A top of this glorious Thursday West Ranch Beacon morn to you, friends. Right off the bat, I’ll warn you. Tug down those Stetsons and check your ammo. We’re going to go capture Buffalo Tom as he derails a Saugus train. (Pictured)

We’ve got a dad who aerated his son’s heinie with birdshot and we’re going to have to pay a visit to Newhall International Airport.

Well saddlepals. If I may take this moment to offer a quote from the disaster movie, “Dante’s Peak,”  from the scene where the crotchety old woman is melting after pushing a row boat through a lake of acid and is being carried by Pierce Brosnan. As her grandson said, trying to urge her on: “Hang on, Grandma. Just another 2 miles to the ranger’s station…” 

NOVEMBER 11, 1919 —

— Pastor Evans did a lot of giving during his career and it was a treat that the good Presbyterian minister was on the receiving end. Evans had gotten into a serious accident in which his steering locked up and he went over a cliff in Agua Dulce. One of his parishioners bought him a brand new Model T so he could make his rounds of prayer and comfort.

— Signal publisher Ed Brown wrote the first-ever “QUIT SPEEDING, DANG IT” editorial and asked if someone in downtown L.A. had voted to turn Main Street (which is what it was called back then) into a race track. The editorial urged motorists to go 15 mph through town. “To those who care for such swift going, we suggest an airplane.” Wonder if Ed would have cared for those stop signs every 18 inches through downtown today. Poor Ed. The World War I would die a few months after writing this, after being publisher and founder for less than a year. 

NOVEMBER 11, 1929 — 

— Here’s another thing that never changes in politics. Check out this local editorial from 80 years back on the nature of the Republican Party:

Here’sanother thing that never changes in politics. Check out this editorial from 70 years ago on the nature of the Republican Party: ”When the party unites, as it did this year, they assume all the arrogance and proceed to run things with a high hand, and do all possible to show what supreme fools they can be. They proceed to disregard every interest but their own, and try to read everyone out of the the party who for a moment presumes to have a thought that they do not approve.” Foof.

— Yesterday marked the 80th anniversary of the great Saugus Train Robbery. On November 10th, “Buffalo” Tom Vernon, an unemployed trick rider and cowpoke, derailed the West Coast Limited at 7:45 p.m. right behind the Baker Ranch (which today is Saugus Speedway). Buffalo Tom had loosened several yards of track behind where Del Taco is today, watch the train flip over, then calmly walked aboard.

Posing at first as a train official, Vernon walked amongst the injured passengers, pretending to help. Then, he pulled out a pistol and proceeded to liberate them of their valuables. He disappeared into the night. You might make the case that Buffalo Tom was the product of if not a broken home, a dead one. He was the son of a saloon owner and his mom was Cattle Kate, who ran a brothel in Carbon County, Wyoming (they and Buffalo Tom were part of the story in the box office bomb, “Heaven’s Gate”).

Both parents had been hanged while Tom was a boy and he claimed he was brought up by Sioux. Back to the train robbery — it wasn’t hard figuring out who derailed the 5000 series locomotive and the cars behind it. Sheriff’s deputies backtrack his trail to a rail equipment shed and they figured out he crouched while watching the train go by. They also figured out it was Buffalo Tom who derailed the train because he left a piece of paper with his name on it. Tom was caught a few weeks later in Wyoming after derailing another train and dropping ANOTHER letter with his name on it plus his intentions to visit a girlfriend/hooker three weeks hence. He was arrested at the prostitute’s room without incident, tried, convicted and given life in prison. They let him out of Folsom in 1964, a frail and elderly man.

The train wreck site, by the way, became a large tourist attraction for the next week as work crews labored to remove the monster engine and cars and rebuild the wrecked tracks.

— Workers were busy at Newhall International Airport, constructing a house, tool shed and office for personnel and equipment. The house was for a full-time caretaker, one J.E. Markely. The tiny airport was used as an emergency strip for when Glendale was fogged in.

