A Hanukkah Mystery: The Case of the Female Maccabee

When they arrive at the Assyrian camp, Judith demands to see Holofernes. She's realized the city is doomed, she says, and has come to him for protection. Struck by her beauty, Holofernes invites her into his tent, where she regales him with the supplies she's brought. The salty cheese makes him thirsty, so he drinks too much wine. Soon, he falls into a deep sleep. Judith prays to God for strength, takes Holofernes' sword, and decapitates him. Then she wraps his head in a cloth, and she and her maid sneak out of the camp and return to Bethulia.

The story of Judith doesn't fit most traditional definitions of "mystery." It does contain elements suitable for a thriller--a brutal and lustful villain, a beautiful woman with a daring scheme, the fates of nations at stake. And someone gets killed--almost always a plus, in either a mystery or a thriller. There's no doubt about whodunit, though, or how she done it, or why she done it. Even so, mystery surrounds the story. What are its origins? Is it history or fiction? In what ways, if any, is it linked to Hanukkah--and even to Hanukkah foods? We'll get to all that. But let's start with the story itself. It's a good one.


It goes back over two thousand years. There are several versions, some long and elaborate--the one in the Catholic bible, for example, is divided into sixteen chapters packed with details. I'll stick to basics, emphasizing elements that could connect the story to Hanukkah.

In ancient Israel, evil Assyrian general Holofernes attacks the city of Bethulia. The inhabitants fight back and manage to keep him from taking the city, but they're too badly outnumbered to defeat him outright. Frustrated by the stalemate, Holofernes decides to starve the Jews into submission. He lays siege to the city.

As supplies of food and water dwindle, Bethulia's elders and military leaders begin to talk of surrender. Judith, a beautiful and virtuous young widow, steps forward to rebuke them. God will save the city, she says. Further, He will deliver Holofernes into the hands of a woman. She puts on the fine clothes she hasn't worn since her husband's death, packs a bag with cheese and old wine, and leaves the city, accompanied only by her maid.

Judith with the Head of Holophernes,

by Cristofano Allori, 1613

(Royal Collection, London)

When Holofernes' soldiers find his headless body, they panic and decide to flee. Judith shows the head to the Jews and urges them to attack the enemy camp. They do, scattering the last of the soldiers. Bethulia is saved. Judith is too devoted to her husband's memory to remarry, but she lives a long life, revered as a heroine by the people of her city.

That's the story. Now comes the mystery. Is the story of Judith based on a real event that took place during the Maccabee revolt? Opinions vary. The oldest existing text of the story is written in Greek. People who know much more about such things than I do think it's probably a translation of an earlier, lost Hebrew text written around 150 B.C.E.--not long after the Maccabee revolt against Assyrian/Greek oppression. But the Greek text makes no reference to the Maccabee revolt, and it has some odd, confusing features. For example, it says Holofernes served Nebuchadnezzar, not the evil King Antiochus of the Hanukkah story. To muddy the waters further, it identifies Nebuchadnezzar as "a king of Assyria," not of Babylon. And there's little historical evidence to confirm the existence of a city called Bethulia. In Hebrew, Bethulia means "a virgin." Some see it as a poetic way of referring to Jerusalem, and some think it's a symbolic reference to Judith's chastity. Some, on the other hand, say it's an indication that the Book of Judith is a work of fiction.

In some ways, the book does seem like a fanciful reweaving of the stories of several heroic women in the Jewish bible (or the Tanakh--a Hebrew acronym for Torah, Prophets, and Writings, essentially the same as the Protestant Old Testament except that we put the books in a different order). First there's Deborah, the judge and prophet, who urges a general, Barak, to resist the oppression of the king of Canaan and his general, Sisera. Barak falters, saying he won't lead the army into battle unless Deborah accompanies him. Deborah agrees but says the glory of victory will therefore belong to a woman. Inspired by Deborah, the Jews defeat Sisera, who flees the battle. That's when another heroic woman, Yael (or Jael)--a Kenite, not a Jew--takes over. Seeking refuge, Sisera comes to Yael's tent and asks for water. She gives him milk, he falls asleep, and she kills him by driving a tent stake through his head. Finally, there's Esther. a Jewish girl who becomes queen of Persia. She's the heroine of the biblical book of Esther and also of the Jewish holiday of Purim. When wicked Haman schemes to kill all the Jews of Persia, Esther steps forward and risks her life to stop him, and the Jews of Persia are saved. It's hard to miss the parallels between these three stories and the story of Judith.

But while Deborah, Yael, and Esther all made it into the Jewish and Protestant bibles, Judith did not. The Catholic bible includes the Book of Judith, but the Protestant bible relegates it to the apocrypha, and the Jewish bible doesn't grant it any canonical status at all, maybe because its basis in fact seems so shaky. Jews loved Judith's story, however, and a number of prominent Jewish rabbis and commentators mention it in their writings, saying Judith deserves everlasting praise. Jewish retellings of the story often emphasize (or invent) links with Hanukkah. Some versions of the story say Judith was the sister of Judah Maccabee, the hero of the Hanukkah revolt against the Greek/Assyrian empire.  (Judith and Judah--they could be twins.) And medieval Jewish retellings add the detail about Judith feeding Holofernes cheese in order to make him thirsty, drunk, and vulnerable. Many authorities say that's the origin of the tradition of eating cheese on Hanukkah.

In fact, the first latkes were probably cheese pancakes, not potato pancakes. After all, the potato wasn't introduced to Europe until a mere four hundred or so years ago. Long before that, Sephardic Jews evidently celebrated Hanukkah with latkes made of ricotta and other cheeses--always fried in oil, to commemorate the Hanukkah miracle that took place when the temple in Jerusalem was recaptured and rededicated by the triumphant Maccabees. They found only a tiny bit of pure oil, enough to keep the Eternal Light burning for just one day--but it lasted for eight days, until more pure oil could be prepared. (The other day, I came across a Food Network recipe for latkes fried not in oil but in clarified butter. Oy vey. What's the point?)

Today, potato latkes are definitely the latkes of choice for most Jews, though there are plenty of variations on the basic recipe, some using sweet potatoes, some incorporating other vegetables such as carrots or zucchini. My favorite latke recipe was included in "Death on the List," a Hanukkah whodunit published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine back in 1999. The recipe's available on my website-http://www.bkstevensmysteries.com/recipes-from-the-stories/-     

But, like many Jews, my family always eats cheese on Hanukkah, too--cheese blintzes, cheese pie, even grilled cheese sandwiches. This year, for the first night of Hanukkah, my husband and I had, as usual, potato latkes and a Sephardic cheese frittata. The recipe for the fritatta follows. It's simple, it's delicious, and it's baked in oil. And if the cheese makes you thirsty and you have an extra glass of wine, so what? As long as you're among friends, you should be fine. If you decide to give the recipe a try, think of Judith when you sit down to dinner. Maybe she was an actual person, and maybe she wasn't. Maybe she had something to do with Hanukkah, and maybe she didn't. Her story will probably always be wrapped in mystery. Even so, like other mystery heroines, she can inspire us with her cleverness, and with her courage.

