Cowardly Claude Dallas

 Conley Elms, a 3-year Fish and Game veteran

Bill Pogue, a 25 year Fish and Game veteran

This outrageous Idaho murder case from the early 1980s came to mind this week. The perpetrator of the crime was never in question, and the hunt for him went nationwide--twice. The perp was Claude Dallas. He has been romanticized into a macho, independent, self-sufficient mountain man who was good with a gun and a target of women. In truth he was none of that. Dallas adopted a "movie cowboy persona" who was without genuine charisma or appeal. His supposed machismo was a lie--he was a poacher who wasted wildlife, who despite his mountain-man boasts depended on friends and regular jobs for survival, and worst of all, he murdered two Fish and Game wardens in cold blood in Bull Basin, an isolated corner of southwest Idaho, on January 5, 1981, when they caught him poaching. Conley Elms and Bill Pogue were the victims.

Due to the remoteness of the crime, word of the murders didn't reach civilization for a couple of days. It descended on Boise on a crystally cold, frosty winter afternoon, and by the end of that work day Bill Pogue's original art work, which was for sale in various local shops, had been grabbed up by collectors. The shocking news depressed the city--Boise was still small then, and was peopled by folks who, if they didn't know the victims, probably knew someone who knew them.

Dallas wasn't seen for 15 months, then was captured in a shootout in Paradise Hill, Nevada, tried, and got off easy, convicted of manslaughter. Some jurors believed he felt threatened because Pogue pulled his gun on the poacher (Dallas's statement; no witness). Pogue never fired. Both he and Elms, who was not armed, were shot down by Dallas, then executed by a shot in the head as they lay helpless in the dirt. Elms's body was left in the camp but Dallas buried Pogue out in the desert. During the trial when he revealed the location of the body, Pogue's brother hastily left the courtroom to locate the body and remove it for proper burial.

The trial was a sensation in Idaho. The venue was switched from remote Owyhee County to more populated Canyon County. Owyhee's courthouse was tiny and no way could they host trial participants plus the media and the public. Groupies followed the trial. One band of women coined themselves "The Dallas Cheerleaders." I don't know what they saw in a dumpy, cold, calculating murderer, but he had taken on a folk-hero aura in the minds of anti-government folks who wanted to believe that he shot in self-defense.

Dallas was sentenced to prison and in a few short years escaped, leading to a second nationwide manhunt that lasted 12 months. It ended in a 7-11 convenience store in Riverside California. Mmmm, what kind of mountain-man shops at a 7-11?

Dallas has been out of prison for 10 years now. His life and crime have been woven into ballads and tall tales, and generations from now will be one of those curious legends Western folklore is cut from. Elms and Pogue won't be forgotten. They were two lawmen doing the job they were paid to do, who had the sad misfortune to have a run-in with a savage killer.

The Ballad of Pogue and Elms

It's a Small World After All

 

On a recent trip to visit our daughter in Idaho, I was asked to help the youth of her ward search for their ancestors using the Family Tree program. I assisted two teenage brothers by the last name of T -------- [I want to guard their privacy].

Mmmm, when we lived in Meridian Idaho in the late 70s and early 80s I was a Visiting Teacher to an elderly woman named Eva T --------.  So I asked them, "Do you have family in Meridian?"  Yes, they had family from Meridian. "Eva and Ben T ---------?" I asked. Yes, they were the boys' great-grandparents.

Wow, so many years ago I saw Eva every month in her home, and now I was talking to her great-grandsons who she never met. Eva died in 1986, and Ben in 2001 (I had to look up those dates just now, as we moved away from Idaho in 1984).

There's still a warm spot in my heart for these two elderly folks, Ben and Eva. Ben did not attend church, yet Eva was there every week on her own. She was a quiet, reserved saddish woman and firm in the faith. Eva once asked me to sew and custom tailor a dress for her. She couldn't fit into store-bought clothes easily because of her unusual shape. She selected some dark-green polyester fabric and a dress pattern, and I measured her. I love sewing but not tailoring and fitting, so I did just this one dress for her. She was happy with it.

There was something about Ben though. He was always present in the front room of their humble little house, in the same chair, with his feet perched near the tiniest wood stove I've ever seen. I swear it was no bigger than a Costco box of Cheerios. In a way I felt sorry for Eva not having time to talk to her friends alone, yet it didn't seem to bother her.

