that Scott portrayed in 1967 may become "the talking dead", either exonerating them from the Walker murders or solving the 53-year-old murder case.

If you haven't seen the black and white classic In Cold Blood (and don't mind sleeping with the lights on for a few weeks), it is available on DVD.  Not exactly a holiday classic, but it is in the news these days.  And it might just reinforce why it's not a bad idea to keep a gun around the house for self-defense. 

Or possibly install a high-tech burglar alarm.

Or a moat filled with hungry alligators. 
 

 



Signs and Wonders and Mayans

Orion the hunter

The gravel crunched under my feet as I walked slowly down our driveway in the new moon darkness of a chilly December night.  My eyes were aloft.  High in the eastern sky, Jupiter shone brightly.  At the metaphorical feet of Jupiter, Orion the hunter guarded the eastern horizon.  Finding a soft dry spot in the grass, I sat down, leaned back, and waited.   Suddenly, a streak of light shot out from Orion's belt, followed the tree line of our woods a few seconds and disappeared just as suddenly as it had appeared.  My chilly quest had been rewarded.  The Geminid meteor shower had begun.  From a mile away the wind carried the whistle of a train to where I reclined.  A hundred yards in front of me from the security of our woods a thousand coyotes (give or take 990) noisily celebrated the darkness and probably drooled at the prospect of the large solitary hunk of marbled meat beside our driveway (me) possibly becoming their Christmas dinner.  Just then another meteor, then another, flamed into the darkness and disappeared.  One may have gone into our sewage lagoon.  I'm not certain.  What I am certain of is that I won't be going in to look for it.

I was prepared for the show.  My Conservation calendar clearly stated that the Geminid meteor shower would peak on December 14.  The local weatherman gave these precise instructions:  Go outside and look up.  On November 13, 1833, Mr. John H. Tabor of Yellville, Arkansas didn't get a heads-up like that.  In The White River Chronicles of S.C. Turnbo, Mr. Tabor describes the fear an intense meteor shower imparted to him and his traveling companions, his brother Smith, and a friend, Nimrod Teaf:

Just before midnight, my brother woke up and was nearly paralyzed with fear at beholding the air filled with falling stars.  When he was able to speak he woke us all up and told us to hurry and get on our clothes for the world was coming to an end. 

I was almost stupefied with wonder and astonishment and hurriedly rose from my couch of bear skins and looked out at the door and saw that the whole heavens, as far as I could observe, was brilliantly illuminated with hundreds and thousands of 'stars' shooting swiftly down toward the earth.  It was a grand but fearful sight.

Like my brother, I and Nimrod Teaf thought it the last of earth, and we all concluded that it was too late to pray and submitted ourselves to await the approach of destruction.  I fully believed that we would have to give an account of our sins to God at once and we sit down and waited  for the awful moment to appear.  The night seemed a month long, and the end of the world had not come yet.

When at last to our surprise we noticed that day was breaking in the east and it looked as natural as it ever did . . . we found to our joy that mother earth was still here and the end was not in sight.  I was a wicked man then but after the date of the 'falling stars' I did not live so sinful toward God.

For some people, mainly those with school zone speed limit IQ's, the future of the world currently hangs in the same precarious position in which the Tabor Brothers and Nimrod Teaf found themselves in 1833.  The Mayan calendar, the current long version of which started in 3114 BC, ends on December 21, 2012.

While some people are awaiting the end of the world, others are trying to make a buck to spend just in case the world doesn't end.  In the Russian city of Tomsk  "Apocalypse kits" are for sale.  The kit includes food, medicine and your choice of vodka or tequila.  If you want to hedge your bets, I'd suggest buying a kit using a credit card with a bill due date after December 21, 2012.

For some people, the Mayan calendar prediction was tardy.  Their world world ended when Twinkies, Ho Hos and Sno Balls went off the market. 

Those people are known as Ding Dongs. 


Gone, but not forgotten!







A Casualty in the War on Stinkin' Thinkin'

In March of 1977, I came to a fork in the road in my life. Following the advice of Yogi Berra, I took it. Leaving the security of a (low) salaried position, I ventured into the wonderful, roller coaster world of commission sales. I immediately learned two things:

1. Overhead never has a bad month; and

2. If your outgo exceeds your income, your upkeep is your downfall.

Realizing the importance a positive attitude, I signed up for what was billed as a "PMA Rally". PMA was stood for "positive mental attitude". The all-day event featured what today would be considered a hall of fame of motivational speakers: W. Clement Stone, Paul Harvey, Art Linkletter, Cavett Robert, and Zig Ziglar, just to name a few. These men have two things in common:

1. They were disciples of the importance of maintaining a positive mental attitude; and

2. With the passing of Zig Ziglar on November 28, 2012, they are all dead.

I still have the dog-eared notes I took that day in Kansas City's cavernous Municipal Auditorium'

Born November 6, 1926, Hilary Hinton "Zig" Ziglar grew up in Yazoo City, Ms. during the Depression. He was the 10th of 12 kids. His father and a sister died within 2 days of each of other when Zig was six years old. After serving in the Navy during WWII, Zig took a job selling pots and pans door-to-door. Good old commission sales! Realizing how important his attitude was to his success, Zig became an expert on eliminating what he referred to as "stinkin' thinkin'". Per Zig, a key to success in sales (and in life) was to get a "check-up from the neck up!"

Here are a few of my favorite tips from Zig:

“Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.”

“There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic.”

“If you go looking for a friend, you’re going to find they’re scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.”

"Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street”

"Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have."

"You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great."

“Have you ever noticed that people who are the problem never realize it? They’re in denial. They think denial is a river in Egypt!”

“People often say motivation doesn’t last. Neither does bathing—that’s why we recommend it daily.”

It's not what happens to you that determines how far you will go in life; it is how you handle what happens to you.”

“The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want right now”

“Confidence is going after Moby Dick in a rowboat and taking the tartar sauce with you.”

"Money won't make you happy... but everybody wants to find out for themselves."

And, perhaps the advice I found most helpful: “You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.”

Alas, PMA rallies seem to be a thing of the past. When I googled "PMA RALLY", the first thing that popped up was a story about the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) rallying to beat Baguio College of Technology in men's basketball.

The second thing was a link to the Pennsylvania Moose Association (PMA) hosting a state rally for moose riders. Now that sounds like a group that could use a "check-up from the neck up".

Zig Ziglar (November 6, 1926 - November 28, 2012) R.I.P.