Name Index
Everyone connected to this family, alphabetically by first name: direct-line ancestors, collateral relatives, spouses, children, and named friends and associates, with links to wherever they can be read, whether a full profile, an entry on someone else's page, or a mention in a research note, journal entry, or family narrative. People who appear only incidentally within a source citation, such as officiants, witnesses, physicians, or record-keepers, are documented there rather than indexed here.
A
Ada Pearl Bates
Adeline Officer
Agnes Egan
Agnes Jackson
Al
Al "Hoots" Colville
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Antiques in Yard, Waving Part of His Style"; a fellow Upper Rio Grande newspaper columnist, quoted on a rancher's use for old farm antiques.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "Eat Beef and Help the Ozone Layer"; one of the readers John jokingly recommends carry the article on cattle and methane in their pocket.
Al Birdsey
Al Hibbs
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Never Bet a Cinch"; won a dime off the author in a marksmanship bet, then taught him the lesson that gives the story its title.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Twice Around the Barber Pole"; ran a barbershop opposite Bob Phillips’s on Main Street; a gun collector and avid hunter whose own pocket watch nearly got talked away from him in his own chair.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Jackson Recalls Building of Ore Bins"; with brother Ashby, leased the first mechanical mucker introduced to the Commodore Mines.
- Named in the caption to the Whiskey Drinking Contest photograph in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter, as "Al Hibbs (rear)"; possibly one of the "Al" of the "Creede Running Crew" named in "Jigaboo Bowels Out" and "Strung Out to String Up," Chapter I, though the stories give only first names.
Al Turnipseed
- Named in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; worked alongside Bill Jackson at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Corporation's fluorspar mine and mill at Wagon Wheel Gap. Possibly the same extended family as Les Turnipseed and Dottie Turnipseed, also named on this site; no confirmed relation stated.
- Quoted in "Third Stool from the Rear," "From the Barrel of Common Sense," page iv: "Never work with a man who wears gloves. He will spend half his time either pulling them on, taking them off or looking for them."
Al Wintz
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; recalled with Jiggs Moore at the end of Amethyst Way on John's imagined Memory Lane bus ride. Disambiguated by key from Al, the hunter named in "Hellions and Moonshiners"; no relation stated.
- Family history research now argues against the identification with "Alvie" once suggested here: the "Alvie Wintz" named as Jerry Wintz's father in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," "Driver Meets Old Friend While Negotiating Tight Road," is described as alive and recovering from new hip joints, while this Al Wintz appears only in the "Dedication" bus-ride poem, whose premise is a roll call of Creede friends already passed on. Research also located two other men named Alvin Wintz in the Creede Wintz family, one who died in 1929 and one in 1935, neither able to be the miner still living in the hip-replacement era; the "Alvie" of the Commodore 2 level remains unidentified.
- Named as "Alvie Wintz" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Moves Keep 'Em Hopping"; with Paul Davis, prepared a mining report for Dr. B.B. Grichter of Des Plaines, Ill., on the Champion and Monte Carlo mines in the late 1940s — a further sighting of this still-unidentified "Alvie," dating his mining career without resolving his identity.
- Named again as "Alvie" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "The Road Starts Here"; visited with wife Edith and the Charles Steeles — paired here with the Edith Wintz who is his wife, distinct from this site's other, unrelated Edith Wintz entry.
- Named again as "Alvie" and "Al" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Which Day Would You Relive?"; recalled, with wife Edith, on a remembered Beartown camping trip with a favorite Spaniel and a beautiful catch of Cutthroat trout.
Albert
Albert Woodruff Davis
- Child of Anna Maud Woodruff and Robert Abraham Lincoln Davis
- Known to family as "Uncle Woody"; named in his nephew John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell" — stayed with the Jackson family in the early 1930s, teaching Joel a riddle that nearly got him expelled from school. Identified through family knowledge as the same person.
- Called "Uncle Woodruff Davis" and "Uncle Woody" in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; built Joel a beanie flipper from a forked willow limb and inner tube rubber, which Joel used to spook the Allen sisters' dairy herd.
- Called "Uncle Woody" in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; bypassed the family's electric meter and learned to roll back its kilowatt-hour reading, to town electrician Ivan Weaver's chagrin.
- Named as "Uncle Woodie" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Magic Age Is Five"; with Uncle Art, taught Joey Jackson the rabbit's-hole riddle he tried on his teacher — the same story, differently detailed, as Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug."
Alex Duncan
- Named in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; worked alongside Bill Jackson at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Corporation's fluorspar mine and mill at Wagon Wheel Gap. Confirmed by Chapter II, "Of Bagpipes, Coasting and Firemen," as the same Alex Duncan already noted on this site as the father of Gordon, Cloy, Hurtha, and James Duncan.
- Named in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as a Scotsman who moved to a house across the gulch from Frank Davis after the loss of his dog "Odie"; a former Colorado Fuel and Iron Company employee at Wagon Wheel Gap's fluorspar mine, remembered for a drunken bagpipe march that panicked the neighborhood and reportedly caused a milk cow to abort her calf.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Magic Age Is Five"; a Scotsman who lived where the Egolfs later had their summer home, and once let the boys hear one short squeak from his bagpipes.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Winter Like That of Memories"; boyhood sledding parties gathered on the corner by his house.
- Named in "Smooth as Silk A'Goin' or A'Comin'," Chapter I of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; one of the three from whom John leased the Holy Moses group of claims in 1953.
Alexander Holmes "A. H." Major
- Proprietor of the A. H. Major Grocery Store, named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell" as Bill Jackson's part-time employer in the late 1920s and early 1930s; a notable early Creede pioneer in his own right, per Find a Grave.
- Named in the Introduction of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; ran a grocery store extending credit to dependable patrons in 1920s Creede, alongside W. S. Lewis.
- Named as "A. H. Major" in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; ran the grocery store where "Uncle Herb" worked as a butcher.
- Named as the "A. H. Major grocery store" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Magic Age Is Five," just north of the Pick & Shovel Rock Shop; also the owner of the truck whose overhanging roof scattered coins from a money bag over the mesa hill, prompting a boyhood coin hunt.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Boxers Highlighted Old Traveling Circuses"; a boxing card was staged in a tent next to his grocery store.
Alice Josephine Davis
- Full profile
- Referred to as "Mom Jo" throughout John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; raising four sons in Depression-era Creede, she disciplined Scooter with a bar of soap over the word "crapper," grabbed her husband's revolver more than once during their arguments, and bundled up the newspaper from Saturday peanut nights for the woodstove.
- Named in the Acknowledgments of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as "the Mom Jo who tanned our britches but always had time to read to us or recite poetry."
- Called "Mom Jo" in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; prayed for a daughter when the author was born, farmed him out to a wet nurse, and disciplined the boys with a leather belt for their various mischief.
- Called "Mom Jo" in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; tried without success to interest the author in church, and, with brother Joey, patiently taught him to dance before a school dance.
- Called "Mom Jo" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Extra Curricular Activities"; gave up trying to tame the author's cowlick and sent him off to his first day of school.
- Called "Mom Jo" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Gentlemen Smoke Pipes"; could smell tobacco smoke on the boys "from 30 feet away, in a high wind and in skunk season," and walloped the author with her shoe over his tobacco theft.
- Named as "Mom Jo" again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "So Long to Ed Snow"; told the author he was feeling sorry for himself when he cried over Ed's death.
- Named as "Mom Jo" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Family Feud Follows Forgetfulness"; doctored Inez's hand alongside Dad Bill after the author injured it in a door in 1951.
- Named again as "Mom Jo" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two"; in "Trying to Quit Vice Can Be a Killer," turned the author "into something else after confession" over a boyhood pipe-smoking episode; also invoked in "No Birthday Party for Him," "Wedding Reminds Us of Our Own," and "All Fabled Out" as the standard for a story convincing enough to make her shed a tear.
- Named as "Mom Jo" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Fame Is Short; Failure Forever"; described her son as "a purveyor of falsehoods" — a more dignified verdict, he notes, than his wife Inez's "damned liar."
- Named again as "Mom Jo" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Marriages Weather Storms With Love"; the author publishes her poem "The Empty Room," found hidden among her keepsakes after her 1980 death, on what would have been her birthday.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter I, "Who Upset the Thundermug"; as "Josephine," John's future mother, who overturned a nearly full thundermug while squirming for a better view of her sister's romance through the cracks in the floor, and was put on kitchen duty for weeks.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter III, "Wedding Bells and Chesapeake Retrievers"; as "Mom Jo," trying to raise strawberries in the red clay of Missouri with Joel and Scooter.
- Quoted, as "Josephine Jackson," in "Third Stool from the Rear," "From the Barrel of Common Sense," page iv, on the laughter of children.