Ben was not jolly or out-going and in fact, exuded a pressing unhappiness. One day I noted the photo on the wall of a boy who looked 10 or 12 years old. Ben stiffened when he said that was their son who had died. The story of the death seemed forced out of him like squeezing dried up toothpaste out of the tube. The son went for a ride on his horse. He stopped to rest near some water and tied the reins around his leg so the horse wouldn't wander off. The horse spooked and ran off, dragging the son to death. It was horrible to hear Ben relate this dreadful story. Every biting word dripped with bitterness.

I understood Ben more after that day. He was still mad at God for taking his son, and taking him that awful way. I wished he could let God heal him, bring him peace. Perhaps he has found it now that he is reunited with his dear little boy, also named Ben.

The Lost Boy

 

One morning I looked out my front window and saw a scene similar to the above, only there wasn't a forest in sight. There was a lone little boy, walking down the shoulder of the main two-lane highway near my house.  He was in no hurry, just kicking at rocks as he made his way down the road. My oblique vantage point didn't allow me to see the full scene around him, but I naturally assumed a grown-up was close by, and went back to taking care of my children.

Not long after, I happened to glance out the window once again, and there he was, as before. Something wasn't right. I ran outside, saw no supervision in sight, so I approached him to ask his name--Tommy I think--and where he lived. He didn't say much but I wasn't going to leave him on the main road. I brought him home.  

While he played with my kids I phoned all the neighbors who were home, and no one had heard a thing about a lost boy. Someone, somewhere was missing him. I reported the wandering boy to the sheriff. A deputy arrived to interview him. The boy could only say his first name and had no idea where he lived and couldn't say his parents' names. There had been zero reports of a missing child. Deputy would start an investigation. He took a quick glance around my house, I guess to see if it was safe, and asked me to take care of the boy until his family was found. He was at my house for about the next 5 hours.

Periodically the deputy checked in with me. Everything was fine at my house, and he still had no reports of a missing child. You know what began to nag at me at that point?  There was one house in the neighborhood with a brand new family that I hadn't met yet. I wondered if this could be their boy. But if he was, they would have called the sheriff hours ago to report him missing.

Well, several neighbors phoned throughout the day to check on progress in the case. And then, after school let out, a neighbor on the next street over had an odd experience. A girl about 10 years old knocked on her door to ask if she had seen her four-year old brother that day. The woman immediately contacted me. It turned out this girl was from that new family who had just moved in.

The girl told the neighbor that her brother had been missing since morning. While her mom had been asleep he slipped out. She stayed home crying and praying all day. It sounded like she never ventured out to look for him, and never called the sheriff. I can't imagine. Anyway, I loaded him and my kids in the car, and my next door neighbor too, and we brought him home. The girl answered the door. Her mom was "taking a shower" so we never did talk to her. They moved away about a week later and none of us ever met the parents.

End of story. We can all imagine the wrenching agony that poor mom went through that day. It's impossible to understand why she wasn't proactive in looking for her son. I'll never know. The ending was a happy one for which I'm glad.

Sugar City--Where Sweet Things Grow!

Teresa moved to Sugar City Idaho a few months ago. I love this place! I'm spending Thanksgiving here to assist Teresa with the girls while she finishes up her last semester of college (Jared is working in ND).

Sugar City is small town America: 1 gas station, 1 grocery store, a post office, a water tower, a volunteer fire department, a high school that draws from the surrounding rural area, 2 LDS church buildings, Ole's Cafe, a dentist office, a family-owned market, and a combination furniture-hardware-appliance store, also family owned. There's a pleasant, clean, small-town feel here. No McMansions, boutiques, traffic jams, chain restaurants, no fast food and no stoplights.

 

 water tower

 the only grocery in town

 The town underwent a huge change 35 years ago when the Teton Dam gave way and all but washed Sugar off the map. For that reason almost every house in town is modern. Old farm houses still stand in Teton and Newdale, but Sugar was smack in the middle of the deluge, so almost everything old was destroyed. With less than an hour's notice of the dam break, people got out with the clothes on their backs, then had only a stone or concrete foundation to call home.

one of only a few survivors of the 1976 flood

center of town

Sugar's reason for being was the beet sugar factory built here in 1904 for the U and I sugar company. The town was built to accommodate the workers, and because of a labor shortage Japanese workers were brought in to help. Some of their descendants live here now. The factory has long been defunct and only 1 building of the complex still stands. Farming and ranching are still going strong. The high school team name is the Diggers, recalling the heritage of the sugar beet.

