The Cowhide by the Count: Alberto Alberti in 1883

Young Alberto Alberti (Age 30?)

I’ve been quiet on the blog front for a few weeks. I am waiting, not very patiently, for Laura Alberti’s patient records from the MO Department of Mental Health. My court order was issued two weeks ago, now the deep search of the MO state archives begins.This process takes 6-8 weeks. It is worth the wait. I feel there might evidence in those documents that will allow me to write more unbiasedly about the last decade of her life. For now, I am hitting the pause button on finishing Part 2 of her story. I want to present as full and factual a picture as possible.

In the meantime, as a research palate cleanser and distraction, I have been scouring old newspapers from St.Louis, MO. Why you ask? The early years of Alberto’s life in the US are still a bit hazy. His immigration paperwork states that he first came to America in 1877 onboard the USS Helvatia through Antwerp, Belgium. After that he bounced around South America and Italy, until finally resurfacing again in Saint Louis around 1883. We still don’t have any idea how he ended up there.

Unfortunately he lived there between census taking years so we don’t know where he lived in Saint Louis. The only paper proof that he lived there is the birth record of his first son, Wilford in October 1884. We know he married Charlotte Sarah Block in Saint Louis, however there are not records of that marriage. I am not giving up hope. It is a slow process reading the papers as they are not indexed very well. Searching the marriage license announcements day by day is tedious. I have a few more months of 1883 left to search. I assume they married before Wilford was born, but it is possible they married because she got pregnant in the winter of 1884.

I am quickly learning the genealogy research has more brick walls than I expected. While I don’t enjoy the frustration that comes with failing to locate a desired document, it is really really cool when you find something that you weren’t looking for. What I am sharing with you today is probably my favorite find to date. This article is about Albert Alberti, from the 1883 copy of the St.Louis Post Dispatch. It details our 28 year old great grandfather defending the honor of one of his “lady friends” by horsewhipping a well known Saint Louis businessman. I can’t do it justice, and you just need to read it for yourself. It paints such a colorful picture of our ancestor! 

Click here to read the entire article

I have so many questions after reading this. Who was this woman he was defending and refused to identify? Could it have be his first wife Charlotte Block? I did find a census record for 1880 showing that at age 16 she had moved out of her father’s house and lived with her sister Kezia on 12th street. This altercation took place on 17th street, but perhaps the sisters moved a few block over by 1883. Or perhaps these “lady friends” were prostitutes. If we know one thing about Alberto for sure, he was a bit of a ladies man. Probably no way to know for sure, but this article is fantastic! I love the quotes and being able to get a feel for what Alberto’s personality and temperament were like. Can’t you just imagine this mustachioed Italian Casanova creating a scene on the muddy Saint Louis streets 135 years ago?

Earl Returns (Reposted)

      

 I see that Earl has resurfaced on Facebook.  I thought he was irretrievably lost.  Those reading this blog in Kyrgyzstan might want to return to whatever it is you do in Kyrgystan, like repairing the roof of your Yurt so it doesn’t leak on your keyboard.

      There are a number of things I’ve mislaid, lost sight of, and let slip through my fingers.  I’ve lost money in the stock market, frittered away time and money on corny business ideas, and pawned my wife’s jewelry to buy shingles for the log cabin.

      For extended periods I’ve most my temper, my sanity, and sense of humor.  I’m now missing several body parts, a toe, tonsils and gall bladder.  Taking Jack Kerouac’s advice on accepting loss I’ve come to terms with all the things I no longer have, except for one.  Earl.

     I was named Guardian of Earl after the funeral of my niece, Julie, a Lieutenant Colonel assigned to the Pentagon.  Julie was a rabid fan of Far Side cartoons and Saturday Night Live.  She found Earl at the bottom of a Walmart discount barrel, took him home, and dressed him in a miniature conical party hat with a matching red ribbon around his neck.  Earl became her inseparable side-kick throughout her long military career.  Earl helped her break the ice and language barrier with children who were dreading the inoculating needle.  During Julie’s last terminal year she requested more and more goofy stories about Earl.  I may post a few in memory of Julie.  Has it been nearly eleven years already?