- Named as "Josie," John's mother, in "The Perils of Adolescence," Part I of "Third Stool from the Rear"; learned of her son's misadventure with Millicent McCarthy within a day, and, in John's words, died at 76 without ever being given enough time to be made proud.
- Named as "Mom Jo" in the Dedication of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts," which closes by thanking her and Dad Bill, who "never gave up hope that I would make them proud."
- Central to "The Bullet Belt" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; meted out lesser punishments herself but invoked Dad Bill's belt for major infractions, then comforted John afterward.
- Named as "Mom Jo" in "Looking The Devil Right In The Eye" in Part Two of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; rode with Inez to the Phoenix claim on a surprise visit that helped alert the crew to the accident below.
- Pictured at the Bonneville Salt Flats in "Mom Jo Runs Her Last Race, 1979," in "Favorite Photos" in Part Two of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts," giving her dates as 1904–1980.
Alice Wilson
Alicyn Blackburn
Allan Phipps
Allan R. Phipps
- Named in the Foreword of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; a Denver lawyer living part-time at La Garita Ranch near Creede, credited (or blamed) with first suggesting, "well snockered," that John collect these stories into a book. Also named with his wife Clara in the Acknowledgments, an "honorary member of the 'Mesa Elite.'"
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Which Day Would You Relive?"; performed a running ritual dressing the Creede Hotel's mounted puma for gatherings there, and, later, sang two songs in German at the author and Inez's surprise birthday party.
Allen "A.J." Hosselkus
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; worked several jobs with John, including cutting ice for the Hosselkus Road Canyon Fishery, and led a hunting trip with his cousin Gordon on which he was the only one of the three still carrying a rifle with any real range.
- Named as "Allen Hosselkus" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Stealing Ain't As Easy As It Was In Times Past"; discovered the author had quietly "borrowed" the lumber from a bridge across Willow Creek to timber the Holy Moses group of claims.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Boxers Highlighted Old Traveling Circuses"; carried Creede's lightweight boxing banner with Kid Caplan.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Hopeful Wife Can Be Trying"; a January dozer job with him ranks among the coldest John ever worked.
- Named again as "A.J." in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "Rifle, Pen Face-Off Suggested"; grouped with Trent as regulars John and Kenny Hosselkus didn't have to rescue with a flat tire this time.
- Named as "Allen Hosselkus" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Moves Keep 'Em Hopping"; attended a dance, with wife, after a June 1931 Creede–Lake City basketball game recalled from old newspapers turned up in a move.
- Named again as "A.J." in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "The Road Starts Here"; hunted near the author's Spring Creek home with Henry, Kenny and Trent Hosselkus, tracking bear by scent for three miles.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter III, "Revolutions and Bloodletting"; as "Allen J." and "Mr. Hosselkus," driver of a Model T Roadster and later a pickup that rolled on the Bachelor Road above Creede; John's head went through the tarred canvas roof in the first wreck.
- Named as "Allen Hosselkus" in "Smooth as Silk A'Goin' or A'Comin'," Chapter I of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; John leased the Holy Moses group of claims from him, Alex Duncan and Ralph Ellithorpe in 1953.
- Quoted, as "Allen Hosselkus," in "Third Stool from the Rear," "From the Barrel of Common Sense," page iv, on forgiving an honest man.
Allison
Alma Reudi Jackson
Alma Wintz Dooley
Alvie Wintz
- Named, paired with Paul Davis, in the roll of "The Top Team Miners" of John's era, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 51.
- Named as "Alvie" in an untitled barroom vignette, Part III of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 29, driving a raise on the Dean fault with the "Wintz brothers" and Paul Davis.
- Pictured near Beartown with wife Edith, and with a catch of trout from Bear Creek, in "Favorite Photos" in Part Two of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts."
Alyce Turnipseed
Ambrose Dooley
- Named in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as one of "the Dooley brothers"; worked alongside Bill Jackson at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Corporation's fluorspar mine and mill at Wagon Wheel Gap.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "Short Stuff"; took twelve licks from Miss Schroeder's belt without changing expression, then asked if she was "gettin' tired."
Amelia A. Woodruff
Ann Mason
Anna Maud Woodruff
- Full profile
- Called "Grandmother Lane" in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; drove with Mom Jo and the three Jackson boys the night of the mercantile-block fire, and helped Dad Bill and Dottie Turnipseed care for the dying Charlie Matson.
- Called "Grandmother Lane" and "Gram Lane" in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; raised chickens, rabbits, and geese on the Lane ranch, worked as a practical nurse who delivered most of Creede's babies from 1920 to 1940, and produced butter, buttermilk, and cottage cheese from the ranch's three milk cows.
- Called "Grandma Lane" in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; delivered a colt when neighbor Witt Thomas's mare went into a difficult foaling in front of the author and cousin Lee Davis, continuing her long service as a Creede midwife — this time to a horse.
- Called "Grandma Lane" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Magic Age Is Five"; baked fresh bread with home-churned butter dripped over warm slices.
- Called "Gram Lane" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Gentlemen Smoke Pipes"; alternated with Dad Bill and Dottie Turnipseed in the death-watch care of Charlie Matson.
- Named as "Gram Lane" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Flatus Before Dessert"; a pot of her lima beans and cabbage, eaten before the Barbers' birthday dinner, was blamed for the author's flatulence.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter I, "Who Upset the Thundermug"; appears as "Maude," John's maternal grandmother, cooking at a boarding house while the family lived on Kerber Creek near Bonanza; the story gives no surname or date.
Anna Maude "Polly" Davis
- Named in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as "cousin Polly," "the pie maker"; daughter of Aunt Caroline and Uncle Frank Davis (John Franklin Davis), per the book's own photo caption. Made the author play house and eat imaginary mud pies once or twice a week. Per family knowledge, her legal name was Anna Maude Davis, called "Polly" throughout her life to distinguish her from her grandmother, Anna Maud Woodruff (later Anna Maud Lane, John Franklin Davis's mother by her first marriage to Robert Davis) — consistent with this site's own Woodruff research. Distinct from this site's other "Polly," Pauline Roberta "Bubbles" Jackson Bates (occasionally called Polly by her husband's family) — the two share the nickname AND are first cousins: per family knowledge, confirmed Jo (Alice Josephine Davis, Pauline's mother) and Frank (John Franklin Davis, this Polly's father) were siblings, both children of Robert Davis and Anna Maud Woodruff, matching this site's own Woodruff family research.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Flatus Before Dessert" — the same mud-pie game, differently detailed, as Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug," "Cousin Polly and Mud Pies."
Anne
Anne Dutka
Annie Cathcart
- Named in the Introduction of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; with her husband Charles, took honors for the largest and most varied garden in Creede.
- Named with her husband Charles in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; the couple's milk cows pastured where mill tailing dams now stand.
Annie E. Chaney
Annie Fairchild
Archie "Spud" Fellows
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; the most prolific of the Snowshoe Mountain moonshiners, a good friend of John's grandfather (see Charles Lane). The manuscript also records his own account of killing a man in self-defense as a boy, stopping a beating the man was giving Spud's mother.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter IV, "I'll Drink to That (Or Anything Else)"; fourth at left in a bar photograph with Ray Ball, Pete Walker, Lucky Keene and bartender Ed Hargraves.
- Named as "Judge Archie 'Spud' Fellows" in "Strung Out to String Up," Chapter I of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; presided, in a foul mood, over the mock trial of the "running crew's" latest mark, until a lynch mob broke down the courtroom doors.
Arlene Filley
- Named in the class-photo roster in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter, second row, and again among the unidentified members in the school-band caption.
- Named as "Arlene" in John's typed poem "I'm Called 'Mister' Mashburn," signed 1991; possibly this Arlene Filley, who appears with Charles Church in the class photo in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug." Not confirmed.
Art Davis
- Named as "Superintendent Art Davis" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Of Hell Cats and She Ghosts." Confirmed by Shannon's mother as NOT related to Arthur M. Davis ("Uncle Arthur"/"Uncle Art"), also named on this site.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Work Eases for Many During Wintertime"; as Commodore mine foreman, fired a young hire, Bucky, for falling asleep in an unfinished post hole.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, "Fire in the Hole and All Over"; as "Art Davis," sharpening steel at the blacksmith shop and dressing Walter Waldo's wound with iodine. The book gives no further identification, so it is not stated whether he is the superintendent named elsewhere.
- Named as "Art Davis, Foreman" in "Pug Loses Directions," Chapter IV of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," driving a 1952 Ford pickup crew truck; the book does not say whether this is the same Art Davis named "Superintendent" in the same exchange as told in "Echoes from the Thundermug."
Art Leonard
Art Neal
Arthur Blackburn
Arthur Bogue
Arthur Fairchild
- Named in the Introduction of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; kept two teams and ore wagons in service in 1920s Creede. No confirmed relation to Byron, Annie, or Clinton Fairchild, also named on this site.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Mule Skinners of 40-Years Ago Were a Hardy Breed"; one of the Emperius Mining Co. skinners during the author's first years there.
