Dreams Can Become a Gusher, But Don’t Call This Plummer January 9, 2010

Spindletop Viewing Her Gusher

On This Date In History: One man prospered on another man’s given up dream. In Southeast Texas, near the present city of Beaumont, there was a large rise in the otherwise flat landscape. It was known to the locals as Big Hill. It was known for its natural gas that seeped from it. People would have fun striking matches and igniting small, brief infernos. When it rained the puddles would bubble. In 1888, Captain George Washington O’Brien bought up much of the land surrounding and including the hill because he thought there was oil there.

Lucas's Patience Paid Off

Beaumont resident Patillo Higgins went to Pennsylvania to study the oil business there and became convinced that there was oil under the hill, then designated as Spindletop Hill. Higgins was looking for ways to fuel his brick factory and knew that in Pennsylvania that brickmakers used oil. George Washington Carroll believed in Higgins and the two formed a partnership. Higgins and Carroll bought the remaining land around Spindletop and eventually partnered up with O’Brien and JF Lanier to form the Gladys City Oil Company and had dreams of Gladys City becoming a booming industrial town.

By 1903, Spindletop Hill Disappeared

To make a long story short, Gladys Oil didn’t find oil and they gave up, signing a lease-sell agreement with Anthony F. Lucas. After two years of failure, on this date in 1901, Spindletop blew. After spewing all of the drillpipe and mud skyward, a 6 inch wide stream of oil flowed 200 feet in the air. There had never been a gusher like that before and it took them 9 days to cap it. The 800,000 barrels of oil formed a lake of oil…I don’t remember how many acres wide it was or how many feet deep. And remember, a barrel of oil is 30 some-odd gallons. Beaumont tripled its population in 3 months and the modern oil business took off. Exxon, Texaco, Chevron and Mobil all have their roots in Spindletop. On that date America’s annual oil output was 64 million barrels a day. By 1909, because of Spindletop, it was near 200 million per day.  Today, some call Spindletop the Boom the Shook the World.

Lucas died in 1921, but his legacy lives on.  The Anthony F. Lucas Gold Medal was established in 1936 “to recognize distinguished achievements in improving the technique and practice of finding and producing petroleum.”   Not only is Lucas credited by some as being most responsible for changing civilization, he also invented many tools and methods that are still used in petroleum exploration and recovery today.

O’Brien, Carrol, Higgins and the rest gave up on their dream. Don’t you make the same mistake.

These Guys Caught the Plummer!

Don’t Hang with this Plummer: Cyrus Skinner was released from San Quentin Prison in California for the first time on August 18, 1853. Skinner isn’t a well known desperado from the old west but he certainly was notorious.

Plummer Had More Hair on his Chin than I have on my head

He grew up in Ohio and began robbing people at an early age. He moved to California with the Gold Rush in 1850 where he continued his robbing ways. He was caught and went to San Quentin. After he got out on this date in 1853, he started robbing again and got caught and sent back again. This time he escaped, started robbing and was caught again and sentenced to 15 years in San Quentin. This time, he met up with a guy named Henry Plummer. Plummer was released and Skinner escaped again in 1860 and this time went to Idaho to meet up with Plummer.

Bannack 1881

Now, Plummer had actually been a sheriff in Nevada City, CA. But, he was having an affair with a miner’s wife and when confronted by the miner, Plummer shot him dead in a duel. Plummer was sent to prison where he met Skinner. Plummer got out due to tuberculosis or due to people asking for a pardon, depending on the source you believe. Anyway, when Plummer got out, he

Plummer's Gallows Today, Rebuilt Following Vandalism...maybe it was Plummer's Ghost!

turned to the other side of the law and he formed a road gang that robbed and murdered about 100 people in Idaho and Montana. When Plummer arrived in Bannack, Montana he killed the one man in town that was aware of his hoodlum past. Henry must have been quite the smooth talker because, not only was he acquitted of the murder, the town went and elected him Sherrif. By day he enforced the law and by night, he and his gang robbed and killed people at will. The gang became known as the Innocents because their not so secret password was “I am innocent.” Skinner was part of that group and was said to have been one of the worst offenders, killing people for no reason. The town folk got tired of it all and formed a vigilante group that one by one, rounded up the bad guys, held street trials and hung them. During this process, one of the bad guys ratted out Plummer.