     The goofy stories include Earl amending Julie’s income tax to include himself as a deductible barnyard animal, building a time machine out of old Game Boy parts, communicating with Stephen Hawking on a regular basis, solving the mystery of Amelia Earhart, and if you owned any Tyson stock back in the day, Earl was the one who started the “Angry Chicken Syndrome” rumor that led to your loss.  Earl tried to short sell Tyson stock but rubber chickens lack basic math skills.

     Earl has secretly infiltrated genetic labs where they’ve been splicing DNA from Foghorn, that super-sized Leghorn, and other cartoon characters.  Earl's been an informant for PETA on a regular basis.

     The last time I saw Earl he was sitting on top of the chalkboard in my high school chemistry lab in the middle of a Superfund site in Picher Oklahoma.  My students had dressed him in a vest made of aluminum foil after he developed a fear of flying sting rays.  Twice I’ve made the trip back to Picher searching for Earl. I think the custodian's son abducted him.  I’m glad to see that Earl has made his way out of that toxic waste dump, but saddened to see that someone has tied him to the back bumper of their car as a shock absorber.  Very cruel and inhumane!

     I also need to inform NASA that Earl has traveled to the edge of the universe and found it is covered with four by eight sheets of half inch gypsum wallboard. During the trip Earl also communicated with aliens from Alpha Centauri who gave him the formula to neutralize carbon.   The most important thing Earl found in his intergalactic travel is that, just as Einstein predicted, time is cyclical.  That means that all things will come back to us in time.

I Always thought Punky was my dog.

How I remember Punky

 That’s how I remember it.  The year after my dad crashed his plane I was playing in the sandbox beneath the big apple tree in our backyard. A little brown dog saw me and wedged his way through the white picket fence that separated our yard from Mom Hopkins yard.  You could see his ribs.  He came right to me in the sandbox.  My mom was hanging out the wash on the clothesline behind me.  The clothesline ran along the fence from the apple tree up to the garden by the chicken house. The dog didn’t have a collar. By the looks of him you could tell he was a stray.  I’d never had a dog so I asked her if  I could keep him.  I begged and pleaded!  She reluctantly gave in with the condition that I would take care of him.

I find two whole pages in my mother’s writings about “Punky.”  This is how she remembers it.

“I was hanging out the wash on the line when a little brown terrier came through the picket fence and stood looking up at me.  He was so thin and weak his legs were trembling.  His eyes were pleading for help even though he was making no sound.  I left the clothes as they were and went in and fixed him a saucer of warm milk.  He became our beloved pet and we called him “Punky” 

       

There goes the memory of my “begging and pleading.”  So I guess “Punky” was not exclusively my dog although I’ll always remember him as mostly mine.  My mother writes:

 “Punky became our beloved pet – He became so much a part of the family that I think he forgot he was a dog sometimes.”

In my memory “Punky” was mostly my dog for about three years, all the way to the beginning of second grade. In the beginning he was pretty timid, especially frightened of bigger dogs in the neighborhood.   My mother writes:

“When Dan heard dogs fighting or barking he would put Punky in the basement.  Several times when Dan wasn’t there I’ve seen Punky run and dive through the basement window by himself.”

I never realized my mother was such a dog lover. There’s nearly as much ink about Punky in this notebook as there is about the five children she gave birth to. Here’s a little more ink she penned on Punky.

“One day the children and Punky went up to Fairmount (2 ½ blocks) with me – I had completed my business and decided to get an ice cream cone for each of the children.  When I went outside I saw Dan feeding his to the dog.  So I got him another.  From then on I bought enough for Punky – Ice cream was his favorite treat (They were 5 or 10 cents then and very good).  I saw Punky knock a cone out of a little girls hand once.  Just now I don’t remember what I did about that.  I really felt bad.

        Another time I remember was Punky wanting to get up on the lounge – I told him no and he started crying, tears running down his face like a person.  I just sat down beside him and talked to him, but I still didn’t let him on the lounge.”

Okay, I‘ll have to fact check whether a dog can cry tears.  I concede it appears that Punky was not exclusively my dog.  I guess Punky was a family dog; my mothers’s and mine primarily.  My sisters will have to weigh in on their percentage of ownership.

