June 6, 1992, was a sunny, perfect Saturday in Dallas City, Illinois, and just a few months removed from the laying of the Rathbun foundation. The framing, roof, and siding had gone up quickly, early-spring; the interior was dry-walled, painted, and carpeted by mid-May. Furniture and personal effects were hurried in at the end of the month.
Today in celebration of its completion and occupation--finally!--Eugene and Winnie were holding their housewarming party to much fanfare in town. This was already the fourth social event of a busy year--the town had just celebrated Yard Sale Days and Clean-up Dumpster Days (in conjunction with it’s unofficial brother, Dumpster-Diving Days) in April, and high school graduation in May; the next big shin-digs on the social docket would be in July celebrating both Independence Day and the city’s birthday bash with kiddie parades, beer tents, and fireworks (lit by them experts on barges and not by us three-fingered beer-tent goers--more proof of this sissy generation, the ghosts of the old-timers might have sneered had they been joining in on the fun along River Road!)
The patio was decked out in red and white balloons and crepe-paper streamers, the school colors of the Dallas City Bulldogs, a no-brainer since Eugene knew that’s what got them here. Long tables held catered food. Virgin strawberry punch was served from rented crystal bowls. The sky and house, in distortion, reflected off the curves of the twin urns for coffee or tea.
To Eugene, this was a double celebration: one, he had just retired, so it was also a great chance to bid so long to many of his students—and to the parents of students who had also been his students over the course of fifty years. And, two, the pride and immense joy of having all new everything—with a view!
For Winnie, the open house was bittersweet, especially during that interlude between worrying if everything was ready, but never quite ready when the first guests arrive, always too early. She looked down at Blackstone, the long ago abandoned family mansion that from up here looked like a kid’s toy made with limestone Legos, and shed a tear for her aunts, uncles and cousins who might have been here to celebrate with them if not for the accident. Blackstone might still be the jewel in the family crown if not for the accident. So long ago, yet the Burg in her remained anchored in guilt and sorrow.
2
A tinkerer and a blacksmith with a mechanical mind, Louis Burg found his way to Farmington, Iowa, from Frankfort, Germany, in the spring of 1853; by 1878, the Burg Carriage and Wagon Manufacturing Company plant was open for business and soon grew into a thriving two-story factory that included showrooms, a paint room, and a blacksmith shop. He and his wife Clara, a beauty from nearby Fort Madison, buckled down to manifest their destiny with wood, iron and bolts—in their heyday producing 100 buggies, 250 wagons, carts and carriages a year.
Meanwhile, across the Mississippi River in Dallas City, town movers and shakers, hearing of his success and realizing the importance of employment if the town was to grow, made Burg an offer he couldn’t refuse: $5,000 in cash and a large parcel of land watersnaking the river on the east side of town if he would bring his buggy factory to their town. Sold! He and his family crossed the river for good in 1890.
The business and Burg’s wealth grew at a fast clip in Dallas City, where he successfully continued making carriages and wagons that were sold all throughout the Midwest. Blackstone, the three-story castle-like mansion and paragon of success, echoed with the fun and laughter of the five Burg children, all girls: Lydia, the oldest at 13, a brainiac like her father, liked learning Latin and building things; Bertie, 11, the imaginative one, spinning fabulous tales at night in the sitting room; Gerta, 8, Teresa-Marie 4, and the toddler, Suzanne, who was only two-and-a-half.
In 1907, as the idea of motor-powered vehicles came into the picture, Louis began designing his own, and in 1910, the Model K, 30 horsepower Burg Touring Car was born. That year’s model was a 4-cylinder, 5-passenger vehicle with a 114-inch wheelbase. Its list price was $1,750.
The 1911 and 1912 models had 6-cylinder, 50 horsepower engines, with a 112-inch wheelbase and a top speed of 55 miles per hour. The cost of these models was $2,480 and were available in four different body colors: red, dark blue, purple, and black. The buyer also had the choice of leather, broadcloth, or plush upholstery.