- Named as "Art Fairchild" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Jackson Recalls Building of Ore Bins"; one of the last Creede teamsters, skidded rail for the Commodore 5 tunnel with his own team.
- Quoted, as "Art Fairchild," in "Third Stool from the Rear," "From the Barrel of Common Sense," page iv, explaining why Creede Transportation Company could pay a dollar more per shift than the mining companies.
- Named as "Art Fairchild" in an untitled barroom vignette, Part I of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 3; the only thing that scares him is his wife Cora "on the peck."
Arthur M. Davis
- Child of Anna Maud Woodruff and Robert Abraham Lincoln Davis
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; stayed with the Jackson family in the early 1930s, teaching his nephews to roll cigarettes
- Named as "Art" in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; recalled with Frankie Davis among the old friends and "pards" on John's imagined Memory Lane bus ride. Identified through family knowledge as this same Arthur M. Davis.
- Named as "Uncle Arthur" in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; recited the rabbit's-hole riddle that Joey repeated to his teacher, Christine Duncan. Identified through family knowledge as Alice Josephine Davis's ("Mom Jo"'s) brother, this same Arthur M. Davis.
- Named as "Uncle Art" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Magic Age Is Five"; with Uncle Woodie, taught Joey Jackson the rabbit's-hole riddle he tried on teacher Miss Marie Birdsey — the same story credited to "Uncle Arthur" alone in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug," there recited to Christine Duncan.
- Named as "Art" and "Arthur Davis" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Never Bet a Cinch"; joined Al Hibbs on an unscheduled prairie-dog-shooting holiday, competing against the author in a marksmanship demonstration.
- Pictured as "Art Davis" with Frank Davis and Charles Lane in the family ranch photograph in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts," captioned "After a Visit to the Still."
- Named as "Art Davis" in "Ed and Cherokee" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; John's regular carpool companion to the Creede mines around 1952, tentatively identified as this same Arthur M. Davis given his appearance elsewhere on this site alongside Frank(ie) Davis; not confirmed.
Arthur Weaver
- Named among the unidentified band members in the school-band caption in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter; possibly related to this site's Stanley Weaver and Woodrow Weaver, not stated.
- Named with wife Minnie in "Curiodditie s" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; owned the Antelope Park resort and, per John, was one of Mineral County's Republican Weaver family.
Ashby
Ashby Hibbs
Aunt Bernice
Aunt Caroline
- Named in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as the wife of Uncle Frank Davis (John Franklin Davis); her kitchen and homemade bread and cookies drew frequent visits from the author, and she was photographed with her husband and two of their children, Polly and Nancy.
- Named as "Aunt Caroline" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Flatus Before Dessert"; her kitchen was the reward for playing house with Polly.
- Named again as "Aunt Caroline" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Geologist Seeks Ore With Fly Rod and Reel"; made sandwiches for a deer-hunting trip that wasn't, at her husband Uncle Frank's order, after the author and Lee Davis's tall tale.
Aunt Claudia
Aunt Maude
Aunt May Lucette
Aunt Olga
B
Babe Fulton
Barbara
Barbara "Babs" McClure
Barney Oates
"Basketball Willie" Leggitt
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "'Dunk' Recalls Feuds With Jackson"; ran the Commodore mine hoist after Jackson stormed off following a phone dispute with Paul Dunkel.
- Named as "Bill Leggitt" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Bless the Ladies"; his home's kitchen area was struck when new Forest Service ranger Will Dietzel's Suburban rolled down an embankment trying to avoid a dog. Possibly the same "Basketball Willie" Leggitt indexed elsewhere on this site from a different chapter; not confirmed.
Bea Collerette
Bea Jean
Bea Jean Wintz
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Women Can Scare Strongest Man"; stormed into the author’s Cebolla Creek home in a fury after an encounter with a bull elk, not the author, per his own telling.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Advice for Bea Jean"; ran her seat belt through the steering wheel to avoid wrinkling her jacket, nearly causing an accident during a sharp turn; the piece's title advice is addressed to her directly.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "The Road Starts Here"; lost bladder control when a startled bull elk charged toward her during an Ishi Yana bow-hunters' deer drive, then waded into Bellows Creek so the rest of her clothing would match.
- Named as "Bea Jean" in "The Bear Who Came for Breakfast," Chapter III of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; slid to the floor when the bear reared up and put a paw on her kitchen window.
Beanie Davis
"Beartown Maude"
Ben A. Birdsey
Ben Helmick
- Central to "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Ben's Economy"; ran the Economy Grocery, later served as city electrician, bulldozer operator, and manager of the Solomon Mine and Mill.
- Named again as "O.B. Ben Helmick" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; pictured as a grocer and millman.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "It's There — All You Need Is Shovel, Willing Back"; as mine-mill manager, had a sample from the Scooter-and-Gust-Jackson water hole assayed at .23 ounces of gold per ton.
Benjamin Massegee
Benjie
Benny
Benny (upper Amethyst)
Bernard Shaw
- Named as "Bernie" in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; snickered at the author's Valentine's Day embarrassment over Hortense Burton and had ink poured into his shoe for it, and is seated with the author in a porch photograph identified as Bernard Shaw. Distinct from Bernie Soward, also nicknamed "Bernie" and named elsewhere in the same chapter; no relation stated.
- Named as "Bernie" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Big Chief Boogers" — the same story, differently detailed, as Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; snickered at the author's Valentine's Day embarrassment over Hortense Burton and had ink poured into his shoe for it.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Toils and Foibles of the Depression Kid"; drove Mineral County's Model B Ford dump truck like an expert despite having lost his left arm to a buzz saw at a very young age.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; kneeling with the author, Wallace Leary, David Manning and Jack Thompson at Jimmy Mason's 1936 birthday party.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "No Birthday Party for Him"; his bow tie is lost somewhere along the route of a touchdown at Jimmy Mason's 1936 birthday party.
- Named again as "Bernard Shaw" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Last Valentine From David"; received "the full complement" of childhood Valentines, unlike the author.
- Named in the Acknowledgements of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; thanked among the students of Professor E. D. Watson John hopes will forgive him.
Bernice Smolen
Bernie Soward
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; one of the old friends and "pards" John imagines rejoining on a bus ride down Memory Lane.
- Named as "Bernie" (Bernard Soward) in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug," in "Bernie, Harry and the Blond Bomber"; with Harry Larson, a longtime friend who struck a rich silver discovery in the "Big Six" tunnel of the Silver Horde Lode in Sunnyside, and whose wife's furious response to one of his morning bathroom rituals gives the story its name.
- Named as "Bernie Soward" in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug," in "The Trials of Minnie Pearl"; the mule skinner whose beloved mule Minnie Pearl was tricked into a runaway by Gene McClure's can of rolled oats. Distinct from Bernard Shaw, also nicknamed "Bernie" and named elsewhere in the same chapter; no relation stated.
- The thundermug story that gives the book its title is told again, nearly word for word, in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Harry, Bernie & the Blond Bomber" — see the cross-reference note on both pages.
- The runaway-mule-cars incident is told again, nearly word for word, in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Minnie Pearl Was a Smart Mining Mule" — see the cross-reference note on both pages.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Mule Skinners of 40-Years Ago Were a Hardy Breed"; one of the Emperius Mining Co. skinners during the author's first years there.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Jackson Recalls Building of Ore Bins"; head timberman on the Commodore 5 restoration, sharing muleskinning chores with Billy Weaver.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "Respectability Comes Late to Some of Us" and "All Fabled Out"; his funeral, at 52, is the occasion for both a graveside toast from Melvin "Red" Johnson and one of John's tallest tales to Inez.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Fame Is Short; Failure Forever"; asked for guidance timbering a sloughing area in the Commodore 5 tunnel and answered, of a stull's angle, "Saw it as straight as you can and it will have angle enough."
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Mother Bee's Tantrum Put an End to Party"; attended the "Upper Willow Creek Mineralogical Society's" meeting at Tomkins Hardware and presented six-year-old Michael McClure a cash award for inventing the "double washer cocktail."
- Named in "'Low Pressure Waterworks,'" Part III of "Third Stool from the Rear"; an ex-sailor and storyteller who told a long, dramatic version of the Battle of the Coral Sea in a Creede bar.
- Named in "'Bernie Folds His Sails,'" Part III of "Third Stool from the Rear"; leased the Silver Horde mine with Harry Larson in the 1930s, was praised by a foreman for his timbering, and later owned and died in his own liquor store.
Bernie Soward's wife
- Called only "the Blond Bomber," Bernie Soward's nickname for his wife, in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; no first name given. Central to "Bernie, Harry and the Blond Bomber," in which she attacks Bernie with a household thundermug.
