Brains Beaten Out Edition!

Here’s another vintage newspaper article. The last sentence of this one sums up why I love old newspapers so much. Can you imagine a boring modern news source like USA Today using a term like “beat his brains out”?

I think not.

December, 1887

Dead in a Car of Wheat.

PERRY, Iowa., Dec. 13.—At Aspinwall, seventy-five miles west of here, a man was found dead in a car of wheat yesterday. The body was still warm. Later in the day a young man named Ted Stevens was arrested at this place. When taken to Aspinwall he confessed to killing the man with a car pin, and that he relieved the man of $69. The murdered man’s name is Carson, and he is supposed to have friends near Tama City. Stevens is about eighteen years of age. His father lives east of this city and is a highly respected man. Young Stevens ran away from home about a year ago, and was beating his way from the west when he fell in company with his victim, whom he finally murdered by beating his brains out.

 Several times today I heard the name Carson on the internet. And brains coming out.

First time it was the news above, then used in an episode of “Hopalong Cassidy” I heard on the internet, the story led Hoppy to the place where Pecos Pete had taken two people to kill them so he could have their share of the Mine. 

It’s always a mine in the Old West. 

Always the mine.

Hoppy dropped Pete from a distance with a high-powered rifle, and the hostages were relieved, as you might expect. 

None the worse for wear, even though they’d just seen a guy’s head explode.  Again with the brains everywhere.

Hoppy’s sidekick, by the way, was named “California,” and I’ll bet it had to do with being from California. His full name was California Carson, but naturally people went with the longer, vague name.  

Then there is this:

During the American Civil War, three men set off to find $200,000 in buried gold coins. Tuco and Blondie have known each other for some time now having used the reward on Tuco's head as a way of earning money. They come across a dying man, Bill Carson, who tells them of a treasure in gold coins. By chance, he tells Tuco the name of the cemetery and tells Blondie the name of the grave where the gold is buried. Now rivals, the two men have good reason to keep each other alive. The third man, Angel Eyes, hears of the gold stash from someone he's been hired to kill. All he knows is to look for for someone named Bill Carson. The three ultimately meet in a showdown that takes place amid a major battle between Confederate and Union forces.

Tuco bennidicto Juan Maria Pacifico Remarez, Known as the Rat
(Now you have to think in your mind, "Tooie tooie tooo Waaaa waaa wa")

Well, adjusted for inflation, that $200,000 in gold would be worth today about one million  five hundred thousand and change.  Give or take a few hundred thousand dollars.




So that is three Carsons in one day.


Go figure.