Jesse James--the L.A. yearsAs you’ve no doubt...
Jesse James--the L.A. years
As you’ve no doubt heard, authorities recently dug up the grave of outlaw Jesse James to determine if he’s really buried there. We couldn’t let this story die without talking about the time Jesse James walked into police headquarters in Los Angeles.
“I’m the original Jesse James,” he declared.
The date was Sept. 8, 1933.
Old Jesse, age 87, told perplexed officers that he had just hitchhiked to L.A. after attempting to confess to the governor of Missouri. The governor evidently didn’t believe that Old Jesse had faked his supposed 1882 death at the hands of Bob Ford (known to most every Missourian as the Dirty Little Coward).
Now, Old Jesse said, he wanted to lecture on the evils of crime--for a fee. Or if a motion picture director was interested. . . .
But he couldn’t get an audience with anyone, including Jesse James Jr., the real outlaw’s son who was an attorney in L.A. It turned out that Old Jesse had been quizzed by family members the year before and had flunked on several counts. For example, his shoes were two sizes too big (Jesse wore 6 1/2), and he didn’t have a missing finger, as Jesse did.
A month after visiting L.A. police, Old Jesse was arrested at a sideshow booth in Santa Monica for impersonating the outlaw. Illinois authorities eventually identified him as a parole violator named John James, and he was shipped back to that state.
Which brings us to the present. We have a hunch the exhumation of the James grave will produce no surprises.
It reminds us of a similar search involving a more recent outlaw a few years ago. That operation produced this memorable headline: “Oswald Dug Up--It’s Him!”
SPEAKING OF LAW AND ORDER: A reader proudly faxed us a copy of the tag on his new pillow, showing that it does not break any feather laws (see excerpt).
IT’S NOT JUST HOT AIR: A couple of readers took issue with our assertion that you can reach Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) by dialing (202) BAG OF GAS.
“Even in Washington, D.C., phone numbers have seven, not eight, digits,” scolded one. That’s true. But it’s nevertheless still true that you can reach Helms at BAG OF GAS. When you dial the number, the eighth digit simply doesn’t register.
As far as that goes, you can also get Helms at BAG OF HA!
WE’RE STILL TRYING TO VERIFY THIS ONE: Ice House founder Bob Stane, writing in the Pasadena Weekly, reports that “hunting licenses have been granted by the Fish and Game Department to authorize the culling of an overpopulation of street pantomimists in Old Town Pasadena.” The humane trapping of mimes was necessitated, he says, by “late-season shortages of coins, with projections of poor forage and starvation.” He advises outdoorsmen that “the species, Pantomimus vulgarious ,” may be captured with a variety of devices, including “pig bladders, rubber chickens, nets or fire hoses.”
We asked a mime for a comment but the question seemed to make him freeze.
miscelLAny Like Jesse James, Billy the Kid has made news in Southern California. In 1981, the Kid’s gravestone was taken from a cemetery in Ft. Sumner, N.M. It was found in the bedroom of a Huntington Beach truck driver. Of course, some people say the Kid’s not really buried in that cemetery.