The evidence mounted and the town vigilantes went after their two-timing sherrif and they eventually captured Plummer and two of his henchmen. With the winds howling on a bitter cold winter day, on this date in 1864, Plummer got hung on a gallows. The builder of the gallows that brought an end to Henry Plummer was none other than Henry Plummer himself. When confronted, Skinner tried to avoid the noose by running away, hoping to get shot….but the vigilante’s wouldn’t oblige. Nope, they caught him alive and then they hung him. It’s good for a rampaging vigilante mob to have principals. I suppose the lesson here is to not follow in the footsteps of a Plummer! Certainly not this one, whom you can read more about here.

NAM 00Z Tue Relative Vorticity

US Snow Depth Jan 9 2010

Weather Bottom Line:  It’s Saturday and light snow continues to fall.  I was amazed that after the sun went down we still had persistent flurry activity with intermittent light snowfall on Friday night.  Now, the clouds are hanging tough….but, I”m tellin’ ya..if the clouds break in time late Saturday night, then we fall to near zero.  Most models do not show this and have us in the low teens.  But, the GFS now suddenly takes us to the low single digits prior to sunrise on Sunday.  That would be a result of that particular model showing the clouds breaking.  We’ll see.  Now, the longwave pattern is going to change and we will come out of the deep freeze.  But, there will be one final assault.  Not big, but still interesting.  Rolling down the eastern flank of the ridge will be a shortwave.  That will approach us on Monday afternoon into Monday night.  It will bring another round of snow.  The GFS isn’t so bullish on snow amounts but does have several hours of duration of light snow or flurries.  The NAM wants to toss out something like 3/4″ of an inch.  This feature will also hold off the warm up.  I’ve seen some public forecasts of highs above freezing on Monday with the idea being that there will be a surge of warmer air ahead of the approaching shortwave trof.  I don’t buy it.  Maybe Tuesday afternoon in the wake of the vorticity maxima we get above freezing. If not, it will be Wednesday.    We get back to closer to seasonal averages for the rest of the week and then next Sunday, there is a potential interesting scenario unfolding, but the solutions are in flux so at this  point nothing concrete can be determined. 

On January 9, 2010, 62.7 percent of the lower 48 is covered by snow with an average depth of 6.3 inches (National Snow Depth).  The analytical output claims there is a maximum of over 900 inch snow depth some place, but I cannot locate that spot.  I question the veracity of the claim.

Right to Smoke Non-Tobacco, Rights to Monopoly, Wrong to Kidnap Kaiser January 5, 2010

Freedom of Expression!

Courts Haven't Ruled in Favor of This Kind of Free Speech

This one may be headed to the legal history bin:  Many municipalities have enacted anti-smoking laws.  I do not understand how constitutional position of such laws in relation to private business,  but I suppose that has probably been adjudicated.  But, the laws typically specifically address the smoking of tobacco products.  They often say nothing about non-tobacco products.  My history professor, Dr. Thomas Mackey, always reminded me of the importance of words and to write what you mean and mean what you write.  Legal professionals are supposed to write with such specificity but sometimes they fall short.  In Denver, apparently the law bans smoking of tobacco products so The Denver Curious Theater says it will go to the Supreme Court of the United States to argue their right to smoke non-tobacco products during theater productions.  Gee…I wonder what non-tobacco product they are considering?  They’ve been arguing for three years before state courts that the non-tobacco smoking is a form of free speech and should be protected as a right of free expression.  The Colorado Supreme Court didn’t buy it, serving up a smoking 6-1 ruling against the plaintiffs.  It will be interesting to see if the SCOTUS decides to hear the case.  I’d love to hear what Justice Scalia has to say.  Actually, if you look at some of Scalia’s less celebrated opinions, it’s possible that he may surprise some folks if he gets the chance.

Monopoly "Inventer" Cashed In, But Was it Legit?

I Doubt That Darrow Could Beat Tom Cruce

On This Date in History:

When I was a kid…I’m talking kidnergarten through second grade…we played Monopoly all the time. We’d have games that lasted for days. Tom Cruce was always hiding money under the board and so we never knew how much he had. I think sometimes we made up our own rules. The game would often be transferred from one house to another, depending on the mood of the mother of whatever house we began the game. If the atmosphere became too tense, we simply moved to someone elses house.

1935 Version

That is my history of Monopoly and its probably a little more clear than the history of the game itself. Parker Brothers made a lot of money selling the game after it bought the rights in 1935. It had always been believed that Charles B. Darrow sketched the original version on a piece of oil cloth. Darrow, an out of work salesman, did not have the means to distribute the game so he offered it to Parker Brothers. But the game company thought it was too complicated and took a pass. So, Darrow joined forces with a friend and sold several sets in and around Philadelphia. Parker Brothers took another look at it and bought the rights. But, the story may be a bit more complicated than that.