Bernice's Cheese Frittata

(Sephardic Style Cheese Souffle)  

2 eggs
2 cups milk
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
grated cheese--about 2 cups
spices such as pepper, tarragon, and nutmeg (optional)
1/4 cup vegetable oil
grated Parmesan cheese (optional)

• Mix all ingredients, except oil and Parmesan, until slightly frothy.
• Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spread oil evenly in 9 x 13" baking pan; heat in oven.
• When oil is frying hot, approximately 2--3 minutes, pour batter into pan. If desired, sprinkle with Parmesan. 
• Bake approximately half an hour at 400 degrees, until a butter knife inserted in the fritatta comes out nearly clean.
• Any type of cooking cheese should work. Bernice's favorite combination is grated Muenster and Romano. We also like using 1 cup cheddar, 1/2 cup fontina, and 1/2 cup Gruyere.
• Serves four to six (depending on how hungry they are, and how many latkes they're having as a side dish) 
  

  

  First night of Hanukkah, 2015: Three unusually adorable grandchildren, many menorahs in the window

  
  

  
  

  
  

Reading Fiction Vs. Nonfiction

By Art Taylor

This week marked the end of classes at George Mason University where I teach—at least class meetings, though finals and lots (lots!) of grading still loom ahead.

Winnie Ruth Judd

The last book we studied in my course "Five Killer Crime Novels" was Megan Abbott's Bury Me Deep, a 2009 novel inspired and informed by a real-life murder and murder trial from 1931: the case of Winnie Ruth Judd, known as the Trunk Murderess, the Blond Butcher and the Tiger Woman. Judd was convicted of killing two of her friends, dismembering one of them and stuffing both bodies into trunks which she then shipped from Phoenix to Los Angeles. It was only when she went to pick up her cargo that she found herself in trouble: The trunks were beginning to smell...and to leak.

In advance of reading Bury Me Deep, the students and I dig through through the original coverage of the case in the Los Angeles Times—the manhunt ("Greatest Police Hunt in History of West") and capture; the background on Judd's childhood ("Preacher Backs Daughter") and her marriage to an older doctor ("Doctor Wants to Hunt Wife"); her friendship with the two victims and their own background ("Gay Revels Revealed, Narcotics Hinted at in Killing"); a confession that was discovered ("Found in Store Wash Room; Authenticity Denied"); a trial that included hints about the involvements of a Phoenix businessman whom Judd said "knows all about it" (but who skirted past being charged with the crime); and ultimately a conviction for Judd ("Death-Penalty Verdict Returns in Less Than Three Hours")—though I should stress that the story hardly ends there.

Building on some of those same documents and on later books about the case, Megan Abbott "began to reimagine Winnie Ruth Judd's story, with a different final act," as she tells readers in the Author's Note at the end of Bury Me Deep. Accordingly, part of what we study in class are the places where fact and fiction overlap, the points where the author has taken characters and plot in fresh directions, and in the process the ways that the novel opens up perspectives on both the character in the book (Marion Seeley) and the real-life Winnie Ruth Judd, on the place and predicaments of women in the early 1930s, and on the nature of storytelling in general—the struggle for control of a story, where truth resides and where it can be shifted, subverted.

I won't go into too much detail here about all those overlaps and intersections and divergences—though it's provoked some fascinating conversation in class. Instead, I want to focus on a more abstract discussion that's kept threading through that examination of text—namely, the differences in how we read fiction versus nonfiction.

For many people—and I don't mean just my students here, but also readers of my own age and older—the idea of reading fiction seems lesser somehow than reading nonfiction. "Fiction isn't about real things"—that's the kinds of thing I've heard from both students and friends. "I'd rather read about people who really lived, events that actually happened." Even in a case like this, where real events have informed a fictional treatment, students have fallen back on the novelist's ability to just make it up, to shift and transform in ways that diminish rather than inform a broader understanding of those real events. Once you diverge from the facts, they might argue, you also sacrifice something about the truth of a person or a situation.

As you might imagine, I'd argue against that idea—as a fiction writer myself, as a scholar of fiction, and even simply as a reader. To defend my thoughts, I could easily point to the ways in which readers can learn about another era or another culture though novels and stories about other times, people, and places. And even in terms of emotional engagement and investment, it's easy to explore the many ways that fiction becomes real to us. How many of us haven't at some point been caught up in the plight and the demise of a favorite character? How many people haven't cried at some scene in a book or a movie about characters who have no flesh and blood beyond those pages? I can usually bring up Harry Potter to the students in my class and offer up a scene or two for them to consider—none of it "factual," of course, but much of it becoming "real" in other ways to the readers, real enough that they have celebrated triumphs or mourned losses that never, any of them, actually happened.

But despite those examples, some divide frequently persists—and it's also easy enough to find support for the other side of the argument. Even I have read nonfiction books or watched documentaries or encountered books and films based on true events and caught myself thinking, with delight mixed into the incredulity, "Wow, can you believe this actually happened?" Just recently, I would point to Dean Jobb's Empire of Deception about master con artist Leo Koretz, and Clint Eastwood's film Changeling comes to mind too.  It's not just that these texts prove how fact can be stranger than fiction—surely it can. Instead, what strikes me is how we read/experience these differently knowing they're factual. What might be entertaining or thrilling or harrowing as fiction becomes something more; we have to process our incredulity as part of the reading/watching experience. These things really happened—we understand those texts in a different way because of that knowledge.

I don't know that I have anything definitive to say about this topic. In terms of Bury Me Deep, many of my students seemed to divide their experience of the book between those sections where Abbott diverged from the true story and those sections which hewed more closely to the "evidence" they had gained from the original  newspaper articles or from excerpts from journalist Jana Bommersbach's 1992 book The Trunk Murderess. Those sections based on fact seemed to give them insights into what might have really happened. Those sections that were clearly fiction (that "different final act," as Abbott herself called it) were at least to some degree relegated to fantasy, entertainment.

What are other people's thoughts about this? Do you read fiction and nonfiction with different expectations? How about fiction based on real-life events? I'm curious to know!

Fables in Crime

by Robert Lopresti

I wonder if you have ever heard of George Ade?  Probably not, for most of you.

He was a nineteenth century Indiana humorist and Chicago newspaperman from Indiana.  While he wrote all kinds of stuff his longest-lasting material seems to be his Fables in Slang.  He capitalized all the slang words to show that he knew they didn't belong in proper English.

I learned about the man from the radio show of Jean shepherd, another Indiana humorist, the one whose tales led to the classic movie A Christmas Story.  The following Fable seems to have enough criminal element to belong on our blog.  Ade had a dry sense of humor and a rather grim view of "modern" society, as you will see.

THE FABLE OF THE INVETERATE JOKER

WHO REMAINED IN MONTANA

The Subject of this Fable started out in Life as a Town Cut Up. He had a keen Appreciation of Fun, and was always playing Jokes. If he wanted a few Gum-Drops he would go into the Candy Store and get them, and then ask the Man if he was willing to take Stamps. If the Man said he was, then the Boy would stamp a couple of times, which meant that the Laugh was on the Man. It was considered a Great Sell in Those Parts.