- Named again, as "the Blonde Bomber," in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "Respectability Comes Late to Some of Us"; John's own brief recap of the thundermug fracas already told in full elsewhere on this site.
Bert Hosselkus
Bertha Larson
Bertie Jane Hosselkus
Bessie Hoover
Bessie Lewis
Beth Hinshaw
Betty
Betty (attorney)
Betty J. Walker
Betty Powell
Beulah Beatrice Bates
Bill (Gunnison lumber yard)
Bill Anderson
Bill Gydesen
Bill Heller
Bill Horning
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; the good-natured butt of a "Please Kick me" sign taped to his coat by fellow pranksters on John's imagined Memory Lane bus ride.
- Named in "'Bill Graduates to Higher Mathematics,'" Part III of "Third Stool from the Rear"; joked that his "nine an' seven" tally meant ninety-seven cars, not nine before lunch and seven after.
- Pictured as one of "The Hunters," with Earl Payne, in "Favorite Photos" in Part Two of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts."
Bill Kolisch
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; Creede's town Marshal and John's old friend, who found him resting in a snowbank after his drunken barrel mishap and delivered him to his wife rather than a jail cell.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Hard Water"; the first in Creede to use a direct current generator to thaw waterlines.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Sweet Beetles"; Creede's marshal, who committed the author to his bride's care after a cold night pushing barrels through the snow.
- Named again as "William 'Bill' Kolisch" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; trying to keep the lower channel open as debris clogged the wooden flume during the 1940 flood.
- Named as "William Kolisch Sr." in "T-Bone" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; loaded the old dragline power shovel onto a flatcar in 1943 for shipment to Russia under lend-lease, as John's family understood it.
Bill Kroll
Bill Lewis
- Named with his wife Bessie in "The Perils of Adolescence," Part I of "Third Stool from the Rear"; rented a house on Creede's west side to the McCarthy family for $15 a month during the Depression.
- Named in "Hell Cats of a Different Breed" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; kept a grain and salt shed behind the Mercantile for cattlemen and sheepmen.
Bill Mathews
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; with George Kershner, one of the Amethyst Mine's "mule skinners" in 1947, a Civilian Conservation Corps veteran who married Phyllis Alspaugh and, disliking underground work after two close calls, returned to Texas.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Mule Skinners of 40-Years Ago Were a Hardy Breed"; one of the Emperius Mining Co. skinners during the author's first years there.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed"; one of the muleskinners in the postwar Amethyst crew.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, "The Big Kentuckian"; a mule-skinner who quit to return to Texas; Pete Morowski took over his job.
Bill Orthen
- Named in the Introduction of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; Sheriff over Bill Jackson's role as Undersheriff, at the time of a moonshiners' shooting feud over a plugged irrigation ditch.
- Named in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as the sheriff over Bill Jackson's post as Undersheriff, during the moonshiners' shooting feud between Mr. Arlow and a rival.
- Named in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as the man Dad Bill served as undersheriff to for several years — the source of the .45 revolver Dad Bill carried on the family's Missouri road trip.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Ozark Adventures" — the same road trip, differently detailed, as Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; the source of the .45 revolver Dad Bill carried on the family's Missouri road trip.
- Named as "Sheriff Orthen" and "William Orthen" in "The Lawbreakers" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; John's father Billy Jackson served as his undersheriff before Orthen's suicide, also referenced in "The Bullet Belt."
Bill Powell
Bill Swinehart, Jr.
Bill Tingley
Bill Van Dyke
Billy
Billy "Jake" West
Billy (upper Amethyst)
Billy Barnett
- Named (surname only) in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; lived near the mesa coasting road and, disliking the boys' snow-and-water jumps, doused them daily with hot coals after a bad spill of his own.
- Named as "Billy Barnett" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Inside Plumbing Blesses Creede," the only appearance on this site to give him a given name; a well below his house served the Barnett, Shaw, Duncan and Davis families. The same Mr. Barnett named (surname only) in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug," confirmed through family knowledge.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; as "William 'Billy' Barnett," hefting a 5-pound rainbow trout at Wagon Wheel Gap, Colorado, in 1932.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Prospectors Were a Visionary Lot Who Built the West"; a former speed-skating champion on Canadian ice, whose name appears on lode location certificates dating to 1889; held claims in the Equity Mine area and over the divide in Spring and Cascade Creeks.
Billy Filley
- Named in John Jackson's 1988 tribute to Joel; downed by Japanese fire on Saipan or Tinian
- Per Del Norte Prospector, 3 Mar 1944: in on the Tarawa Island campaign with Joel
- Per Del Norte Prospector, 3 Mar 1944: sent to rest camp alongside Scoot
- Named in the class-photo roster in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter; second row.
Billy Matzen
- Named in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as Grant and Esther Matzen's son, who teamed with his cousin Heinie Leonard as "the hell raisers," photographed together with their sisters and the Leonard siblings.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; pictured in Creede around 1926 with Norma Matzen, Mildred Matzen, Dorothy Leonard, Don Leonard and Heinie Leonard.
- Named among the unidentified band members in the school-band caption in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter.
Billy or Bobby Bond
Billy Patterson
Billy Taylor
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Jackson Recalls Building of Ore Bins"; drifted around a cave-in in the Commodore main tunnel with Dave Brown.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Hopeful Wife Can Be Trying"; suffers frostbitten fingertips helping bandage Gene Dooley's frozen ears near the Amethyst mine.
Billy Weaver
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; recalled with blacksmith Johnny Slater on John's imagined Memory Lane bus ride. Disambiguated by key from Johnny Weaver and Paul Weaver, also named in the manuscript; possibly the same extended family, no relation stated.
- Named in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; a CF&I Wagon Wheel Gap miner who helped Dad Bill swap Lee Skinner's box of chocolates for mule droppings.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Minnie Pearl Was a Smart Mining Mule"; mule skinner on the Reynolds Tunnel renovation project.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Mule Skinners of 40-Years Ago Were a Hardy Breed"; one of the Emperius Mining Co. skinners during the author's first years there.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Jackson Recalls Building of Ore Bins"; shared muleskinning chores with Bernie Soward on the Commodore 5 restoration.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Moves Keep 'Em Hopping"; attended a dance, with wife, after a June 1931 Creede–Lake City basketball game recalled from old newspapers turned up in a move.
- Named as a child of Thomas and Mary Weaver, and as a Creede town electrician for whom John worked one summer replacing power poles, in "Curiodditie s" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts."
Billy Wills
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Black Drought Basics"; hired the author as chore boy at his and Loraine's Lake Cliff Ranch.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "New Year’s Greetings"; "shared a similar married life style" with the author, a foreign-born bride, deferring to wife Loraine.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Women Can Scare Strongest Man"; retired from "war clouds gathering" over wife Loraine’s temper.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Talking to Yourself OK, But Don't Start Believing It"; said to "just as well" talk to himself.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Thundermug in the White House"; the author's mock choice of Ambassador to the United Nations is his wife Loraine, joking that Billy hasn't won a household vote in 50 years.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "Thundermug John Returns to Bosom of His Family"; taught John, years before, how to adjust his ears to mute unpleasant sounds.
- Named as the tourist-resort owner who gave John his first paying summer job, in "Working Stiffs" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts."
Blackberry Johnson
Blanche Holzworth
Blane Mazzuca
Bob
Bob
Bob
Bob (Ikie's friend)
Bob Bennett
- Named in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as Howard and Pearl Barber's son-in-law, whose birthday dinner is the setting of "Birthday Cakes and Pucker Power."
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Flatus Before Dessert" — the same birthday dinner, differently detailed, as Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; the guest of honor at the Barbers' ranch dinner.
Bob Blackburn
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Fish Dish Gave Jackson's Clan, Neighbors a Hot Time"; the author's companion in eating "everything that cackled, squealed or grunted" as boys playing Indians.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; standing with Ted Bucher, Robert Bishop and Jimmy Mason at Jimmy Mason's 1936 birthday party.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," as "Robert A. Blackburn"; a childhood friend from the Wagon Wheel Gap fluorspar-mine years, remembered for a stove-cartridge prank, a chemistry-class scare, and a near-fatal cold-weather bender the night before he left Creede for Pueblo.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two"; pictured at Jimmy Mason's 1936 birthday party in "No Birthday Party for Him," and, as "Robert Blackburn," a co-conspirator in the boyhood dog-tail story confessed in "Let Us Duel It Out With Ink, Mr. Dennehy."
- Named as "Bobby" in John's typed poem "I'm Called 'Mister' Mashburn," signed 1991; threw bullets on the coals of the classroom heater, the same prank told of Bob Blackburn in "College Recruits."