1904 sugar factory

My favorite walk here is to head east a couple of blocks to where I can see the mighty Grand Tetons rear up on the eastern skyline. The houses on that edge of town view this:

 Grand Tetons on a hazy November day

Sugar's only drawback is the wicked winter weather common to Eastern Idaho--wind, sub-zero temps, plenty of snow. But it's a nice place to raise a family.

Places (continued)

I wasn't actually done with yesterday's post. It ended abruptly with our move to the house where we have lived for 26 years.

It was a shock at first to come to Portland from little old Meridian Idaho. People here spent money which meant they had boats and trailers and went on vacation to places like Hawaii. During 5+ years in Idaho I never knew anyone to go to Hawaii. There's nothing wrong with that. We were the proverbial country bumpkins that had just rolled in on the turnip truck.


Well, the years have passed quickly. What's so great that we would stay 26 years in the same house?

• close to big city culture and offerings without being in the big city
• situated about halfway between snowy mountains, hiking trails and dramatic coast
• scenic no matter which direction you face
• high caliber / quality schools
• near enough to Craig's job that he can cycle to work
• just around the corner from our church
• close to schools our children have attended
• a high education level in this area's population
• love the weather no matter what it is on any given day
• enjoyable 4 seasons
• 25 minutes from a temple
• release-time seminary for our children
• public bus service to our neighborhood
• close to pool / athletic facilities
• farms within a few miles where we can buy a multitude of fruits and vegs, and cut our own Christmas tree!

And many other attractive features of our area!

our house December 2008

Places I Have Lived

Decades ago I made up  my mind to love every place I lived. No matter the initial impressions, you can find beauty and pleasantness and friends anywhere.

Some places I don't remember living, such as Brooklyn New York, my birthplace, or Perryopolis Pennsylvania where my Mom stayed with me in between moves, or Sherman Oaks California where we lived for a year and a half. Actually, I remember one thing about that place--tumbling down the concrete stairs at our apartment building.

When I was two we moved to Sepulveda California and lived there until I was 13 (1956-1968). It was white-bread dullsville suburbia and life was predictable and safe and comfortable in our 1400 square foot one-story ranch-style home with a big backyard.

My life took an exciting turn when my folks found a larger (2200 sq ft) house in Valencia (Santa Clairita Valley) (I lived there 1968-1974). The area was still rural country then, and I discovered peers who were not like me. My college-educated father went off to work daily to an office job. Some of these kids came from homes that were hardly better than shacks, and their fathers were blue-collar workers, if they even had jobs at all. My high school was attended by blacks from Val Verde and Mexicans whose parents had been migrant workers before they settled down. A few of my friends had horses and was that ever fun--one of my favorite memories is the day I rode my friend's chestnut down the main drag to Thrifty Drug to buy supplies for our school project.

Then it was off to college at BYU (1973-1976) in probably the grandest setting of any university anywhere. But again, these people weren't like me. I was a brand-new Mormon. My roommates fully embraced me and helped me learn how to be a Mormon. As for the city of Provo, I didn't really care for it much, once I started working downtown. Folks were either active LDS, or they were inactive bitter anti-LDS and made life hard for the other ones.

Craig's first job was in Ridgecrest California (1977-1978) in the Mojave Desert, sandwiched between Death Valley on the east and the Sierra Nevada Range on the west. What a nice small town. There were disadvantages such as a dearth of retail establishments. On the plus side the people were humble, strong and faithful, the landscape was beautiful and wide-open and fascinating. We stayed two short years.

Meridian Idaho (1978-1984). Meridian had the deepest effect on who I am today than any place I've lived. We turned our half acre into an orchard and garden, sometimes weeding on summer nights until it was fully dark at 11 p.m. Our neighbors came from all over; there were tons of children in the neighborhood. We belonged to LDS Meridian First Ward which took in the "downtown," if a farm town actually has a downtown. These farmers had lived in their homes for 40 or 50 years or more and raised their children in two or three bedroom little boxes. They spoke out about what was right, even criticizing when appropriate. They put up with me and I came to love and appreciate them. These old folks (many of them widows) reached out to we younguns, taught us about hardship and life and canning and every practical skill. From them I learned a person didn't need much to get by; the virtues of faith and hard work were what got you by.

Portland's Rock Creek (1984). We spent such a short time in that area while waiting for our house to be built. We still have life-long friends made that year.

In December 1984 we moved 4 miles down the road to the Beaverton area, where we have lived 26 years.