Tuesday, September 23, 2008

The shove, 1966

The opposite of whining and crying:

History-rich Oberon Grill returns to Old Town

EUREKA -- “It happened on a warm Saturday evening, spring of 1910. I was there.”

So reads the framed letter, dated July 20, 1966, that hangs on the back wall in the Oberon Grill, an upscale new restaurant and bar in Old Town. Written by a Eureka resident named W.J. “Hap” Waters, the letter recalls in vivid detail the fight that took place that warm Saturday evening, now nearly a century past, between Eureka timber man Stanwood Murphy, whose family controlled the town's main industrial power, the Pacific Lumber Co., and an author traveling through town by the name of Jack London.

The fight took place inside the Oberon, Waters writes, a bar and brothel located across from the Vance Hotel. It was a knock-down, drag-out tussle, the letter says, sparked by political debate -- Murphy being described as a “Conservative Republican” and London a “confirmed Socialist.”

Both men spent the following days in the hospital, “licking their wounds,” Waters remembers, but the brawl never made the papers, he adds, “on account of the popularity and prestige of both gentlemen.”
☛ TS History-rich Oberon Grill returns to Old Town

Funny, eh?

9 comments:

  1. In disagreements, Rose advocates violence over civil discourse.

    Git' err dunn Rose, go grab you shit kickers and lets do it up right!

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  2. If that's all you get out of this - ok, then.

    'Cause you could get a laugh that we haven't changed all that much in 100 years. Or you could appreciate that they both had to take it like men, no whining allowed. Or you could ruminate on the fact that the papers didn't used to consider that news.

    All in how you look at it.

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  3. Better yet, you apparently condone violence to solve disagreements with your elected representatives.

    Now that sure makes alot of sense-

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  4. Oh, NAN, c'mon,. use your real name. there's no point in going anon if you're going to make identical comments with your 'name' on heraldo. You're safe. Be a man. the only thing you have to fear is fear itself.

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  5. You know my name? What is my name then? I have not posted anything on Heraldo, but you apparently know better than me!

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  6. I've read that Jack London won the political debate then had to defend himself in a pitched battle out numbered as he was by Stanwood Murphy and his crew. Stanwood Murphy commenced the battle shouting the words, "I will destroy you!" and advanced upon London with two Pacific Lumber Co. employees. It was Murphy and one of his employees that spent time recuperating in the hospital. London walked away virtually unscathed. It was Murphy that kept the story out of the paper.

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  7. hell of a stretch anon


    Or maybe you're just cranky over the demise of Measure T.

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  8. Jack London seemed to repudiate the whole story see http://www.jacklondons.net/writings/Bykov/ihs_chapter34.html

    "I remember," wrote London, "how, one day three different sensational articles appeared in the newspapers. One of them claimed that my wife had quarreled with me in Portland, Oregon, packed her things and sailed on a ship to San Francisco, to her mother. Another article talked about how I was beaten up by some millionaire during a bar fight in Eureka, California. The third article described how I, while vacationing in the mountains, on the shore of a lake in Washington, won a bet for 100 dollars by catching some absolutely uncatchable kind of trout. Meanwhile, on that very day, my wife and I had been walking in the virginal woods of Southwestern Oregon."

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  9. It is a good story/yarn.

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