Dakota Datebook: May 04, 2020

Upright Sleeper

May 4, 2020 — We’ve all heard about talking in your sleep – and many of us do. And then there’s sleepwalking, which afflicted pilot Carl Ben Eielson the night before he’d set out on any new adventure. But today’s story is about something far more unusual.

On this date in 1905, the Fargo Forum and Daily Republican published a story about a woman named Mary Dickerson, who was called Aunt Dickie by most people. She lived with Mrs. B. H. Smoot in north Fargo.

There were few background details on Aunt Dickie, but the story said she was “so old that she herself doesn’t know her age.” She knew only that she was born into slavery in Mississippi somewhere between 1825 and 1835. It wasn’t explained how Dickerson ended up in Fargo. Mrs. Smoot said only that Aunt Dickie was sprightly, did her share of the housework and regularly went to church. She had also been using morphine for 50 years; how she got started on it wasn’t explained.

Aunt Dickie had fought her morphine addiction for many years without success, and doctors were unable to help her kick her habit. Then, on Christmas morning of 1904, Aunt Dickie had an abrupt recovery while attending church at the Christian and Missionary Alliance. “...the god (sic) Lord has saved me from this awful shame,” she told the reporter. “He has made me whole.”

Mrs. Smoot confirmed Aunt Dickie’s recovery, saying, “Now she is able to work and is at peace with the world.” But there was still one thing Aunt Dickie couldn’t do. She couldn’t sleep lying down.

Dr. E. L. Siegelstein said, “I attended her several months ago when she was slightly ill. I told her she must go to bed for a few days. Her answer startled me. ‘I can’t go to bed,’ she said. “I haven’t been to bed for twenty years.’” Dr. Siegelstein assumed she slept in a chair, but he was wrong. Aunt Dickie slept standing up.

“I didn’t believe her at the time,” he said. “But some time later I visited the house again and found her asleep. She was leaning against the wall and was sound asleep as though she had been in the softest bed. I was greatly interested and questioned her. She gave a novel but plausible reason, but I have failed to find a parallel case in medicine.”

“It’s this way,” Aunt Dickie explained. “When I took the dope, I had the most terrible dreams. The more morphine I took, the worse the dreams got. I found that when I took the dope and went to bed I would dream of falling into hell’s fire or going through the worst tortures. I just couldn’t stand it and I’d have to get up and take more dope.

“I just couldn’t afford that,” she said. “I had just money enough to buy a little of the stuff at a time and couldn’t afford to take it day and night. So I started to sleep in a chair. That was better. But the dreams still came and so I started to sleep standing up. Then I had no bad dreams and I’ve kept it up ever since. I couldn’t sleep in a bed now if I wanted to.”

Bomb Balloon

May 5, 2020 — It was on this date in 1945 that a Japanese bomb balloon claimed the lives of six people in Oregon. They were the only casualties of World War II in the continental United States. Two of them were the children of Grand Forks railroad engineer, Frank Patzke – 13 year-old Joan and 14 year-old Dick.

Reverend Archie Mitchell and his young expectant wife, Elsie, were hosting an outing for five adolescents who attended Sunday School at the Bly Christian and Missionary Alliance Church. The plan was to have a picnic and do some fishing in the mountains. According to reports, Reverend Mitchell found the main road to the Fremont National Forest blocked by equipment, so he pulled off the road at a different spot where they could fish in a creek.

Mrs. Mitchell and the children got out while Archie was either parking the car or unloading food or both. He heard Joan Patzke say, “Look what I found!” and saw a gigantic balloon she’d discovered caught on some tree branches.

Just a few weeks earlier, one of the other kids, 13 year-old Jay Gifford, had found a weather balloon. He had returned it to the weather station in Klamath Falls, where he was praised for his action. Now, here was another balloon. Someone tugged on one of the balloon’s ropes and an on-board bomb detonated. The explosion instantly killed all but the Reverend.

During the previous six months, thousands of hydrogen-filled bomb balloons had been launched from a seaside beach in Honshu, Japan. Each was 33 feet across and carried five bombs – four that would cause fires and one that was meant to kill. Traveling in the jet stream, the balloons to crossed the Pacific in approximately three days.

The experiment was short-lived, because censorship in the U.S. kept the enemy from learning whether these weapons were doing their job. It was also expensive. Originally, the balloons were made of rubberized silk. Then, someone thought of using a special waterproof paper traditionally used for making stencils for textile design. The technique for manufacturing the paper was long and laborious; after the paper was made, it was waterproofed by soaking in mulberry juice that had been aged many months.

Given the fact that the government had ordered 10 thousand balloons, one can only imagine how laborious it was to construct them. Individual sheets of this paper were only about the size of a piece of gift wrap; not only did they have to be spliced together, they had to be laminated three to four layers deep. The paste that was used was derived from a tuber called “devil’s-tongue” and was often eaten by hungry workers on the sly.

Final construction required auditorium-size work spaces, but a bigger problem arose when B-29 bombers took out two of Japan’s three hydrogen plants. Without hydrogen, the balloons were grounded.

Cream Can Crimes

May 6, 2020 — North Dakota dairy farmers used to hand-deliver cream to cream stations in thigh-high metal cream cans. About this time in 1929, the Bismarck Tribune reported:

“Farmers using cream cans owned by creameries or cream stations are being warned by the state dairy department to return them. The law provides that cream cans must remain in the possession of the person or firm owning them and may not be loaned out. It also provides a penalty for persons having cream cans in their possession to which they have no title.

“The law was passed, E. A. Greenwood, dairy commissioner, said, to prevent cream cans from being contaminated by being filled with oil, gasoline or other liquids which would seriously reduce the value of cream placed in them after they had been used for such purposes. Agents for the state dairy department are placing posters in cream stations and creameries, calling attention to the law.”

“Dakota Datebook” is a radio series from Prairie Public in partnership with the State Historical Society of North Dakota and with funding from the North Dakota Humanities Council. See all the Dakota Datebooks at prairiepublic.org, subscribe to the “Dakota Datebook” podcast, or buy the Dakota Datebook book at shopprairiepublic.org.