Or else he would go into a Grocery with another tricky Tad and get some Article of Value, and they would pretend to Quarrel as to which should Pay for it. One would ask the Proprietor if he cared who paid for it, and if he said he did not, they would up and tell him to Pay for it Himself. This one was so Cute that they had a little piece in the Paper about it.

Or they would go and Purchase a Watermelon to be paid for as soon as a Bet was decided, and afterwords it would Develop that the Bet was whether the Saw-Mill would fall to the East or the West, in case the Wind blew it over.

It was Common Talk that the Boy was Sharp as a Tack and Keen as Brier and a Natural-Born Humorist.

Once he sold a Calf to the Butcher, several Hours after the Calf had been struck by Lightning. As for ordering Goods and having them charged to his Father, that was one of the Slickest Things he ever did.

About the time the Joker was old enough to leave Home, he traveled out through the Country selling Bulgarian Oats to the Farmers. When the Contract for the Seed Oats got around to the Bank, it proved to be an iron-clad and double-riveted Promissory Note. The Farmer always tried to get out of Paying it, but when the Case came to Trial and the Jurors heard how the Agent palavered the Hay-Seed they had to Snicker right out in Court. They always gave Judgment for the Practical Joker, who would take them out and buy Cigars for them, and they would hit him on the Back and tell him he was a Case.

One Day the Joker had an Inspiration, and he had to tell it to a Friend, who also was something of a Wag.

MANUFACTURING SUBURB

They bought a Cat-Tail Swamp remote from Civilization and divided into Building Lots. The Marsh was Advertised as a Manufacturing Suburb, and they had side-splitting Circulars showing the Opera House, the Drill Factory, Public Library, and the Congregational Church. Lots were sold on the Installment Plan to Widows, Cash-Boys, and Shirt-Factory Girls who wanted to get Rich in from fifteen to twenty Minutes.

The Joker had a Lump of Bills in every Pocket. If asked how he made his Roll, he would start to Tell, and then he would Choke Up, he was so full of Laugh. He certainly had a Sunny Disposition.

Finally he went to the State of Montana. He believe he would have a Season of Merriment by depositing some Valuable Ore in a Deserted Mine, and then selling the Mine to Eastern Speculators. While he was Salting the Mine, pausing once in a while to Control his Mirth, a few Natives came along, and were Interested. They were a slow and uncouth Lot, with an atrophied Sense of Humor, and the Prank did not Appeal to them. They asked the Joker to Explain, and before he could make it Clear to them or consult his Attorney they had him Suspended from a Derrick. He did not Hang straight enough to suit, so they brought a Keg of Nails and tied it to his Feet, and then stood off and Shot at the Buttons on the Back of his Coat.

Moral: Don't Carry a Joke too Far, and never Carry it into Montana.

Gone, No Forwarding

Having put THE BONE HARVEST up on Amazon, I added the following note. 

"You don't necessarily have any specific object in mind when you start a book, but I knew going in that THE BONE HARVEST would be about the nuts and bolts – the gear, the manpower, the physical resources – what it takes to mount an actual spy operation. My model was a now-abandoned listening post on the outskirts of Berlin, in Marienfelde, near the sentry wire where the East German guard posts once stood. There was a time when the world seemed divided into two armed camps, static and unyielding, written in stone, but these days that's become the fossil record."

I could go on, although this is fine, for the here and now. Or more to the point, the there and then.

None of this is my invention, or reinvention. The Cold War was real. And there were times when it just missed getting hot.

I'm not nostalgic for the climate of fear. I'm talking about revisiting a physical place in memory, because the place itself is physically lost. Gone, no forwarding.

We might see the footprints, but that's an act of imagination. The archeological evidence is thin on the ground.

Back in the day, the Army Security Agency and the USAF Security Service each had operational sites in Berlin. Teufelsberg, the ASA facility, began monitoring Soviet and Warsaw Pact communications in 1961, and the Air Force commissioned Marienfelde in 1967. Both listening stations, as it happens, were built on landfill, rubble from the ruins of Berlin. It gave them artificial height, the better to intercept signals.

I remember going out to Marienfelde at the beginning, when the move was just starting, the equipment being transferred from Tempelhof to the site. All the ELINT gear first, the Voice stuff last. It was spooky, tell you the truth, the perimeter fence lit up, and secure access, but the building almost empty. I was assigned to a ghost ship. Over the next couple of weeks, the whole business ramped up, and pretty soon we were 24/7. It's instructive to look back on the logistics, the heavy lifting, how it was purposed. I don't think we got a lot of outside help, I think it was all more or less in-house. Some of it must have been

flat-out improvisation. Then again, we had experienced Operations people on board. They'd set up in remote places, without immediate or close support, and even hostile environments. The best part, you really want to know, is how quickly and effectively we got it going. There must have been wasted motion. I mean, seriously – it's the military. But there wasn't any loss of coverage. The mission never went dark. We didn't even brake for the turn. That's the most amazing thing. That it came out right. Somebody should take a bow.

There's nothing left of it. T-berg's a ruin, Marienfelde's overgrown.

Berlin Brigade, along with the other occupation forces, the British, French, and Russian, were decommissioned twenty years ago, and they had a parade. All in marching order. History turns the page.

I guess the lesson is not so much things slipping out of our grasp, or whether memory is reliable or not, but what we might like to think we hold in trust. Maybe it didn't actually happen quite that way, and the facts were messier. That's usually the case. We clean things up. We allow as how there's a moral to the story. Or we settle old scores. It's always going to be something. You leave part of it out, or you adjust the seasoning, or you come up with a better punchline, twenty years too late. But this is one of those instances where I didn't have anything to lose. I wanted to make outfitting Camp Hector as accurate as I could, and I had the example of the installation at Marienfelde to keep me honest. Credit where credit is due.

(And some of it, yeah, I made up.)

DavidEdgerleyGates.com

Public-Speaking Tips for Authors

Every autumn the Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime runs two programs we label Mystery Author Extravaganzas. Chapter authors who've had something new published that year can stand up and tell the audience about their new works, and a local bookseller (usually Mystery Loves Company from Oxford, Maryland) is on hand to sell the authors' works. The first Saturday of each November, we appear at a library in Columbia, Maryland. The first Saturday of each December, we appear at a library in Reston, Virginia. In our promotion, we remind people that this is a good time to do your holiday book shopping, and it's also a way to support local mystery authors and a local indie bookstore.
Our events are open to the public, and the libraries promote the heck out of them. We usually get fifty people at our Columbia event. At our event this past Saturday in Reston, more than ninety people showed up--standing room only--including the twenty authors who spoke. We started having these events annually when I was chapter president nearly ten years ago. And I've had the pleasure of organizing them nearly every year since. My experience has taught me a few things about how to succeed as a speaker, and I thought I'd share them here:

• Keep it snappy, i.e., don't feel the need to use all the time allotted to you. Short story writers have long known to get in and out of a story as fast as you can. Don't meander and go into unnecessary detail. This is good advice for public speaking, too. The authors who keep the

  