Bob Crowley
Bob Farrell
Bob Ford
Bob Foster
Bob Hawkins
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," "RSVP"; cited for indecent exposure after an all-night pig-roast vigil for a Freeport Exploration Co. barbecue in Denver.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Solitary Journeys"; part of an Elko reunion of Freeport Exploration Co. colleagues, soon transferring to work from the Denver office on the same projects as the author.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Whistle While You Work"; braved a geologist's wild Wyoming-to-South-Dakota driving spree, along with Dave Jones, better fortified by prior drinks than the author.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Bless the Ladies"; project senior geologist at the Jerritt Canyon camp, warned the author, laughing, that a mop-handle prank played on geologist Debbie would get him killed once she found out.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Inez Hooks the Big One"; arrived at a Freeport office party with Dave Jones and Tina Gonzales.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter IV, "I Didn't Hear It 'Til It Was Already Passed"; a geologist seen with his head out the left side of the vehicle in Colorado after a Mexican dinner.
Bob Kukuk
Bob Manning
Bob Oates
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; a Navy veteran who survived Kamikaze attacks off Okinawa and, with Neil Walker, one of the Amethyst Mine's miners in 1947; John's regular shift partner after the war. His father, also a miner, died of a heart attack the day Bob returned from war duty.
- Named as "Bobby Oates" in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; one of the few mesa boys with gauntlet gloves, considered proof that proper cowboy apparel was all that separated them from real riders.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed"; the author’s driller shortly after the war, a Navy destroyer veteran who experienced kamikaze attacks off Okinawa.
- Named again as "Robert Oates" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; pictured with Eugene Dooley.
- Named again in the class-photo roster in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter; top row.
- Named in "'A Rude Awakening,'" Part I of "Third Stool from the Rear," one of the crew warming themselves at the barrel heater and watching the tunnel horse Teddy.
Bob Pinkley
Bob Vidano
Bob Wardell
Bob Weir
Bobbie Martin
Bobby
Bobby
- Named, first name only, in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Stealing Ain't As Easy As It Was In Times Past"; a friend a year older who taught the author how to shoplift a box of rifle shells from Tomkins Hardware Co., with a sleeve trick that ended in a burst box and rolling .22 shells. Not confirmed the same person as Bobby Snow, also named in this chapter, or the unqualified "Bobby" in "Big Chief Boogers." Per Shannon's mother, family memory recalls three other Creede-era "Bobbys" from around this generation — Bobby Brooks, Bobby Manning, and Bobby Oates (the latter already documented on this site as "Bob Oates") — though none is confirmed as this one. Bobby Manning is a tempting but imperfect age match: from a family of brothers including Earl and David (David Manning already documented on this site as a mesa contemporary), but the only indexed Bob Manning enlisted in the Navy alongside Joel Jackson in December 1941 — putting him around Joel's age (five years older than the author, John's own brother, not a separate generation), rather than "a friend a year older" than John specifically, so even this isn't confirmed.
- Also named, first name only, in the same book's "Big Chief Boogers"; threatened to rap Doris on the head if she moved to the author's empty chair during a birthday party's winking game. Not confirmed the same person as this chapter's other "Bobby" mentions.
Bobby Jean Bates
Bobby Snow
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Extra Curricular Activities"; brought water snakes to school to leave in the girls' toilets. No confirmed relation to Clarence, Ed, Eva, or Kenneth Snow, also named on this site. Possibly the same unqualified "Bobby" named elsewhere in this chapter, in "Stealing Ain't As Easy As It Was In Times Past" and "Big Chief Boogers"; not confirmed the same person.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Winter Like That of Memories"; taught the author to retrieve burrowed rabbits with a twisted length of barbed wire.
- Named in the class-photo roster in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter, as "Bob Snow," third row; possibly this site's existing Bobby Snow, not confirmed.
Bolger
Bonnie Wardell
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Decibels Unlimited"; Gene Wardell’s wife, hosted the gathering that led into an Elks Hall New Year’s Eve dance.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Advice for Bea Jean"; Gene Wardell's wife, willing to camp again if a proper mattress can be packed in, having tried pine boughs and horse blankets before.
Brent McCarthy
Brian
Britt McCormick
Brodie Farquhar
Bruce Barksdale
Bruce Manning
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; hauled a wood/coal kitchen stove into Brewster Park, which the Jackson family used on their August 1947 camping trip.
- Named in the Introduction of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; transported goods around Creede with a Chevrolet truck in the 1920s.
- Named with his wife Ethel in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; tried without success to keep their son David from joining the spring cattle drive from Wason Ranch to high range.
Bryan (assay laboratory)
Bryan Beck
- Named in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as the owner of the theatre whose planked, cracked stage hosted Eloise Blackford's music rehearsals, and beneath which boys hid to peer up at the young performers.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Bloomers & Home Runs" — the same story, differently detailed, as Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; his theatre's cracked, planked stage let the boys peer up at the young performers rehearsing above.
- Named in "Hell Cats" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; traded punches with Pug Sutherland in a Rainbow Bar and Grill brawl in 1949.
Buck
Bucky
Bud Miles
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; recalled with Barney Fairchild and Donald Powell among the old friends and "pards" on John's imagined Memory Lane bus ride.
- Named as "Geo. 'Bud' Miles," paired with Ivan Van Akin, in the roll of "The Top Team Miners" of John's era, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 51.
Burl McAdams
Byron
Byron "Barney" Fairchild
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; recalled as "Barney Fairchild," with Bud Miles and Donald Powell, among the old friends and "pards" on John's imagined Memory Lane bus ride.
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell" as "Byron 'Barney' Fairchild"; in "Quirks of the Trade," scowled the whole time he was underground and lit up the moment he saw daylight.
- Named in the class-photo roster in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter, as "Barney Fairchild"; second row.
- Named as "Byron Fairchild," paired with Charles Slaght, in the roll of "The Top Team Miners" of John's era, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 51.
Byron "Pappy" Fairchild
- Pictured on the front cover of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug" — a 1970s drilling-contest photo with the author — captioned as having tutored three generations of drillers and still operating his own backhoe at 90 years of age.
- Named as "Byron (Pappy) Fairchild" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Mule Skinners of 40-Years Ago Were a Hardy Breed"; one of the Emperius Mining Co. skinners during the author's first years there. Identified through family knowledge as the father of Byron "Barney" Fairchild, also named on this site.
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; with his wife Annie (Anna), one of the two couples John names as Creede's most graceful dancers, a smooth and graceful waltzer. Confirmed through family knowledge as this Byron "Pappy" Fairchild, married to Anna. No confirmed relation to Clinton Fairchild, also named in the manuscript.
C
C.F. Nelson
Carl Gilbreath
Carl Hogue
Carl Stedham
Carolyn Blackburn
Carroll Clayton Wetherill
Cathy Lou
Cathy Stevens
Cecil Owens
Celia
Chancy C. Bates
Chappie LeZotte
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed"; trammed and hooked buckets with Freddie Birdsey for George Hatfield and James "Zero" Ott.
- Possibly the "Chappie" addressed by a tommyknocker's warning voice in the untitled tommyknocker poem, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 48, saved from a cave-in on the graveyard shift in the Happy Thought Mine; not confirmed, as the poem gives no surname.
Charles Alfred "Chuck" Davlin
- Named in the Acknowledgments of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug", deceased at the time of publication; with his wife Toni, credited with giving Creede its first museum.
- Named again as "Charles 'Chuck' Davlin" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; pictured underground with the author himself, closing out "The Low Riders."
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "So Long Chuck!"; John's obituary tribute to the friend who hired him at Emperius Mining Company in 1942, recalling a last bighorn-sheep hunting trip before Chuck's death from illness.
Charles Cathcart
- Named in the Introduction of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; with his wife Annie, took honors for the largest and most varied garden in Creede, and shared milk and vegetables from their Holstein cows with neighbors.
- Named with his wife Annie in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; puzzled over his milk cows' contrariness on days when local kids had been secretly riding them.
Charles Church
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Bloomers & Home Runs"; the basketball team's center, coaxed by Eloise Blackford into playing a major singing role in a cantata.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Creede Ragamuffins Battled Valley Teams"; the 1941 Bulldogs' center, tallest of the team at barely six feet.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; pictured alone, with no caption beyond his name.
- Named again in the class-photo roster in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter; top row.
- Named as "Chuck" in John's typed poem "I'm Called 'Mister' Mashburn," signed 1991; identified as Charles Church from John's high school yearbook.
Charles Dabney
Charles G. Johnson
Charles Johnson
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; recalled waiting at the ore bin he designed, "a high old thousand tonner," on John's imagined Memory Lane bus ride. Disambiguated by key from Tom and Red Johnson, also named in the manuscript; no relation stated.
- The same Charles Johnson named in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" (per family knowledge); the author and a mine crew drilled and blasted outcroppings where his "new ore bin was to be constructed."
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Minnie Pearl Was a Smart Mining Mule"; carpenter and mechanic on the Reynolds Tunnel renovation project.
