A small group of Iolans braved Friday night’s heat to walk in the footsteps of “Mad Bomber” Charley Melvin as part of Allen County Historical Society’s contribution to Iola’s annual Charley Melvin celebration.
Society president Jeff Kluever told a rapid-pace tale of Melvin’s antics, from his institutionalization in Chicago to his easy escape to Missouri after the blast heard as far away as Neosho Falls.
When Melvin struck Iola, it was 1905. About 10,000-15,000 people lived in the city, Kluever noted.
Downtown was bustling. Respectable candy stores, pharmacies, shoe stores and clothiers lined the blocks. Brick buildings were painted bright pastels. On the alley side of some buildings, taverns catered to those with a thirst.
“There’s this underground sort of workers’ lifestyle,” Kluever said.
“It’s pretty proper on one side with the industrialists” — those names that are stalwarts in Iola history — “But really, it’s kind of a rough and tumble town. You have all these workers in the concrete plants” who at the end of the day, Kluever noted, liked to go have a shot of whiskey or a beer to wind down.
Enter Carrie Nation.
Carrie Nation was an ardent prohibitionist who brought her fiery rhetoric about destroying saloons to Iola in 1903.
By most accounts, the talk had little effect.
“Taverns operated openly, but if there were a complaint, police would arrest someone,” usually a saloon owner, “and throw them in jail for the night,” Kluever said. Then, they were released, and business continued as usual.
IN CHICAGO, Ill., Melvin had begun to speak out against saloons in a similar fashion.
Melvin was a dangerous combination — a zealot for the cause of prohibition, coupled with a leaning toward mental instability. By the time he moved to Bassett, just south of Iola, he had already been institutionalized, as well as jailed, over his erratic behavior.
Melvin found work at a local smelter, where his coworkers encouraged the ever-agitated Melvin to soothe his nerves by taking in a pint with them after work.
Drink did not sit well with Melvin, although he must have become a regular downtown.
In a report after the blast, The Iola Register noted “Damage is such that the perpetrator must have been familiar with the layout of the bars,” Kluever quoted.
Kluever took his small crowd through alleys where Melvin laid dynamite, and to the corner of S. Washington and Jackson avenues, where Melvin watched his destructive antics play out.
Walking the route while hearing the tale gave life to the story that sop many are familiar with.
Most interesting, perhaps, were photographs Kluever showed of downtown Iola at the time of the blast.
Whole walls ripped off buildings revealed shattered contents therein. And on undamaged streets, tracks for a marvelous public transportation system — the Iola Electric Railroad — ran straight and true.
Everything, then, was new and shiny. A new courthouse. Bustling businesses. And a chiming clock that was barely three days old when Melvin stopped its bells.
Kluever led the group to the spot where Melvin laid — and lit — a stack of 150 sticks of dynamite, at the base of the Eagle Saloon on the night of July 10.
The building, the Cowan & Ausherman, also held a shoe store, mercantile and land office, Kluever noted.
“Almost every building is like that,” he said.
The Iola Fruit Company, adjacent to the Red Light bar, would lose all its produce to water damage as a result of Melvin’s blasts.
In the timber-framed Blue Front Saloon, the owner was asleep upstairs at the time of the explosion. He escaped with broken ribs “but the loss of his building is probably worse than anything he physically suffers,” Kluever said.
At the base of the Shannon Building, the group imagined Melvin strolling casually down South Washington Avenue before hopping a train to Missouri.
There is a chance Melvin may never have been caught, but letters he sends to local authorities, additional saloon keepers and The Iola Register peg his pride in his actions.
“Consternation increases when the Portland Cement Company reports that 30 boxes (holding 1,500 pounds) of dynamite are missing,” Kluever noted. The letters mention further explosions. Only 500 pounds of the stolen dynamite were accounted for after the July 10 blast.
It takes authorities about three weeks to track down Melvin, Kluever said, but he is found, arrested and returned to Allen County for trial.
In a post-arrest interview, Melvin claims to not have lit the fuse on some of the dynamite found to preserve the lives of families sleeping above the taverns. He meant the piles as a threat, he said.
THE TOUR ended with a visit to the Old Jail Museum, where Melvin was held ever briefly.
Another former inmate was of more interest to tour-goer Richard Culbertson.
Culbertson’s uncle, Earl Hunsaker, had scratched his nickname, “Bub,” into the ceiling of one of the cells.
“He was in here quite a bit,” Culbertson said. “He liked to drink.”
No comments:
Post a Comment