  A different kind of high point

  audience's attention best are the ones who don't describe all their characters and drill down into a lot of the plot. They hit the high points, the exciting stuff, the information you'd find on the back of a book, and they leave the audience wanting more. If you're a person prone to meandering, consider bringing a cheat sheet with you with bullet points so you can occasionally look down and see the high points you want to address. (More on bullet points below.)
• Consider if you have something particularly interesting to share--not just about your story, but perhaps an interesting research tidbit or what prompted you to write the story. A good tale can entice an audience. For instance, on Saturday, when speaking about my story "The Wrong Girl," I shared how my fifth-grade teacher tried to get me to stop speaking quickly, and how that humiliating experience finally became useful when I wrote this story about a girl who went through the same thing I did, but unlike me, my character doesn't plan to let her teacher get away with it. I heard from audience members who enjoyed learning the story behind the story.
• Don't write a speech and read it. I know public speaking can be scary, and writing down

  

  My story made the cover!

  what you want to say can help you feel more comfortable. But I've seen too many authors read their speeches with their heads down, barely making eye contact. Don't do that. You want to connect with the audience. So practice at home. Get a feel for what you want to say. And if you'd still feel more confident with notes, bring them, but have them address only the high points, so when you look down, you'll be reminded of what to talk about, and then you can look up and do it. For instance, if I were talking about my short story "A Year Without Santa Claus?" my bullet-point notes might say:
• Title and publication
• Main character
• What's her problem?
• What's her solution?
• If you're considering reading aloud from your book or story, practice first. And have someone you trust--someone not afraid to tell you the truth--listen to you read so they can tell you if you are a good reader or a bad one. If you read in an animated fashion, looking up regularly and making eye contact with the audience (see the prior bullet point), great. If you read in a monotone voice without looking up at all, then don't read. The last thing you want to do is put your potential readers to sleep.
• Briefly (for a few seconds) hold up a copy of your book as a focal point. But don't leave it
  
  propped up there while you talk. That's distracting, and it might block someone's view of your face. (This applies to panels at conventions, too.)
• If you're a funny person, don't be afraid to be funny while you're speaking. But if you're not funny, don't force it. There's nothing worse than someone bombing because he felt the need to come up with a joke. You're there to sell your books and yourself. Do it in the way best suited to your personality.
• Keep in mind how much time you have. If you think you'll fill your entire allotted time, practice at home so you can be ready to wrap up when the timer dings. You don't want to hear that ding and know you never got to talk about the third story you had published this year because you meandered talking about story number one.

And since I have your attention, I'll tell you briefly about my new stories from this year. There's "The Wrong Girl" mentioned above. It's in the anthology Flash and Bang, which is the first anthology featuring stories from the Short Mystery Fiction Society. It's available in trade paperback, large print, and e-book format from Untreed Reads Publishing. In "The Wrong Girl," a fifth-grader humiliated by her teacher plans revenge.

My second story is the aforementioned "A Year Without Santa Claus?" from the January/February 2015 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. In this story, my main character is the head of everything magical that happens in New Jersey. It's two weeks until Christmas, and Santa says he's skipping Jersey this year because a murderer is on the loose. So my main character sets out to find the murderer and save Christmas. Can she do it? You can find out by reading the story--it's available on my website: http://www.barbgoffman.com/A_Year_Without_Santa_.html

Do you have any public-speaking tips for authors? Feel free to share in the comments.

Christmas Spirit

Some days around this time of year I have zero spirit for Christmas. Husband passed away ten years ago. Grand kids are all grown up. it quickly feels like just another day. Last night I was watching some re-run on TV when my doorbell rang. It was about 8:20 or so, a little late for unexpected company. Even a bit late for a sales call.
I turned on my front porch light. I could see a well-dressed man holding the hand of a little boy.  The little boy was also well dressed including a rakish French cap. Probably wanting a donation for the holidays, I though,t as I cautiously opened the door.

The man smiled, he was holding a small paper sack. "We're from a local Church and we want to invite you to our presentation of  "A Christmas Carol." Next Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We're going around singing Christmas songs as we invite people.

I could hear a bit of noise out on the street, looked and saw a pick-up pulling a flat-bed truck behind. The flat-bed was decorated with Christmas lights and a lot of people were sitting in it. They started singing "Jingle Bells."

It was apparent these were mostly children and you could hear joy and laughter in their voices. The duo at my door handed me the paper bag and wished me a "Merry Christmas." I stood in my doorway as the truck drove slowly by. I waved and the carolers all waved back. I kept standing there until they were all the way past, all of us waving back and forth at each other.

Of course they were almost all the way past before I thought of taking a photo. I grabbed my phone, but they were too far away. I enlarged the screen hoping to still get something. It was too dark and the flash flashed twice and the picture was nothing except a bright white spot. Frustration, but I have a great mental photo which will last.

I closed the door and looked inside the paper sack they had given me. There were two pieces of peppermint candy and one piece of lemon drop candy and a Christmas tree ornament. The ornament was a clear ball with shiny red paper stars inside.

A little personal size advertisement card was also inside which told the times of the presentation of the "Christmas Carol" event they were inviting people to attend and that there was no admission charge. Another card attached to the sack had the name of the church.

I couldn't help having a smile on my face for the rest of the evening bcaue it brought back memories of caroling. Both going caroling and having carolers come by my house. Both had happened many years ago.

I posted a short note on Facebook and several people commented about nice memories that caroling had been for them. School children used to go caroling like this. We walked about our neighborhood. Everyone enjoyed the caroling. The people singing and the people listening.

It did give me a nice feeling of the spirit of the holidays and I wanted to share this with all of you.

Sherlock Holmes meets O Henry, 1

Last month, we brought you a Sherlock Holmes parody by the author of Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie. A number of famous writers have penned takeoffs on Holmes. Today, we bring you a Holmesian tale from one of America’s best known authors.

You might not recognize the name William Sydney Porter (spelled Sidney on his birth record) because he’s much more famous under his pen name, O Henry.

The author is known for his contemporary humor and twist endings. He wrote at least two Sherlock Holmes parodies featuring the characters Shamrock Jolnes and Dr. Whatsup. Not O Henry’s best works, the stories contain tepid joke endings. A number of jests and witticisms of the time can be found in this story, such as a comment on the price of gas for heating in New York City where O Henry’s characters reside.

We see here another example of British spellings still in use, much as we found in the works of Horatio Alger, Jr in post-Civil War America. Here the publish date is 1911, the eve of World War I, a year after O Henry's death.

After reading this, you’ll probably head to the bar for a stiff one, muttering, “Oh, man. O Henry gets this trash published and I can’t get an editor to look at my Sherlock in Love opus?”

You’ve been warned.

The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes

by O Henry
(© 1911)

I am so fortunate as to count Shamrock Jolnes, the great New York detective, among my muster of friends. Jolnes is what is called the “inside man” of the city detective force. He is an expert in the use of the typewriter, and it is his duty, whenever there is a “murder mystery” to be solved, to sit at a desk telephone at headquarters and take down the messages of “cranks” who ’phone in their confessions to having committed the crime.