- Named in "'Didn't Have to, the Boot Had a Hole in It,'" Part I of "Third Stool from the Rear"; supervised outside restoration work at the Commodore Mine, including a new multi-partitioned ore bin.
Charles Lane
- Second husband of Anna Maud Woodruff, married 9 Sep 1920
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; married Anna Maud after buying the old Gardnier homestead, where they ran a firewood and mine-prop business
- Referred to only as "my grandfather" in John Jackson's account of the Snowshoe Mountain moonshiners; identified through family knowledge (27 Aug 2026) as Charles Lane.
- Called "Granddad Lane" throughout Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug," in "Grandparents, the Building Blocks"; a wood and mine-prop supplier on his 160-acre Moonshine Mesa homestead, remembered for wild wagon rides after too much time in Phillips Beer Parlor, folksy wisdom about not making "a brood mare out of a good riding horse," and standing armed guard over his grain fields each June against passing sheep herds with his 30-30 Winchester.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Magic Age Is Five" as the author's best pal and confidant at five years old; gave him his first rifle and was with him at age ten for an out-of-season bull elk kill to stock the larder.
- Named as "Granddad Lane" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Never Bet a Cinch"; sawing blocks from Red Spruce logs with the author when Al Hibbs and Arthur Davis drove in, and staked the dime for Al's shooting-contest bet.
- Named again as "Grandad Lane" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Hard Water"; hauled water from the Rio Grande in wooden barrels behind his team, Shorty and Chubby.
- Named again as "Granddad Lane" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "Short Stuff"; hauling firewood from the Lane ranch on Moonshine Mesa with young John when Roy LaFont stopped to admire a loose wheel rim.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter I, "Granddad and the Jayhawker"; appears as "Granddad" and, once, as "Mr. Lane," John's step-grandfather, delivering firewood with the boy to summer residents at Idlewild on the road to Spar City and refusing to be beaten down on the price.
- Central to "Snakes Alive" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts" as John's grandfather, running a firewood, mine-prop, milk, and egg business at "The Ranch" with wife Maude in the 1920s.
- Pictured with Frank Davis and Art Davis in the family ranch photograph in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts," captioned "After a Visit to the Still."
Charles Matson
- Named in the Introduction of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; worked Windy Gulch's mineralized sediments alongside Fred Monkemeyer.
- Called "Mr. Matson" and "Charlie Matson" in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; the author's neighbor on Windy Gulch, cared for by Dad Bill through his final illness, whose secondhand pipe and cast-off tobacco gave the author his first, brief smoking habit.
- Called "Charlie Matson" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Gentlemen Smoke Pipes" — the same story, differently detailed, as Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; his cast-off pipe, retrieved from his deathbed housecleaning, gave the author his first, brief smoking habit.
- Named as "Charlie Matson" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Inside Plumbing Blesses Creede"; Dad Bill's well beneath an enclosed porch served his and Ed Snow's households.
Charles Nelson
Charles S. Mashburn
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Creede Ragamuffins Battled Valley Teams"; principal and first coach of the 1941 Bulldogs before leaving to teach in California.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "College Recruits"; the high school superintendent whose classroom stove Bob Blackburn loaded with live cartridges.
- Named as "Mister" Mashburn in John's typed poem "I'm Called 'Mister' Mashburn," signed 1991; the stern principal of Mineral County High School. John's high school yearbook names him Charles S. Mashburn, High School Principal.
Charles Slaght
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; hauled ore from several mines with Slim Blackford and Pete Walker. Disambiguated by key from Clarence "Kayo" Slaght, also named in the manuscript; likely the same extended family, no relation stated.
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; recalled as "Charlie Slaght," riding beside the driver, Woody Wintz, in the closing lines of John's imagined Memory Lane bus-ride poem.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; waiting for the doors to open with Ray Ball, Charles Dabney, Burl McAdams and Robert Phillips.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, "Two Photograph Pages"; pictured first at left in a photograph captioned "Charles Slaght, Paul Davis, Woodrow Wintz, Ralph 'Pete' Walker."
- Named among the unidentified band members in the school-band caption in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter.
- Named, paired with Byron Fairchild, in the roll of "The Top Team Miners" of John's era, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 51.
Charles Steele
- Named in the Foreword of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as "a writer of real stories" and an old, trusted friend who goaded John into publishing. Named again with his wife Dorothy in the Acknowledgments.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Wisdom of Age"; had tools loaned to the author 15 years earlier turn up in a yard sale; delivered the "Praise the Lord for that small difference" line at a Congregational Church parsonage gathering.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Talking to Yourself OK, But Don't Start Believing It"; one of several Creede men said to talk to themselves.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "Eat Beef and Help the Ozone Layer"; at 80 and past, still dragging meadows and readying for 200 head of cattle.
- Named again as Deputy in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Finding Body Set Off Long Day on Divide"; joined a 1963 helicopter-crash body recovery on the divide above Spring Creek, taking double turns on the stretcher so Sheriff Don Zimmer of Saguache County could rest.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "The Road Starts Here"; with wife Dorothy, visited along with Alvie and Edith Wintz.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Which Day Would You Relive?"; joined the author and wife Dorothy on a remembered picnic atop Fisher Mountain.
- Named in the Introduction of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug" as "my old and faithful friend"; answers Reverend Mary Grubbs's remark on the difference between man and woman with "Praise the Lord for that small difference."
- Quoted in "Third Stool from the Rear," "From the Barrel of Common Sense," page iv: "A hundred years from now we'll see this in a different light."
Charles Voris
Charles Wanzer
Charles Webber
- Named in the Introduction of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; ran "The Webber Mercantile Company" in 1920s Creede.
- Named in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; his large mesa house, with an indoor flush toilet, struck the outhouse-using Jackson boys as unsanitary. His delivery wagon, and his son George, were also the target of the author's champion-caliber urinating.
Charley A. Woodruff
Charley Johnson
Charlie Gratton
Charlie Kipp
Charlotte Florella Lane
- Child of Anna Maud Woodruff and Charles Lane
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; close in age to her nephew John and raised alongside him on the Lane ranch
- Called "Charlotte Lane" in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; the author's regular companion driving cattle to and from the Broadhead Ranch bull, fishing at the Broadhead lake, and, in "Birthday Cakes and Pucker Power," pushing and pulling a one-horse buggy for miles of rutted road between neighboring ranches.
- Named as "Charlotte Lane McClure" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Flatus Before Dessert" — the same birthday dinner, differently detailed, as Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug," "Birthday Cakes and Pucker Power"; walked with the author from the Lane ranch to the Barbers'.
- Named as "Charlotte McClure" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Women Can Scare Strongest Man"; John McClure’s wife, shared lunch with the author at his Cebolla Creek home the day Bea Jean Wintz stormed in.
- Named in the class-photo roster in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter, as "Charlotte Lane"; seated row.
- Named as "Charlotte" in "Snakes Alive" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; John's cousin, who grew her own horsehair "snake" from the bay horse Chub alongside John's.
- Pictured as one of "The Snake Charmers," with Lee and John, 1930, and again in 1935 with Polly Davis, in the family ranch photographs in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts."
Charlotte Powell
Charlotte Turnipseed
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Solitary Journeys"; Les Turnipseed's wife, met the author at the door of their home in Eckert with an urgent message to call home. A different Turnipseed woman, Kathleen ("Dottie") Turnipseed, is also named on this site; no relation between the two is confirmed.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Wintertime Travelling Is Not for Us"; hosted the author and Inez at the Turnipseed home in Eckert on a winter trip to Nevada.
Cherie Larson
- Named in John Jackson's 1988 tribute to Joel, a teenage crush of Joel's, alongside Toots Matzen
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Creede Ragamuffins Battled Valley Teams"; a member of the Creede pep squad that turned out for the Bulldogs' scrimmage against Monte Vista.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; printed as "Cheri Larson," pictured with Emma Mae Wilson.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Wintertime Travelling Is Not for Us"; recalled thirty-six years earlier marveling, with Bertha Larson and Lucille Wilson, at the view of the Great Salt Lake basin, since obscured by smog.
- Named in the class-photo roster in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter, as "Cherie Larson," second row, and again in the Acknowledgements, thanked among those John hopes will forgive him.
Chester Garnier
Chet Brubaker
Christine Duncan
Chuck Fairchild
Chuck Lehman
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Early-Morning Call Jogs Memory of Days in Local Choir"; tried out for the Snowshoe Mountain Glee and Choir Club.
- Named as "Chuckie Lehman" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Solitary Journeys"; named in a joking note the author and Pete Walker hung in the cage during a stockholder mine tour at Creede, tasked with "conducting the services" to the tune of Rock of Ages.
Clara Phipps
- Named in the Acknowledgments of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug", wife of Allan R. Phipps.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Which Day Would You Relive?"; recalled with husband Allan for pleasant times at the Creede Hotel, and their quiet, anonymous generosity to Creede and its children.
