CHARLES EHLIG - EARLY DOUGLAS

Recorded by Helen M. Smith, Field Reporter

I was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1864, and came to this country when a youth. I eventually landed in Colorado, and in the railroad service. Somehow, in 1902, I drifted to Douglas, Arizona, where I was foreman of the railroad water service. My wife remained in Colorado until October of the same year.

Douglas was not much of a town then. There were plenty of saloons, the company store, located in what is now the warehouse, back of the present Phelps Dodge store. My wife complained a great deal because one had to climb steps before one could get into the store—and the post-office; which above mentioned buildings about comprised the business part of the town. Two or three rooming houses, always crowded, a few tents, and several two-room frame shacks belonging to the “upper ten” made up the rest of Douglas. Its present was largely covered with mesquite bushes and fine white dust two or three feet thick. In addition to this native soil, Mexico regularly came across the line in the form of heavy dust clouds which sometimes did not let up for two or three days.

Mrs. Ehlig and two children arrived in Douglas on October 25th, 1902, by train from Colorado. (Mrs. Ehlig is Irish, while I am German. The expressiveness our reunion lacked from my stolidity was more than made up by her exuberance, and we probably gave our audience at the station something to think about.) I had one room in a rooming house on 9th Street back of where the mortuary now is. It was all I could get for love or money, so we ‘must needs’ go there on the arrival of my family. The children were to sleep on the floor, while the whole family must eat out--an expensive proposition, but needs must, when necessary, in the form of an Irish wife, drives. (Mrs. Ehlig: “Don’t let him fool you, Mrs. Smith! He was just as anxious to have me there as I was to come.)

The next afternoon about four o’clock we were getting ready to go out for Sunday evening supper. Mrs. Ehlig was standing in front of the glass trying to set her hat at the proper angle to bring out best Irish eyes and hair, when our landlady rushed into the room exclaiming, “Oh Mrs. Ehlig, come quick and see the fire!” Of course we all rushed out at once. Several blocks away—only there were no blocks—a tent house was ablaze from top to bottom. A woman was burned to death. The affair was afterward reconstructed as follows: The house, built some three weeks, belonged to a young couple who were expecting a third member to join their family soon. She had just started to prepare supper on their little two burner oil stove. There was some gasoline in a pitcher and she poured it into the coffee pot she had previously placed over the blaze, under the impression it was water. A few drops sloshed over on the fire and the whole place went up at once. She apparently reached the door in her effort to escape, since the door knob was clasped tightly in her hand when her remains were removed from the ashes of the tent house. The affair so saddened Mrs. Ehlig that her appetite for Sunday night supper was completely gone, so we returned to our room after purchasing a few articles of food for the children.

One smelter was already working and the other in process of completion. New workers arrived daily, and building grew steadily. Street had been laid out in the mesquite, but of course, no one stayed in the streets and there were wagon tracks across lots in every conceivable shape and direction. In fact, no one could have told where these same streets were supposed to be. We eventually acquired a frame shack up on 17th Street. This shack, located among tall mesquite bushes, was very difficult to find, especially at night when I had been unusually thirsty. There was a saloon on 17th and F by which I used to get my bearings when returning home after dark. I would walk out several blocks toward home, in what I fondly hoped was a straight line. Invariably when I turned around, I would be either too far north or south. It would have been ideal had I been able to back home with my eyes on the saloon, but this was impractical for several reasons. I am sure that I walked many extra miles on that trip home before the surrounding country became open enough to make our home easy of location.

Dust became worse and worse. Wagon wheels sank almost to their hubs in the fine white dust of the roads. Walking was very unpleasant, since one sank well into the dust with every footstep. One evening I was returning home after a day’s work, riding on the back of a wagon driven by a friend of mine. Ahead of us in the road was a woman, walking. She had on a dress which had been black, but was now gray half-way to her waist from the dust. Women wore long skirts then, and I am sure her skirt dragged two feet behind her. She had several bundles in her arms, and consequently made no attempt to hold up her skirt as she walked. She must have sunk well over her shoe tops at every step.

I threw back my head and roared, “Ain’t that a dam-fool woman for you!” I exclaimed. “They’ve got to be in style, no matter what happens. Nobody but a fool woman would walk in a rig like that, out here.” And so on, for about five minutes. When I paused for a few seconds for breath, my friend asked quietly, “Do you know who that woman is?” “No, I don’t,” I answered. “My wife,” he said, quieter than ever. I dropped the subject as though it were hot.

Mrs. Ehlig had her housekeeping difficulties. She dusted and cried, and cried and dusted. Every night before retiring she removed all the bedding and beat and shook it out thoroughly. This was partly Mrs. Ehlig, and partly the dust. I have just had the house repainted and gone over thoroughly, but she still sheds tears over the housekeeping on occasion, although paving and the water wagon now make the dust hazard practically nil.

The first school in Douglas was the Seventh Street School. Our older boy went there, and the next boy went to Fifteenth Street School. The Ord Saloon was located where the Valley Bank now is, and there was a hotel above the saloon, and in connection. A hotel called the Colonial Hotel was located in the place now occupied by the Grand Theater, but burned. The post-office used to be on the corner of Tenth and H, where the James A Dick Company now has a wholesale house.

We were living on Third Street and I was working on the smelter when the Mexican War started. I was on ‘three-eleven’ shift at the smelter, and had gone to work on a Sunday afternoon, when one of Mrs. Ehlig’s neighbors rushed into the house, “Come and see the fight!” the neighbor cried, “Oh, is there a fight?” asked Mrs. Ehlig. “I heard a whining noise, but I thought it was a vacuum cleaner.” “No, it’s the Villistas,” replied the neighbor, and both women hurried out to see what could be seen. That night when I returned I found the bed made in front of the big kitchen range, which had been turned with its back to Mexico. The Villista bullets were coming across the line, and lumber did not always stop them. We still have the range with several bullet marks in the back. We are keeping it for a souvenir.

A great many Douglas residents took to the housetops on International Avenue, the better to see the fight. Others flooded Washington with telegrams demanding that the United States be protected from danger and damage. There were several days which were almost a holiday in Douglas during that time. A cartoon appeared in the paper picturing the Douglas population on the housetops, protected from the sun by beach umbrellas, with a hotdog vendor etc. confetti, and the other appurtances of a fiesta, while at the same time they were alarming the rest of the country by cries for protection. It is certain that the authorities had their hands full trying to keep Americans away from the line.

However, Douglas’ best days were when beer was five cents.

Copied from microfilm by Wilola Follett, transcribed by Vynette Sage, made available and maintained on the internet via Jean Walker.

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