But on certain “off” days when confessions are coming in slowly and three or four newspapers have run to earth as many different guilty persons, Jolnes will knock about the town with me, exhibiting, to my great delight and instruction, his marvellous powers of observation and deduction.

The other day I dropped in at Headquarters and found the great detective gazing thoughtfully at a string that was tied tightly around his little finger.

“Good morning, Whatsup,” he said, without turning his head. “I’m glad to notice that you’ve had your house fitted up with electric lights at last.”

“Will you please tell me,” I said, in surprise, “how you knew that? I am sure that I never mentioned the fact to any one, and the wiring was a rush order not completed until this morning.”

“Nothing easier,” said Jolnes, genially. “As you came in I caught the odour of the cigar you are smoking. I know an expensive cigar; and I know that not more than three men in New York can afford to smoke cigars and pay gas bills too at the present time. That was an easy one. But I am working just now on a little problem of my own.”

“Why have you that string on your finger?” I asked.

“That’s the problem,” said Jolnes. “My wife tied that on this morning to remind me of something I was to send up to the house. Sit down, Whatsup, and excuse me for a few moments.”

The distinguished detective went to a wall telephone, and stood with the receiver to his ear for probably ten minutes.

“Were you listening to a confession?” I asked, when he had returned to his chair.

“Perhaps,” said Jolnes, with a smile, “it might be called something of the sort. To be frank with you, Whatsup, I’ve cut out the dope. I’ve been increasing the quantity for so long that morphine doesn’t have much effect on me any more. I’ve got to have something more powerful. That telephone I just went to is connected with a room in the Waldorf where there’s an author’s reading in progress. Now, to get at the solution of this string.”

After five minutes of silent pondering, Jolnes looked at me, with a smile, and nodded his head.

“Wonderful man!” I exclaimed; “already?”

“It is quite simple,” he said, holding up his finger. “You see that knot? That is to prevent my forgetting. It is, therefore, a forget-me-knot. A forget-me-not is a flower. It was a sack of flour that I was to send home!”

“Beautiful!” I could not help crying out in admiration.

“Suppose we go out for a ramble,” suggested Jolnes.

“There is only one case of importance on hand just now. Old man McCarty, one hundred and four years old, died from eating too many bananas. The evidence points so strongly to the Mafia that the police have surrounded the Second Avenue Katzenjammer Gambrinus Club No. 2, and the capture of the assassin is only the matter of a few hours. The detective force has not yet been called on for assistance.”

Jolnes and I went out and up the street toward the corner, where we were to catch a surface car.

Half-way up the block we met Rheingelder, an acquaintance of ours, who held a City Hall position.

“Good morning, Rheingelder,” said Jolnes, halting.

“Nice breakfast that was you had this morning.” Always on the lookout for the detective’s remarkable feats of deduction, I saw Jolnes’s eye flash for an instant upon a long yellow splash on the shirt bosom and a smaller one upon the chin of Rheingelder -- both undoubtedly made by the yolk of an egg.

“Oh, dot is some of your detectiveness,” said Rheingelder, shaking all over with a smile. “Vell, I pet you trinks und cigars all round dot you cannot tell vot I haf eaten for breakfast.”

“Done,” said Jolnes. “Sausage, pumpernickel and coffee.”

Rheingelder admitted the correctness of the surmise and paid the bet. When we had proceeded on our way I said to Jolnes:

“I thought you looked at the egg spilled on his chin and shirt front.”

“I did,” said Jolnes. “That is where I began my deduction. Rheingelder is a very economical, saving man. Yesterday eggs dropped in the market to twenty-eight cents per dozen. To-day they are quoted at forty-two. Rheingelder ate eggs yesterday, and to-day he went back to his usual fare. A little thing like this isn’t anything, Whatsup; it belongs to the primary arithmetic class.”

When we boarded the street car we found the seats all occupied -- principally by ladies. Jolnes and I stood on the rear platform.

About the middle of the car there sat an elderly man with a short, gray beard, who looked to be the typical, well-dressed New Yorker. At successive corners other ladies climbed aboard, and soon three or four of them were standing over the man, clinging to straps and glaring meaningly at the man who occupied the coveted seat. But he resolutely retained his place.

“We New Yorkers,” I remarked to Jolnes, “have about lost our manners, as far as the exercise of them in public goes.”

“Perhaps so,” said Jolnes, lightly; “but the man you evidently refer to happens to be a very chivalrous and courteous gentleman from Old Virginia. He is spending a few days in New York with his wife and two daughters, and he leaves for the South to-night.”

“You know him, then?” I said, in amazement.

“I never saw him before we stepped on the car,” declared the detective, smilingly.

“By the gold tooth of the Witch of Endor!” I cried, “if you can construe all that from his appearance you are dealing in nothing else than black art.”

“The habit of observation -- nothing more,” said Jolnes. “If the old gentleman gets off the car before we do, I think I can demonstrate to you the accuracy of my deduction.”

Three blocks farther along the gentleman rose to leave the car. Jolnes addressed him at the door: “Pardon me, sir, but are you not Colonel Hunter, of Norfolk, Virginia?”

“No, suh,” was the extremely courteous answer. “My name, suh, is Ellison -- Major Winfield R. Ellison, from Fairfax County, in the same state. I know a good many people, suh, in Norfolk -- the Goodriches, the Tollivers, and the Crabtrees, suh, but I never had the pleasure of meeting yo’ friend, Colonel Hunter. I am happy to say, suh, that I am going back to Virginia to-night, after having spent a week in yo’ city with my wife and three daughters. I shall be in Norfolk in about ten days, and if you will give me yo’ name, suh, I will take pleasure in looking up Colonel Hunter and telling him that you inquired after him, suh.”

“Thank you,” said Jolnes; “tell him that Reynolds sent his regards, if you will be so kind.”

I glanced at the great New York detective and saw that a look of intense chagrin had come upon his clear-cut features. Failure in the slightest point always galled Shamrock Jolnes.

“Did you say your _three_ daughters?” he asked of the Virginia gentleman.

“Yes, suh, my three daughters, all as fine girls as there are in Fairfax County,” was the answer.

With that Major Ellison stopped the car and began to descend the step.

Shamrock Jolnes clutched his arm.

“One moment, sir,” he begged, in an urbane voice in which I alone detected the anxiety -- “am I not right in believing that one of the young ladies is an _adopted_ daughter?”

“You are, suh,” admitted the major, from the ground, “but how the devil you knew it, suh, is mo’ than I can tell.”

“And mo’ than I can tell, too,” I said, as the car went on.

Jolnes was restored to his calm, observant serenity by having wrested victory from his apparent failure; so after we got off the car he invited me into a cafe, promising to reveal the process of his latest wonderful feat.

“In the first place,” he began after we were comfortably seated, “I knew the gentleman was no New Yorker because he was flushed and uneasy and restless on account of the ladies that were standing, although he did not rise and give them his seat. I decided from his appearance that he was a Southerner rather than a Westerner.