— The Shell Oil Company donated a large roof sign for aviators. The giant, orange 6-foot tall letters against the black roof read: “NEWHALL” and was 60-feet long. It was a bit of one-upmanship over Standard Oil. They had their own giant “NEWHALL” sign on their roof, but they must not have had a graphic artist in their employ. The first two letters started out real big but then, the oilmen sort of ran out of roof and had to finish with increasingly tinier letters. 

NOVEMBER 11, 1939 —

— Here’s a lesson that still holds true today. Don’t eat that pretty brownish-yellow fungus that grows near oak stumps. R.E. Galbreath did and found it quite delicious until several hours later when he woke with severe stomach convulsions, a cold sweat and hallucinations. I hate that when that happens…

— These paragraphs would be a mite shorter if it weren’t for the near weekly misadventures of nimrod hunters and shootists. On this date, Tom Duddleson was walking a few feet in front of his father on a quail hunting safari. Some birds erupted from the shrubbery and Tom’s dad started firing, hitting his teen son square in the butt with birdshot. The lad was sewn up by our own version of Medicine Woman, Dr. Sarah Murray. As the good doc said: “The boy will be taking his meals on the mantle for the next few weeks.”

— The Newhall Ice House was robbed on this date. Seven bucks in change was swiped. That surely was a cold-hearted crime… 

NOVEMBER 11, 1949 —

— Ed “Digger” Hilburn, town mortician and practical joker extraordinaire, was taking a lot grief a half-century back. His wife, Peggy, took over ownership of the Lulu Belle Dress Shop on the main drag. Alleged friends of Digger were accusing him of building her inventory from a lot of dead and heretofore clothed bodies.

— Bill Rose Anna Lechler celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary on this date. They had settled on their Oak Canyon Piru ranch in 1889. Their grandchildren run the Lechler Historic Museum in Piru. Bill’s uncle, by the way, H.T. Hazard, was mayor of Los Angeles from 1889-1892.

NOVEMBER 11, 1959 —

— Hart teaching legend Cecil “Good Child” Sims penned another hit tune, this being the new fight song for the Indians. The frail government teacher also composed Hart’s alma mater which is still being sung today. You know, they really should have a photo of that guy displayed somewhere today on campus… 

NOVEMBER 11, 1969 —

— We had a double Clint Eastwood first-run bill. “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” and “Hang ‘em High” were playing at the old Mustang Drive-in on Soledad in Honby.

— Vice-president Spiro T. Agnew came out with a stinging rebuke of anyone who would protest the Vietnam War, calling them “un-American rotten apples who should be discarded.” A rather prophetic Scott Newhall editorial said it was Agnew who was un-American and that perhaps some day, HE should be discarded. Interestingly over the hill, San Fernando city mayor Phil Jones (who spoke at a Newhall Park anti-war demonstration) was turned away at his own city’s Veteran’s Day ceremony, put on by the American Legion. Jones was against the Vietnam War but he was also a decorated World War II hero. 

NOVEMBER 11, 1979 —

— The drama of the little water district with the giant name continued. Members of the West Los Angeles County Resources Conservation District had all got into office on the promise they would dissolve the district that apparently did nothing. The bunch was a collection of oddballs, from an actual institutionalized mental patient to one member who showed up to meetings with open cans of malt liquor in his back pocket. The WLACRCD infuriated locals by initiating a local tax to fund their fact-finding vacation to Washington even when they had $200,000 in the bank. 

Well saddlepals, here we are again, right back where we started. Give the ponies a good brush down and a handful of grain. Turn to the person left of you and give them a good brush down and a handful of grain. Me, I’ve got more trail riding to do this morning with my peer, Hunter. See you next Thursday here at the West Ranch Beacon with a brand new Time Ranger adventure and until then, vayan con Dios, amigos! 

John Boston is the valley historian. Go out and buy his book, Images of America, The Santa Clarita Valley, published by Arcadia. It’s at bookstores and retail outlets throughout the valley and makes a dandy Christmas present. Hint. Hint. Hint.