Magie's 1904 Patent

In 1971(1973 or 1974 in some sources), someone came out with Anti-Monopoly. Naturally, Parker Brothers wasn’t too enthused and off to court they went. In the testimony, witnesses claimed that the game had been patented on this date in 1904 by Elizabeth J. Magie. Ms. Magie followed the theories of economist (now thought of as a socialist) Henry George and came up with the game to show the evils of real estate monopolies. Her early version was known as the Landlord Game and spaces sported names like Lord Blueblood’s Estate where trespassers were sent to jail. There was also Poverty Place. By the 1920′s, the game was being played in eastern universities by students who held left-wing ideals. At the Quaker Haverford College in Philadelphia, the student yearbook in 1924 made reference to the game and called in Monopoly.

Five years later, the students at Atlantic City Friends School were introduced to the game by a Quaker teacher. The spaces were given names found in Atlantic City with property values assigned and spaces painted in the colors that are familiar today. The story goes that a visitor to the school

1935 Marvin Gardens Card Misspelled

took the game back to Philadelphia and showed it to a Quaker hotel manager named Charles Todd. Todd, in turn, showed it to Darrow. Todd said that Darrow was slow to catch on to how the game was played. Todd claimed that Darrow asked him to write up the rules and make a copy of the game board for him. Todd then asserted that “he(Darrow) stole the game and took it from there.” As proof, Todd said that when he made a copy for Darrow, he misspelled Marven Gardens. Instead of an “e” he used an “i” and that is why Marvin Gardens is not spelled properly on the board game.

So, Charles Darrow may indeed have been a fraud…but he did gain a monopoly…at least for awhile after he received U.S. Patent 2,026,082 for the game in 1935. Darrow became the first millionaire game designer in history and three years after he died in 1967, Atlantic City put up a commemorative plaque on the boardwalk near Park Place to honor the man who may not have invented Monopoly, but certainly profited from it. It looks like to me that the Quakers must have felt like that they got stuck with Baltic and Medeterranean while Darrow had Boardwalk and Park Place.

 

Kaiser Wilhelm II

Hand Over the Kaiser!  Well…Never Mind: 

After World War I, Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II found haven at a friend’s castle in Holland.  American Colonel Luke Lea was outraged, thinking that the former head of Germany should be tried as a war criminal.  Tennesseans from the days of Davy Crockett and his Tennessee Volunteers at the Alamo have been known for their toughness and hard headedness and Lea and his pals decided to hold up that tradition.  Lea got 7 other guys from his home state and plotted to capture the Kaiser and present him to President Wilson  as “a New Year’s Eve gift” at the Paris Peace conference.  So, the 8 Tennesseans acquired some passes, stole a couple of cars and, on this date in 1919, went to the Dutch town of Amerongen.  When they got to the castle, they BS’d their way past some guards and demanded to see the Kaiser.  Count von Bentinck asked what they wanted and they said they’d only tell the Kaiser.  The Kaiser refused to see them.  They argued a bit and then just decided to say “never mind” and left politely.  By that time, a crowd of soldiers had gathered but the octet managed to get in their stolen cars and made a clean getaway.  Or so they thought.  They were eventually apprehended and squeaked past a court martial, though I don’t think that was ever too much a concern.  See, the American commander, General John J. Pershing later said that he’d have given a year’s pay to have gone with Lea and his private expeditionary force.  It’s good to have the king on your side. 

CONUS Snow Depth NAM 7 AM Friday

Weather Bottom Line:  As of January 4, 2o10 58.1% of the United States was covered with an average of 5.9 inches of snow.  In a few days, that coverage will expand as a pretty quick moving shortwave dives down from the northern Rockies, across the plains, through the Ohio Valley and into the Carolinas.  Behind it will be another shot of arctic air that promises to keep Kentuckiana in a deep freeze.  As it passes on Thursday, it still appears to be the best shot this season for some decent snowfall.  Some models have over 4 inches of snow but I kinda like the 2-3 inch range a little better. The NAM has come in line with this thinking as it calls for a 2.5 inch snow depth over our region by Friday morning.  It’s possible for more than that, depending on the humidity of the air.  Lower dewpoints may result in a great snow to liquid ratio and so a fluffy snow may be closer to 4 inches.  Either way, I wouldn’t be surprised to see schools closed on Friday given its the first snow, its  the first week of school for the new year and it’s a  Friday and everyone wants a long weekend.  With snow on the ground, easily single digits and maybe low single digits could be in the cards Saturday morning.  You probably heard that here first but others will come around.