“Next I began to figure out his reason for not relinquishing his seat to a lady when he evidently felt strongly, but not overpoweringly, impelled to do so. I very quickly decided upon that. I noticed that one of his eyes had received a severe jab in one corner, which was red and inflamed, and that all over his face were tiny round marks about the size of the end of an uncut lead pencil. Also upon both of his patent leather shoes were a number of deep imprints shaped like ovals cut off square at one end.

“Now, there is only one district in New York City where a man is bound to receive scars and wounds and indentations of that sort -- and that is along the sidewalks of Twenty-third Street and a portion of Sixth Avenue south of there. I knew from the imprints of trampling French heels on his feet and the marks of countless jabs in the face from umbrellas and parasols carried by women in the shopping district that he had been in conflict with the amazonian troops. And as he was a man of intelligent appearance, I knew he would not have braved such dangers unless he had been dragged thither by his own women folk. Therefore, when he got on the car his anger at the treatment he had received was sufficient to make him keep his seat in spite of his traditions of Southern chivalry.”

“That is all very well,” I said, “but why did you insist upon daughters -- and especially two daughters? Why couldn’t a wife alone have taken him shopping?”

“There had to be daughters,” said Jolnes, calmly. “If he had only a wife, and she near his own age, he could have bluffed her into going alone. If he had a young wife she would prefer to go alone. So there you are.”

“I’ll admit that,” I said; “but, now, why two daughters? And how, in the name of all the prophets, did you guess that one was adopted when he told you he had three?”

“Don’t say guess,” said Jolnes, with a touch of pride in his air; “there is no such word in the lexicon of ratiocination. In Major Ellison’s buttonhole there was a carnation and a rosebud backed by a geranium leaf. No woman ever combined a carnation and a rosebud into a boutonniere. Close your eyes, Whatsup, and give the logic of your imagination a chance. Cannot you see the lovely Adele fastening the carnation to the lapel so that papa may be gay upon the street? And then the romping Edith May dancing up with sisterly jealousy to add her rosebud to the adornment?”

“And then,” I cried, beginning to feel enthusiasm, “when he declared that he had three daughters” --

“I could see,” said Jolnes, “one in the background who added no flower; and I knew that she must be --”

“Adopted!” I broke in. “I give you every credit; but how did you know he was leaving for the South to-night?”

“In his breast pocket,” said the great detective, “something large and oval made a protuberance. Good liquor is scarce on trains, and it is a long journey from New York to Fairfax County.”

“Again, I must bow to you,” I said. “And tell me this, so that my last shred of doubt will be cleared away; why did you decide that he was from Virginia?”

“It was very faint, I admit,” answered Shamrock Jolnes, “but no trained observer could have failed to detect the odour of mint in the car.”

---

Coming next week, another painful classic.

Posted and Stranded

Sounds like a soldier abandoned at his duty station, right? Actually, what it means is that this month I'm lucky enough to have short stories in The Saturday Evening Post and The Strand Magazine. And there are three reasons I'm writing on that subject today: the first is a "Look, Ma--see what I did!" thing (otherwise known as BSP, with emphasis on the BS); the second is laziness (nothing is easier than talking about your own creations, since you're the only one who knows how and why they were written); and the third is that I couldn't think of anything else to write about, this week.

Anyhow, those two stories, both of which are fiction, are different in several ways. For one thing, the first is short, around 2000 words (most of it takes place inside a plane parked on the tarmac of an airport), and the second is long, around 8000 words. Also, one is fairly easygoing and the other is violent. Besides all that, the first tries to make an observation about right vs. wrong, while the second is a twisty suspense story about murder, robbery, kidnapping, and a few other heinous deeds. In their own ways, I suppose both are mysteries in that they involve puzzles that the protagonist has to figure out--but only one of the two stories fits the generally accepted definition of mystery fiction, because only one involves crimes that are central to the plot.

The only thing truly common to both stories is a rather unintentional "secondary" theme: One of the best ways to deal with the stressful seas of Corporate America is to hold your nose, jump over the side, and swim for shore. Being somewhat familiar with that theme in real life, I felt qualified to use it as a plot element in these stories.

A tale of two ditties

"Business Class," which appears in the current (Nov./Dec.) print issue of The Saturday Evening Post, is both a Christmas story and a fictional account of ethics and (the lack of) common sense in the modern-day business world. The antagonist, like Mrs. Robinson or Apollo Creed or Smokey chasing the Bandit, isn't really an evil villain--he's just an antagonist. He's there to prevent the protagonist from accomplishing what he needs to do. And the only mystery in the story is the "clue" that the hero discovers that allows him to complete his journey.

This story, published on November 1 (at least that's when I received my contributor's copy in the mail) was also made available online at the SEP's website yesterday, December 4. If anyone's interested, here's a link. FYI, The Saturday Evening Post publishes one piece of fiction in each print issue (six stories a year).

My other story, "Arrowhead Lake," is featured in the current (Oct.-Jan.) issue of The Strand Magazine, and with this one I'm on more comfortable ground: it's a crime story with a lot of action, and it's probably more of a thriller than a mystery because it involves ordinary people thrust into a fight-or-flight, life-or-death situation. In this story, which is actually quite a bit longer than a ditty, a successful businesswoman and her underachieving younger brother face off against a couple of ruthless home-invaders with hidden agendas, who do little to hide the fact that the victims probably won't survive to see the end of the tale. What finally happens comes as something of a surprise to both the bad guys and the good guys--and, if I'm lucky, a surprise to the reader as well.

A most pleasant surprise to me was that this issue of The Strand also contains a never-before-published short story by a fellow (and slightly more famous) Mississippian named William Faulkner. In fact, Strand editor Andrew Gulli has managed to unearth and publish quite a few of these long-lost manuscripts lately, by authors like Tennessee Williams, Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck, etc. The first I heard about this one was an interview with Andrew on NPR that aired the other day, in which he talked about the new issue. I picked the magazine up at our local Books-A-Million this past week and just finished reading the Faulkner story--I think you'll like it. And I hope you'll like mine also.

The Strand usually publishes four or five pieces of fiction in each issue, and this one includes interviews with Dean Koontz and A. E. Hotchner.

Bonus material

I was also pleased, during a trip to Kroger the other day, to discover one of my stories in Woman's World. (The contract always names the issue in which they expect the story to appear, but that sometimes doesn't hold true, so I usually find out for sure by hearing about it from one of my e-friends who has a subscription or from spotting it myself on the newsstand when I go to the store for necessities like Oreos or potato chips.) This story, my eighth in WW this year, is called "Strangers on the Block," in the December 7 issue, which went on sale on November 26. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this market, WW publishes one mystery and one romance in each issue. You can probably guess which genre I prefer.

A quick note about Woman's World mini-mysteries. They really are minuscule (700 words max), and since the "solve-it-yourself" format was introduced in 2004 they are always interactive, featuring a puzzle and an upside-down "solution box" that allows the reader to try to supply the answer. In my story this time, the amateur sleuth figures out which of the three suspects is the guilty party, and the reader's challenge is not whodunit but howdidsheknowwhodunit?

Several of my present and former co-conspirators at SleuthSayers--B. K. Stevens, R. T. Lawton, and Deborah Elliott-Upton, among others--have sold to WW, and they'll vouch for the fact that writing those little mysteries is a lot of fun.