The last Burg automobile--A Good Car at a Reasonable Price, the tagline hawked in an ad placed in the Dallas City Weekly Review--rolled out the doors in 1913 when the factory was suddenly closed, its forty-some workers let go. Today, the only Burg Automobile known to exist--cardinal-colored with gold trim and knobby tires barely larger than those on today’s dirt bikes--is permanently displayed inside the Kibbe Museum in Carthage, the Hancock County seat (and home to Twain’s fancy courthouse copula, as well as one legal hanging—the convicted man’s attorney was Abe Lincoln) when not featured in area parades.
Louis Burg, ever inventive, had been highly impressed by LaMarcus Thompson’s newly-patented Gravity Switchback Railway that opened at Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York, in 1884, and by the construction of the Eiffel Tower at around the same time. Over Clara’s strongest objections, he thought his kleinen liebe would enjoy their own roller-coaster—all the rage at faraway amusement parks—and he would build it himself. Using steel and rivets meant for car frames, he began to fashion the ride. Heating and bending metal for tracks and assembling them into peaks and valleys was child’s play to a blacksmith.
The four-carriage train, driven by a gear-and-chain assembly, click-clickety-clicked thirteen feet up, then dipped to a twenty-five-foot long, twenty degree angle. Like his family and his business, the Burg roller coaster also thrived, ending up nearly seven hundred feet in length and elevated a few feet off the ground, with a small section even going over the river. It reached its top speed at 7 mph at the first drop, but mostly poked around the track at 4. The ride seemed faster in the open-air cars made from the same metal and painted the same colors as the larger cars being built on the same (free) property.
July 4, 1913, according to the Dallas City newspaper, was a steamy one, but with the Mississippi River as a backyard pool, the Burg girls didn’t mind. They bided their time until fireworks on Polk Island, frolicking in their brand-new matching bathing suits that had just arrived from an upscale store in Chicago. Navy blue and wool, the outfits had sleeves that ran down to the girls’ wrists, bloomers that ran down to their ankles and were equally edged in light blue piping. Collared and buttoned to the neck, they had little worry about getting sunburned. Throughout the day, they would dip in the river, then speed-dry with a little roller coaster ride. Until disaster struck.
This is the Review’s account that was published the following Monday:
UNBEARABLE GRIEF FOLLOWS INDEPENDENCE DAY TRAGEDY AT BURG BLACKSTONE MANSION!
Dallas City in Mourning
The Death Angel’s unrelenting grip came suddenly and swiftly to Mr. and Mrs. Louis Burg of Dallas City, Friday, July the 4th, when four of their five young daughters drowned in the Mississippi River in a roll-over roller-coaster accident, the reason known only to our steadfast Lord. Gone to eternal rest in His comforting arms are devoted daughters Lydia, Bertha (Bertie to her little schoolmates), Gerta, and Teresa-Marie. Baby Suzanne was rescued from the watery death scene.
Hancock County Sheriff Thomas T. Sherman surmised that at approximately 2:45 on the hot and humid Independence Day afternoon, the girls were riding in a roller coaster their father had built himself for their amusement. The train with four cars attached, overturned along a stretch of straight track that was tresled over the river, although no structural damage has been discovered. Alas, the four metal attached cars toppled and landed upside down, pinning the four sweet unfortunate angels underneath. The youngest, serendipitous 29-month old Suzanne, swaddled in a diaper, was plucked from the river before perishing, as she was not fatally hampered by a waterlogged bathing suit as worn by her older sisters.
The remains of the girls lie in repose at Blackstone, the Burg family residence, sleeping in their little white forever-beds, beaming with the Lord’s love reflecting from the Tiffany windows above.
A vast concourse of friends and classmates over the weekend paid last respects to the innocently departed with much wailing and mourning. Funeral services have yet to be planned by the parents who remain in seclusion.
Lest we not forget the frail cord that binds us to this earth for life is uncertain for us all, be we old . . . or young!