- Named with husband Allan Phipps in "Working Stiffs" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts," financing the 1969 Gateway Access Corporation tunnel with The Colorado Fuel, Iron and Steel Company.
Clarence "Frosty" Snow
Clarence "Kayo" Slaght
- Named in John Jackson's 1988 tribute to Joel; downed by Japanese fire on Saipan or Tinian
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "A White Cross on Iwo Jima"; boarded the bus for Marine Corps training with Walter Workman.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Wet Bags and Dry Flies"; an avid fisherman, second only to his brother Henry, on an overnight fishing trip that ends with a scorched sleeping bag.
- Named only as "Kayo" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed," among those the author remembers from the late-’40s Amethyst crowd.
Clarence Howard
Clarence Martin
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; one of the old friends and "pards" John imagines rejoining on a bus ride down Memory Lane.
- Named at length in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed"; a Bataan prisoner of war who endured captivity in Japan, later died from a long fall in 60 raise.
- Named in "Mine Is Not to Question Why," Part III of "Third Stool from the Rear"; a Bataan Death March survivor who became a miner at Emperius Mining Company, always craved vegetables after his years as a prisoner of the Japanese, and fell 130 feet to his death cleaning up in 60 raise.
- Recalled, as "Clarence," in an untitled barroom vignette, Part III of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 26, reflecting on his death alongside an earlier, unnamed miner's fatal fall.
Clarence Snow
Clarence Withrow
Clarence Y. Butler
Claude Cecil Jackson
- William Thomas Jackson Sr.'s youngest child (per the 1910 census, age 1½); pictured as a small boy alongside his father in a photograph from John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell," captioned in verse, in the old man's own voice, as "the last one of my breed."
- Named as "Claude" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "In Respectful Memory Of," the memorial his nephew John dedicated to his parents, William Thomas Jackson Sr. and Selma.
- Possibly the boy called "Rasty" in a front-matter photograph in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug" (caption "William T. Jackson Sr. & son Rasty"); the same photograph is captioned "Claude & William T. Jackson Sr." in "Please Go to Hell." "Rasty" as a nickname for Claude is not confirmed anywhere else on the site.
Claude Larson
- Named in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; his garage was among the stops on the author's boyhood cigarette- and cigar-butt-collecting circuit of Creede's business section.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Magic Age Is Five"; his garage was a five-year-old's wonderland — watching gasoline rise in the glass pump bowl, collecting steel marbles from a cast-off bearing, and witnessing the electrified dog-shock prank at the doorway.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Gas Was Easy to Borrow"; ran the Main Street gas pumps where "Wick" worked.
Cleta
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," "This Soldier Says Navy Men Are All Wet"; fed "Loyd 'Bo' Roberts" through a garden hose during his 20-year Army career, per John's joke — presumably his wife, though this is not stated outright. See the note on noel-lloyd-roberts-bolo regarding the possible identification of "Bo" Roberts.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "The Road Starts Here"; to accompany husband Bo on a threatened spring visit.
Clifford French
Clifton Hudson
Clinton Fairchild
- Named in John Jackson's 1988 tribute to Joel; drove Joel, Bob Manning, Clarence Snow, and Herb Hutchinson to Denver on 8 Dec 1941 to enlist; served in the Navy
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Name in Society Page Prompts Memory of Partners"; banked a log-loaded truck at the foot of Black Pitch in 1947, thrown clear with only bruises.
- Named among the unidentified band members in the school-band caption in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter.
- Named as "Clinton" in an untitled barroom vignette, Part I of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 3; helped pull a truck off a log at the Amethyst mule barn.
- Named in "'Chalk One Up for Blackberry,'" Part II of "Third Stool from the Rear"; bulldozed a road to his grandfather's caved tunnel, giving the Phoenix claim crew access.
Cloy Duncan
- Named in the Acknowledgments of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug" with her brother Gordon Duncan, a neighbor and ally on "the mesa" who contributed photos and memories.
- Named in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as one of the Duncan siblings — with Gordon, Hurtha, and James — who joined the mesa platoon after their father Alex Duncan moved to a house across the gulch from Frank Davis.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Retirement Means Kicking Back"; retired, and, with husband Gordon, took to dressing "like Internal Revenue Service agents" to tour around scaring old friends; grew a belly in retirement "to rest his arms on while telling lies."
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Acknowledgements; thanked, with Gordon Duncan, as one "who contributed several photographs."
- Named among the unidentified band members in the school-band caption in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter.
- Named as "Cloy" in John's typed poem "I'm Called 'Mister' Mashburn," signed 1991; possibly this Cloy Duncan. Not confirmed.
Clyde "Unc" Hood
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "A View from the Barroom Floor"; a railroad engineer who brought his Big Ben alarm clock to the bar and drank only "as long as I can see the hands on my clock."
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; pictured as a railroad engineer, captioned "Gentle Spirit."
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter IV, "I'll Drink to That (Or Anything Else)"; as "Unc Hood," one of the "elders" who glared at Ruby's clicking fingernails at the bar and retired to a corner table.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter IV, "I Didn't Hear It 'Til It Was Already Passed"; as "Clyde," the old fellow in a knee-length Army coat who could make it billow, one of the old men on the bench at Soapy's Pool Hall and Barber Shop; very likely the same man, though the story gives only "Clyde."
Cora Davis
- Second wife of Robert Abraham Lincoln Davis; married 8 Jul 1931, Neosho, Missouri, per a marriage license located since this entry was first written — no longer unverified. Robert's own death certificate lists her as his wife at his 1943 death.
- Almost certainly the "Cora Dear" named in Robert’s poem "Womans Love" — per Robert’s own note, written years earlier for a widow he was courting who didn’t believe he’d written it himself, and whom he went on to marry regardless.
Cora Helmick
Cpl. Kenworthy
Curly
Curt Cadwell
- Son of Forest Cadwell, per family knowledge. Named only as "Curt" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Jo Jo Joins the Herd"; Leanne’s husband and Michael Cadwell’s father, nearly persuaded to return "Jo Jo" the goat to the auction barn. No surname given.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Dog Is the Dogies' Best Friend as Well as Master's"; with his father, Forest, "hogged the penicillin and warmest sheds" during a hard winter of makeshift veterinary care for ailing livestock.
- Named as "Curt" in "A Feeling of Love" and again in "Reigning Cats and Dogs," Chapter II of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; Forest Cadwell's companion moving cattle, and again bringing Skeeter's greyhound-cross girlfriend Megan on morning feeding runs.
Cynthia Haynes
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Fish Dish Gave Jackson's Clan, Neighbors a Hot Time"; a newspaper columnist for The Miner and Tines and camp-cook stand-in whose fish fillet casserole recipe is the whole joke.
- Byline of "Open Range," a mock newspaper column reprinted as "Open Season Declared on Jackson" in "Echoes from the Thundermug."
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Secret Channel Turns Up His Heater"; her newspaper recipe column is the springboard for a swapped-recipe joke.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "Can You Get Charge Out of Bed?"; her red snapper recipe is blamed, in jest, for John's ravings against Dan Dennehy.
D
Dale
Dale Bruns
Dallas Filley
Dan Bartlett
Dan Dennehy
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," "Rifle, Pen Face-Off Suggested"; a retired Navy CPO from Del Norte, John's real-life sparring partner in a running, months-long letters-to-the-editor feud over gun control and the Second Amendment.
- Writes at length in "Don't Columnists Know Facts?", his own letter to the editor rebutting John's column on assault rifles, signed "Dan Dennehy, CPO, USN (Ret.), Del Norte."
- Addressed at length in "Let Us Duel It Out With Ink, Mr. Dennehy," John's reply.
- Writes again in a second, unheadlined letter to the editor, revealing he was rejected from the Army in 1940 because his parents were married, "hence, the Army's loss was the Navy's gain."
- Addressed again in "This Soldier Says Navy Men Are All Wet," John's verse-and-prose reply recounting old Army buddies and a courthouse visit to Judge Richard and Attorney Betty.
- Addressed a final time in "Can You Get Charge Out of Bed?", where John concedes the feud and accepts a marshmallow duel.
- Pictured in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "In Respectful Memory Of"'s closing tribute page, holding a wolf or coyote, captioned "C.P.O. Dan Dennehy, Ret., and friend / KNIFEMAKER / PATRIOT / STRAIGHTSHOOTER."
Dan McCaulley
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," "Short Stuff"; sold John the Model T truck "T-Bone," previously owned by William J. Russell. Possibly related to the site's Hank McCaulley, though no relation is stated.
- Named as Creede's shoe cobbler and Harold McCaulley's father in "Working Stiffs" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts."
- Named in "T-Bone" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; sold John his first automobile, a 1916 Ford Model T pickup, for $20 in 1942.