Counting my blessings

As I have mentioned before at this blog, 2015 has been kind to me, writingwise. I'm sure the Law of Averages will soon catch up to me, but meanwhile I'm having a great time. One of the best things to happen to me this year, on the literary front, was having three of my writing buddies--B. K. (Bonnie) Stevens, Barb Goffman, and Art Taylor--join our infamous group here at SleuthSayers, and the other was getting the chance to finally meet Bonnie and Art face-to-face, along with fellow SSers R. T. Lawton, David Dean, and Rob Lopresti. And to see and visit once again with longtime friends Barb, Dale Andrews, and Liz Zelvin.

Here's to a good year for all of us, in 2016.

The Dutchman Who Won't Die

Those confused to find my two posts about the Legend of the Lost Dutchman, and the Superstition Mountains, on the SleuthSayers blog, may be glad to learn the reason.

As many of you know: this year, I am posting a series of articles about Arizona Crime Scenes. Though it may seem odd to list a mountain range or wilderness area as a crime scene, the fact is: the Superstition Mountains, and the Superstition Wilderness Area have been the unfortunate host for many crimes, including murder. And, the legend of the Lost Dutchman's mine was a major catalyst for many of them.

Even though you can see a picture of that "Lost Dutchman" tomb stone on the right – there may have been no Lost Dutchman at all! At least, not in the Superstitions.

In fact, according to some research, there are as many as 51 versions of the Lost Dutchman legend, many of them having nothing to do with the Superstitions, and some taking place in states other than Arizona.

So, why is this legend so prominent, here in The Valley, that folks die over it?

Lost Dutchman Mine Ride at Legend City Amusement Park
Park was located at border of Tempe and Phoenix in the 1970's.
The Lost Dutchman Mine Ride was the "haunted house" attraction.

'What is so "haunted" about a mine?' you may ask.

Other than the part of the ride where an outhouse door flew open to a startled miner's recorded cry of, "Gee, Miss Mary, ain't there NOWHERE a man cain get a little privacy 'round here?" – which is pretty scary when you think about it – the answer is: A mine can seem pretty spooky if its location is mysteriously unknown and the reason for this is interconnected with murder, mayhem, Apache curses, the ghosts of dead Conquistadors, ghosts of dead Spanish miners, and/or dead Apaches, as well as Apache spirit guardians (evidently not quite the same as the ghosts of dead Apaches) – all of whom are pledged to slay any living soul who sets foot inside the mine shaft.

But, Where Did All These Ghosts Come From?

Long before anyone, from some land that might lead others to say he was 'Dutch,' ever came to Arizona's Great Salt River Valley and perhaps got lost, the Spanish Conquistadors encountered a group of the Apache tribe living not far from the Superstition Mountains, which they (the Apaches) considered sacred.

The Spanish, after evidently deciding there was gold in the mountains, directed the Apaches to help them find it. (Don't ask me how they decided there was gold in the mountains, if they hadn't already found it. It's a Conquistador thing: you wouldn't understand.) The Apaches refused, supposedly saying the mountain was "The Devil's Playground" (whatever that was supposed to mean – I mean, who translated it from Apache into Spanish, and from Spanish into English? I have no idea!), and that this mountain was the home of their "Thunder God," causing the Apaches to warn the Spanish that they would be cursed if they set foot on the land.

So, see: In the beginning, came "The Curse" element. As many a reader will happily realize, we can lay this one firmly at the feet of those nasty Conquistadors – mascot of my children's high school (the Coronado High "Dons"). This Curse Element, imho, lends a sense of magic to the story.

And magic is important, when it comes to fueling dreams.

The Peraltas (or Paraltas, if you wish)

Another part of the reason this legend rests in the Superstitions may be due to the Peralta family – members of which supposedly claimed to have mined both silver and gold in the Superstition Mountain area during the mid-1800's – though they didn't find it easy.

After all, the Apaches still considered the place sacred. And, they weren't exactly willing to look the other way or turn the other cheek when they felt their beliefs were being violated. (Can't say I blame 'em!)

Another shot from Legend City. This is how I always imagined the mine.
Except without wood floor, or a bar. Maybe not even a piano.

At one point, the Peraltas supposedly had to hide their mine and run for their lives, because the Apaches had tumbled to their presence and were not happy about it. This work of hiding the mine didn't help the Peralta miners very much, however. The Apaches caught up with their heavily laden wagon train (gold and silver not being terribly light-weight) and killed most of them, scattering (or, according to some: caching) the gold and silver they had collected on this trip.

Finally, around 1864, after a 16-year hiatus, on the north-west slope of the Superstitions, in an area now known as "Massacre Ground," the last Peralta to lead an expedition here was killed on his way back into the mine area, along with about 400 of his party, by rather angry Apaches, who evidently objected to outsiders again trampling over ground they considered sacred.

So, here we have: (A) the introduction of a hidden gold mine, (B) an expansion of the Curse, and (C) the addition of mass death.

Please note: The above description of the Peralta family's activities is the one shared by a large portion of the Lost Dutchman legends. And, the Peraltas evidently did mine gold from within what is now Arizona. (Though there is a train of belief that says they mined their gold in California – just so you know.)

I should note here, however, that the Peralta family may have told folks they were digging in the Superstition Mountains just to throw people off the scent of where their real mine(s) were located. There is a strong belief that the Peraltas actually mined their ore from an area near, or around, the later-established Mammoth Mine or Black King mine, located roughly 4 miles north-east of where Apache Junction now sits. (This location is not literally within "shooting distance" of the Superstitions, but the mountains certainly do dominate the landscape here.) These mines pulled a lot of gold out of the ground during the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, which might support this theory.

This same belief holds that the Peralta Massacre took place there – not in the relatively near-by Superstition Mountains – while the miners were packing their ore for shipment back to Mexico.

And the Peraltas certainly continue to be deeply involved in many versions of the legend. The photo

on the right shows stones, supposedly discovered in the Superstition Mountains, which provide a map to the Lost Dutchman Mine (though, so far, nobody has successfully found the mine by using said map). These rocks are commonly known as the Peralta Stones, or the Peralta Rocks, or the Peralta Stone Map. Last week, as some of you may recall, I wrote that the Lost Dutchman supposedly created the marks on these stones.

And, in fact, many versions of the tale claim he did. In some, he was a friend of the Peraltas, and thus spoke Spanish (which explains why there is Spanish writing carved into the stones). In others, he carved the stones while working for the Peraltas, which is why he later knew the mine's location. In other versions – he just carved the darn things!

Be advised, however: There is NOT ANY EVIDENCE that the Peraltas ever dug in the Superstitions. Nor is there a single iota of evidence that ANY massacre of Peralta miners ever took place. Anywhere.

But, something else also occurred.

In the 1860's (remember, this is around the time that the Peraltas may have tried to reclaim their mines), people began spreading the rumor that two prospectors had found three dead pack mules somewhere in the desert around the Superstition area. The two supposedly claimed to have liberated $37,000 worth of "Spanish Gold" from the dead mules' saddle packs, which had still been intact. Popular opinion held that these mules must have been pack animals of the Peralta miner group killed when fleeing the mine in the mid-1800's.

