Felonies & Misdemeanors Introduction

Introduction

Although Cliffside was mostly free of felons perpetrating nefarious deeds, every once in a while a criminal impulse would rear its ugly head.

Not all incidents had earth-shaking consequences. Every few years, on a Saturday night, some irresponsible dimwit (most likely an out-of-towner) would come barreling down Main Street in his $100 car (a ’41 Ford coupe was the weapon of choice in our day) and try to “straighten out the curve,” showing off to the multitudes hanging around the cafes and riding the rail. Sometimes the dimwit du jour would lose control and slide/crash into the hardware store’s loading dock. The current deputy sheriff, say, Henry Davis or Ben Humphries, who’d be sitting in his car beside the fish pond waiting for just such an assault on the peace, would slowly alight from his car, walk over and cuff the inebriated would-be hell driver and cart him off to jail.

Or a band of Gypsies would come through seeking to sharpen our dull knives and scissors, after which we might find our chicken population reduced by a few hens.

Or on Halloween, mischievous boys might take apart some poor man’s Model A and reassemble it on top of his house. When the matter was looked into, the ringleader was usually found to be some fine, upstanding scholar who ordinarily minded his mother—like, you know, Jack Biggerstaff.

But here we’re speaking of more serious matters: killings, robberies and disappearances, that sort of thing. Here are clippings and stories about only some of the unfortunate events that once made headlines in Cliffside.

Next: Story Index