Fast forward a couple of years. Punky’s rib cage had filled out on table scraps.  He never got much bigger but he got more aggressive and territorial.  He was still afraid of bigger dogs, but cars and trucks were fair game, especially big noisy trucks.  He began chasing them.  He would yip and bite at their rotating tires.  I tried to stop him but Punky had his own agenda.  A leash never crossed my mind.  A leashed dog in our blue collar neighborhood was unthinkable.

Punky finally succeeded in catching a truck, right before school, right in front of Mom Hopkins house next door.  It was a big clunking slow moving truck that Punky tangled with.  I think Mom Hopkins’s husband helped bury Punky.  I’ve never figured out why we called her Mom Hopkins.  She was no relation.

Staying home and grieving was not an option. My mother was already at work. I had tried staying home alone before. It had precipitated a lie about a man with purple shoes offering me candy. I was on the principal’s radar.

My mother writes this:

“Finally a car (truck) killed him and Dan saw it happen.  I was already at work and didn’t know until evening – His teacher said he laid on his desk and cried most of the day.”

My second grade desk was in the middle row halfway back.  I couldn’t have been more centrally located.  Teachers are woefully underpaid.  I disrupted the class beginning with the first school bell.  I stayed at my desk and cried through recess and lunch.  After about six hours of non-stop crying it was the last straw for Miss Straw.  She finally lost her patience.  Her voice had an edge to it. The voice of an exasperated Saint.

“Danny, would you please stand up and tell the class why you are crying.”

I stood up. Thinking about Punky ignited a new outburst of blubbering.  It’s impossible to talk when you’re blubbering.  Without any explanation I sat back down exhausted. I put my head on the desk, and slept until the final school bell rang.  I think Miss Straw thought I had been orphaned.

I guess it was Punky who had the last say on whose dog he was.  I cried buckets over his passing but it was mother that he came back to for a final farewell. Here’s the last paragraph my mother wrote on Punky in her notebook.

“A few days after his death I had an odd experience – I was upstairs and looked down the  steps and I thought I saw Punky, body and tail wagging with eyes shining and ‘I’m glad to see you look,’ and then nothing.”

Bitter Ending and New Beginnings

Photo taken near time of accident

At 4:45 on the afternoon of July 6, 1946 my father stalled the engine of his plane and started a spin move above a crowd of thousands at Fairfax airport in Kansas City, Missouri. His was the next to last performance of the finale of a three day air show.  He had successfully made a number of dangerous aerial dives, loops, and spins very close to the ground.   Seconds later, after failing to pull the plane out of the spin, he crashed into the middle of the field.

My brother, two older sisters, and mother were watching from a good vantage point with thousands of other horrified spectators. My mother immediately sprinted across the field to the crash site.  When she got close enough to see the extent of the damage she screamed and fainted.

Someone grabbed a microphone and tried to settle the crowd by announcing that the flyer was not seriously injured.  Visual evidence proved otherwise.  The show went on with a final parachute jump and one lucky spectator in the crowd won a brand new Studebaker.  The crowd however was focused on the emergency vehicles surrounding the wrecked plane.

Someone intercepted my stunned siblings and prevented them from going onto the field.  My mother recovered from the shock and watched the fire rescue team working rapidly, worried that the plane might burst into flames.   My dad was completely enmeshed in the crumpled tubular framework of the plane.  Both legs were broken and he had internal injuries.  My mother said every bone was broken.  After he was extricated she climbed into the back of the ambulance, probably against the wishes of the medics.  My siblings followed the ambulance to the General Hospital in Kansas City in another vehicle. When they arrived at the hospital my brother Dale shouted “this is the morgue!”

 Evidently the ambulance didn’t pull up to the emergency entrance.  The ambulance crew took my father to the back door of the hospital.  Maybe, due to the extensive injuries, they didn’t expect him to live.  My mother said he died several hours later.

My older siblings were in shock. Judy lost her memory for most of what followed. My brother might have been the most impacted for a reason so painful it wasn’t voiced until 1980.  He was 47 years old.  He and my father had argued prior to the accident, possibly about Dale’s job of mowing between the runways at the “Heart of America Airport.”  Somehow, in his 13 year old mind, Dale thought the argument might have contributed to the accident. He kept this pain inside for all those years.