Dallas City Weekly Review
July 7, 1913
3
Only a few quick ptszes of Reddi-wip clouds skirted the sky as the Rathbun open house began in early afternoon. Guests arrived and oohed and aahed during The Tour, complimenting the lucky couple on their choice of furniture, colors, and decor, and gathered and chatted and gossipped and envied the view from on high through the wall of glass (Eugene’s dream materialized!). The spread of fancy supermarket deli sandwiches, fruit and veggie trays, and pastries was to die for!
Eugene, ever the lover of mangled show tunes, brought out horns and drums, stands and sheet music for anybody who dared, sober, to play them like they did as teens. Wearing his lucky porkpie, he announced, “you won’t be graded!” Many renditions of the DCHS fight song were played; Winnie brought down the house with her rousing version of Baby Elephant Walk. There were many reminiscences. And laughs. And tears.
By three, the clouds westward were turning less white and were forming into thicker and longer ptszzzzzzes. Fifteen minutes later, a single zephyr of wind blasted across the bluff, scattering sheet music and napkins with the supermarket’s logo on them like autumn leaves would six months later; paper plates and red cups scuttled in the wind eastward, like the clouds coming in fast over the river from Iowa, now dark and boiling.
Distant thunder cracks, echoing like cannon fire from the old fort, rumbled from the west; the inevitable finger of lightning that struck the grain elevator’s rod on top brought the soiree to an outside standstill.
Guests quickly gathered up the food, musical instruments and chairs from the patio area as steady, strong gales of wind propelled the fast-moving thunderstorm (where was the warning from the clownish mid-market weatherman?), eastward. Plastic tablecloths and umbrellas and red and white balloons took to the sky, untethered; the beverage table blew over, strawberry punch staining the concrete like blood. Wind-fueled clouds, dark and foreboding like smoke, swirled and clashed, as if ignited by lightning.
Once they all got inside safely on this once lovely day, the guests gathered in the spacious living room area and enjoyed watching nature’s raging antics. Through Eugene’s wall of glass, the river down below churned like the fountain the Rathbuns had rented for the party; the wind tousled the trees’ shaggy leaves like they needed a trim at Janet’s Cut & Curl, from this birds’-eye point of view. As the clouds wrung out, a waterfall of rain cascaded down the ceiling-to-floor-windows like a weird, wet curtain, creating a psychedelic blur of spring greens and yellows.
The casual chatter of the crowded room, buzzing like the bees outside, was broken up by a shout of, “Hey, Eugene!” It was third-grade teacher Cindy Hackett, whose voice carried over the thunderclaps as effectively as it did in her classroom of pre-pubescent students. “You might want to come over here.”
Eugene gave the little bead of water trickling down the inside of the glass the same look he used to give his students for talking in class. “I’ll be calling the contractor first thing Monday morning, that’s for sure,” he said in full schoolteacher sternness.
“Uh...Mr. Rathbun, grab another towel, it’s leaking over here, too,” Carl Wendle, tooted low and loud, like the tuba he played in band, class of ’91, from the other side of the room.
Now there were puddles growing on the hardwoods requiring a mop and bucket as sheets of rain continued outside--and inside—the couple’s dream house; a lock-and-dam amount of water channeling from the peak of windows encasements down to the floor until it finally stopped with the storm twenty minutes later. “Thank heavens there was no water damage,” an embarrassed Eugene said meekly. “Well, shoot, I guess it truly rained on our parade,” he joked, wringing out things, without implied humor.
As the storm and party abated, guests filed out with their thanks and their hugs and their warm wishes, and went home, leaving the ground a rutted mess of tire tracks and shoe prints.
A consternated Eugene did call the contractor first thing Monday morning and was told that the silicone caulk in the windows installed in late March must have cracked during the hard freeze they had in early April. That it would be fixed by Thursday at no charge. Sorry about that, and all that other jazz that incompetent people spit out when they speed up a job and cut corners for profit.
ns 15.158.61.21da2