After that, prospectors began combing the area for more spoils. They also started exploring the Superstitions, hoping to find the Peralta's mines. Hence: We now add prospectors to the mix, and the sense of magical mystery that has already begun.

From the lobby of Westward Ho hotel.
The peak in background is Weaver's Needle.

Enter the "Dutchman"!

Just who this Dutchman was, depends on who you ask.

One story holds that his name was Jacob Waltz, that he knew the Peraltas and had been told where their mine was. That's his tombstone, in that picture up higher, incidentally.

In another version, this same Jacob Waltz learned of the Peralta mine location from his young wife, an Apache woman he met while working at the Vulture Mine in Wickenburg.

In other versions, he's not Waltz at all, but a mysterious someone else.

What everybody DOES agree on is this:

1. There may have been a man, who was a prospector, who was somehow involved in all this.
2. That guy may have come from some place in Europe that caused the local yokels to call him a "Dutchman."
3. This guy, who might actually have lived, and whom everybody supposedly called a Dutchman, died.

HOW he died (assuming he ever lived) remains in contention.

The folks who say Waltz was the Lost Dutchman, claim he brought several loads of high-grade gold ore out of the Peralta mine in the Superstitions over a period of several years. Before he could reveal his mine location, however, he was (A) killed, or (B) died of natural causes, at home, in bed (B-1) without revealing his mine's location, or (B-2) after whispering the location to someone who died without sharing this knowledge, or (B-3) he died after whispering cryptic clues about this mine's location to the woman nursing him on his death bed, who later was unable to locate the mine, or (B-4) he wandered off in a fever and told somebody else, who later told it to somebody else
just before dying, but that other person didn't quite understand what the dying man had told him. (And, while we're at it, don't forget those Peralta stones he may have been involved in, too.)

Another version of the story, is that a green-horn from Europe, whom local yokels called a "Dutchman" because they had a hard time understanding his poor English and thus lumped him in with those who were rather Germanic, stumbled into an assay office in Phoenix several months after anyone had last seen him around town. This "Dutchman" turned in a load of ore for assay, and was overjoyed to discover it was incredibly "pure." This "prospector" then lives it up all over town, getting folks fired-up to discover where he found his gold. But, he refuses to say, departing in the dead of night, to avoid being followed back to his mine – never to be seen again.

The real Weaver's Needle, plays significant role in the legend.

According to which legend you prefer, he disappeared because he was killed by (A) someone in town who followed him out to the desert, tortured him for the mine's location, and then cut his throat before realizing the "Dutchman" had left out important clues, or (B) by Apaches who were getting really tired of all these white guys digging holes in their sacred mountain, or (C) the ghosts of dead Apache braves who had been killed in the mine so their spirits could protect it from being plundered by others, or (D) by the ghosts of Conquistadors who were entombed with the gold they had abused the Apaches to find and now must guard for the Apache horde in the afterlife, in order to atone for their bad behavior, or (E) the ghosts of Peralta miners who are there for reasons similar to those in choice D, or (F) by Apache 'Spirit Guardians' who protect the mine from interlopers, or (G) by the desert itself, since he was a greenhorn – he might have just died of thirst and evaporated into a desiccated husk-like mummy.

Pure Gold

The "incredibly pure gold" part of the story might be important to note here. This is why some people – many of whom claim the Dutchman was Waltz – say he had discovered, not a vein of gold ore in the ground, but rather the site where the massacred Peralta miner's gold had been hidden (either by the miners, or the Apaches, depending on who's telling the story). The theory here is that the gold was "too pure" to have been simply mined from the earth, but must have already been processed somehow – hence the introduction of the Peralta miners, who must surely have had smelting equipment or something on hand, so the story goes.

At this point, I'm sure the reader has already noticed the easy way in which that rumor of two prospectors discovering dead mules with gold-laden saddle packs sort of fits right in, or perhaps morphs and entwines itself within the "Dutchman's" legend. Which illustrates another factor that I believe keeps this legend so alive: The Dutchman does not stand alone.

Instead, "his" story is combined and en-wrapped by many others, wrapping itself about these stories in return, serving to create a rather thick "cable of legend" created by myriad strands of other legends all twisting together to form a plot-line capable of bearing great weight over a long period of time.

This also helps account for why there are so many versions of the Legend of the Lost Dutchman: Person A is introduced to the legend through one strand, which the teller follows throughout the tale's recounting, while person B is introduced via another legendary strand, which puts a different slant on the main legend, and person C is introduced through a third strand, etc.

In fact, some versions of the story insist on specifying that the Dutchman discovered a vast sum of "Spanish gold." Among these versions, some fail to identify where this "Spanish gold" came from, while others claim it was Peralta gold, and still others claim it was gold mined by Apaches used as slaves by Conquistador overseers.

Enter the Fourth Estate

The best explanation I think I've read, concerning the origins of the Lost Dutchman's Mine legend, can be found HERE at the Apache Junction Public Library's website.

Evidently, Julia Thomas, a woman who claimed to have been at Waltz's bedside as he lay dying (with many valuable gold nuggets in a box beneath his bed) supposedly searched the Superstitions after his death, following the directions he had given her. She was unable to find the mine shaft, but did evidently mine some meager profits by selling the story to Peirpont C. Bicknell, who wrote an article that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1895. And, once the newspapers got hold of the story, it was "Drop the soap and Katy bar the door!"

Whatever the truth behind the "Lost Dutchman" and his "mine" there can be no denying the fact that its influence on some folks' imagination is responsible for many deaths, violent or otherwise. And most of those deaths occurred within the Superstition Mountain Wilderness Area.

The legend was also responsible for bringing a lot of money into The Valley, whether spent by tourists or contemporary treasure hunters. Many tourists enjoy a picnic at Lost Dutchman State Park, while others climb from the trail heads there to explore the inner wilderness area behind the jagged peaks in the foreground.

The Mountains themselves do not stand mute, in my opinion. Walk the trails through them, and I'm sure you'll discover what I mean.

Just watch out for the tourist traps that the Dutchman's legend helps spring up around the area. If you want to take the kiddies on an extremely safe ride into a "mine," see a "shootout," or maybe get a good steak, you might check out Goldfield Ghost Town.

Just be aware: The real Goldfield burned down in the 1940's. When I was a kid, the area looked like the photo on the right. Now, it looks like the one below.





















If you want to see something that really is, basically, a ghost town, however, the Superstition Wilderness holds some of the nicest American Indian Ruins I've ever encountered. Not only are they TRULY old and authentic, but you actually have the opportunity, in some of these ruins, to reach out a hand and lay your fingertips on the very spot on a wall, floor, or roof, where ancient peoples may once have touched their fingers to it.

This is a very powerful feeling, and may ... in the final calculation ... account for the real reason that the Lost Dutchman's story has such a strong hold more than a century later. Touching that ancient place touches a person's heart in return. There can be no denying the deep-seated call of the ancient past – which may well be the same call sounded by that Lost Dutchman.

See you in two weeks!
–Dixon