When my mother heard about it she writes a letter to Dale that begins. “Just recently I’ve become aware of a burden you have carried for many years – I’m so sorry you didn’t tell me.  I’m sure I could have relieved you of it.”

The first part of the letter also shines light on where mother stood in regards to the “stunt flying.”

“Your daddy Leonard went into flying against my wishes – when I saw he wanted to so much I made him promise to follow the rules – well for various reasons he got involved in stunt flying.”

Later in the letter she says “He used to have nightmares, and when I would wake him and ask what was wrong he would say he was chasing something he was afraid of, and it would turn around and get him.  So the Lord tried to warn him.  He also prepared me in different ways.”

Someone has torn the bottom part of the letter off.

It was Dale, who two years before the accident, was clipping out articles of plane accidents and sending them to his dad in Manhattan, asking him to be careful.  With Dale’s fear of heights he might have been even more apprehensive than my mother about the risks our father was taking.

Judy and Sherry, my two older sisters, have fond memories of being in a plane with their dad when he was doing barrel rolls and figure eights

Dale was less trustful of air travel in a cotton covered airplane. During his last weeks, before cancer took him, Dale said he accompanied our dad in a plane that had been repaired by the one armed mechanic at the “Heart of America Airport.”  They were delivering it to its owner in Springfield, Missouri. Dale said “the old plane sounded as if it was going to fly apart.”

I was just days short of three years old so all of my memories are suspect and some of them entirely false.  I had a false memory that Ruth and I were at the airport that day. I thought we were being kidnapped.  We were hurriedly shoved in the back seat of a car beside an airport hangar.  I can still smell the new car smell of the leather seats. The lady kidnapper in the passenger seat was turned towards us and was trying to calm me.  I was trying to pull the door handle to escape.

However real that memory is, Ruth and I were not at the airport that day.  We were at a neighbor’s house being watched by a teenage girl named Lilah Linhares. The kidnapping fright was when a distant cousin and his wife picked us up from our babysitter after the accident.  I didn’t know them, thus the panic. 

I do have a valid memory of being in a plane banking above the airport and seeing a jeep below and asking for one.  My dad actually bought me one, albeit a pedal car jeep.

My mother writes about how destructive I am pedaling it pell mell through the house.

            In a little binder that turned up with my mother’s memories she writes that she didn’t know how to tell me about what happened to my father.

           

“One night Danny started crying and I asked him what was wrong. “ He said, my daddy don’t love me, he don’t come home.”  I told him as best I could that his daddy couldn’t come home because he had been hurt real bad and he had gone to heaven.

           The next day he started thru the house in a very business like way – I asked him where he was going – He answered, I’m going to get a ladder and go to heaven and get my daddy.”

            Then I had to try and explain about heaven and that we probably wouldn’t see his daddy until Zion was built.  His answer was – “Let’s build Zion.”

            Over the years I have had conflicting and evolving thoughts about my father.  When I was younger I was captivated by the image of him as a dashing and daring stunt pilot.  Somewhere that image evolved into a simmering anger toward him for leaving my mother with a total of twelve dollars and no real means of support with five young children.

 Now, after reading all their letters I’ve come to realize that the love between my parents was a classic love story.  It didn’t end with the tragedy.  My mother didn’t dwell in self pity.  She resolved to carry on and raise her children as if my father was still a partner.

            In the eleven years before she remarried my mother was the sole supporter of five children. She scrimped and sacrificed, and somehow managed to provide us with all the necessities of life, plus scouting uniforms and musical instruments, etc, etc. etc.

            Yes, he went into stunt flying against her wishes, but she was all in as a partner in his dream of building a flying service, and eventually buying a farm with the profits.  I think every personal sacrifice she made for her children after the accident was made with him in mind.  Maybe love is blind but it carried her through the rough times and was never extinguished.

P.S.  Stay tuned!  My great niece Megan Kunze is on the hunt.  There will be recisions and revisions of earlier blogs of mine due to her incredible research.  I won't spill the beans but she has found a newpaper article on Albert Alberti in ole Saint Looie that is a dandy!