Dan McCleary
Dan McGilvery
Darlene Dooley
Dave Brown
Dave Deci
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Early-Morning Call Jogs Memory of Days in Local Choir"; tried out for the Snowshoe Mountain Glee and Choir Club.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Solitary Journeys"; an old friend and former Creede-area mine manager, reunited with the author in Elko; recalls a phone mix-up at Tankersley's, asking for "Seth" and being asked "Who the hell is Seth?" before learning even Seth E. Tankersley's own family calls him "Tank."
Dave Jones
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Whistle While You Work"; braved a geologist's wild driving spree better fortified than the author; later got his emergency whistle full of water joining nude bathers under a waterfall in Squaw Canyon, South Dakota, taking two days to sound it again.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Inez Hooks the Big One"; arrived at a Freeport office party with Bob Hawkins and Tina Gonzales.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter IV, "I Didn't Hear It 'Til It Was Already Passed"; as "David Jones" and "Dave Jones," a geologist "bursting with pride" in Idaho and later leaning out the right side of a vehicle in Colorado after Mexican food.
- Named as "Geologist Dave Jones" in "Grounds for Manslaughter," Chapter V of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; held the record among John's colleagues for longest sustained and highest-decibel snoring, unmuffled even by a foam pillow in Billings, Montana.
Dave Jonson
Dave Potter
Dave Stevens
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," "RSVP"; Freeport Exploration Co. manager, remembered for a "Sugar Cane Rumba" performance with an East Colfax belly dancer.
- Named again in "Bloody Palm Gulch"; John's exploration manager on a precipitous sampling traverse, took a spectacular tumble down loose scree and came up bloodied but more worried about his radio.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Inez Hooks the Big One"; with wife Cathy, hosted the Freeport office's Christmas-New Year's farewell party for Jeanne Downing.
David
- Named in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; a classmate in the author's Bible class who added horses, saddles, and bridles to the gang's vision of Heaven, for rounding up the Lord's cattle. Keyed separately from David Manning, also named on this site, since only a first name is given here; no relation stated.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Going to Church Just Never Was John's Idea of Heaven" — the same story, differently detailed, as Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; envisioned a black stallion with a silver-conchaed saddle for rounding up the Lord's cattle.
David Blackburn
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "College Recruits"; one of the four-boy quartet, with John, Bob Blackburn and Scooter, exploring Goose Creek drainage as children.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Last Valentine From David"; returned, a year before his death, a two-for-a-nickel Valentine the author had given him as a boy, wanting him to know he had been his "No. 1 friend."
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter III, "Revolutions and Bloodletting"; one of four men crammed on the seat of the pickup that rolled three times or more chasing "split-tail quail" on the Bachelor Road.
David Henry Woodruff
David Manning
- Named in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as Bruce and Ethel Manning's son, envied by the mesa kids for his boots and for joining the co-op cattle drive on horseback despite his parents' efforts to stop him.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Let's Hear That One Again"; joined Lee Davis and the author behind Mortensen's shed to smoke Bull Durham and look at cowboy magazines, wearing oversized cast-off cowboy boots.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; kneeling with the author, Bernard Shaw, Wallace Leary and Jack Thompson at Jimmy Mason's 1936 birthday party.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two"; kneeling at Jimmy Mason's 1936 birthday party in "No Birthday Party for Him," and, in "Campaigns & Growing Pains," caught at gunpoint escorting a young lady to a Del Norte dance.
- Named in the class-photo roster in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter; third row.
David Stevens
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Fame Is Short; Failure Forever"; as district manager, gave the author a raise and a new title, telling him, "Hell, you reached [the peak of your incompetency] long ago. Just accept this raise for being more incompetent than we thought."
- Named as "David Stevens" in "Grounds for Manslaughter," Chapter V of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; one of the professional-grade snorers of John's exploration career, compared to an old plow horse turning the last furrow.
Dean
Dean Hammond
- Named in the Acknowledgments of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug", deceased at the time of publication; with his wife Ev, credited with the newspaper partnership that "planted the seed of inspiration" for the book.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Moves Keep 'Em Hopping"; showed the author and Inez, ten years earlier, how sprinkling cedar sawdust by garden plants deters cutworms — a box of the sawdust turns up unpacked in a later move.
- Quoted in "Third Stool from the Rear," "From the Barrel of Common Sense," page iv, on respect as the ultimate compliment.
Dean Shillings
Debbie
Deefie Moss
Denny Heyrman
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," "RSVP"; escaped an indecent-exposure citation at the Freeport Exploration Co. pig roast only by falling in the pit and being mistaken for the pig.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter IV, "I Didn't Hear It 'Til It Was Already Passed"; produced the blast that flattened two tires of the Chevy Blazer in Idaho.
- Named in "Grounds for Manslaughter," Chapter V of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; tried and failed to smother Dave Jones's snoring with a foam pillow in Billings, Montana.
Dick Lehman
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; with Tommy Phillips, one of the Amethyst Mine's leasers in 1947, a Navy Sea Bee veteran who rose to foreman and later worked for an exploration company.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, "Mr. Lehman Draws a Joker"; John's "old friend," driving a raise in the West Drift, whose young nipper panicked when the stoper started and begged to be taken out. Also pictured in a photograph captioned 'Richard "Dick" Lehman.'
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, "George and the Glory Hole"; as the shifter who found a new miner tied to a slusher bucket for fear of "the big cave."
Dick Springer
Dick Wilson
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Talking to Yourself OK, But Don't Start Believing It"; a Cebolla-area rancher who talks to himself, shoots at coyotes near the power lines, and once knocked out the neighborhood's power trying to hit one.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Heifer Checker Sets Tone on Powderhorn"; the self-appointed pregnancy tester for the Powderhorn-area cattle herds.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Brush With Trooper Recalls Law's Rare Visits to Creede"; spreads his own embellished version of John's traffic-stop story around the Powderhorn Valley.
Digger
Doc Diaz (of San Luis)
Doctor Whitaker
Dollie Workman
Dolly
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Fate Deprived Me of Fame and Fortune"; ran Dolly’s Bar and Grill, stretching the hamburger with cracker crumbs "for more bulk, less protein."
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter III, "A Wake for Herb"; as "Dolly," who gave "a passable Eulogy" at the Silver Dollar Bar & Grill; the story does not say whether she is the Dolly of Dolly's Bar and Grill in Echoes.
Don Kipp
Don LaFont
Don Leonard
- Named in a Chapter II photo caption of "Once Around the Thunder Mug," credited to Heinie Leonard; presumably a sibling of Heinie's, though no relation is stated in the text.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; pictured in Creede around 1926 with Norma Matzen, Mildred Matzen, Dorothy Leonard, Billy Matzen and Heinie Leonard.
Don Zimmer
Donald Powell
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; recalled with Bud Miles and Barney Fairchild among the old friends and "pards" on John's imagined Memory Lane bus ride.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Of Hell Cats and She Ghosts"; a hoist prank with foreman Tom Phillips goes wrong in total darkness.
- Named again, as just "Donald," in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Sweet Beetles," confirmed per family knowledge as the same Donald Powell; stopped by a patrolman while driving home from Del Norte and asked if he was intoxicated.
- Named in the class-photo roster in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter; third row.
- Possibly named, unqualified, as "Donald" in "Donald Pioneers a Freeway," Chapter IV of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; a mining partner who falls asleep drunk at the wheel driving home from Del Norte and is found by a patrolman. The same circumstance -- a patrol stop driving home from Del Norte -- appears in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Sweet Beetles," already identified there, per family knowledge, as this site's Donald Powell; the identification here is offered as likely, not confirmed, since this book gives no surname.
- Pictured standing in a rail yard in the World War II photograph page in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts."
Doris
Dorothy Krausnick
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Creede Ragamuffins Battled Valley Teams"; a teacher who sat with the Creede pep squad at the Bulldogs' scrimmage against Monte Vista.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One" as "Miss Krausnick"; the teacher on the receiving end of Bob Blackburn's chemistry-class pranks, and director of the 1941-42 junior-senior play.
Dorothy Leonard
- Named in a Chapter II photo caption of "Once Around the Thunder Mug," credited to Heinie Leonard; presumably a sibling of Heinie's, though no relation is stated in the text.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; pictured in Creede around 1926 with Norma Matzen, Mildred Matzen, Don Leonard, Billy Matzen and Heinie Leonard.
Dorothy Steele
- Named in the Acknowledgments of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug", wife of Charles Steele.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "The Road Starts Here"; with husband Charles, visited along with Alvie and Edith Wintz.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Which Day Would You Relive?"; joined the author and husband Charles on a remembered picnic atop Fisher Mountain, on "one of the rare days" she wasn't nursing wounds.
Dorothy Wintz
Dorothy Workman
- Named in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as one of Dollie Workman's children, alongside Harold and Walter.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "A White Cross on Iwo Jima"; one of the three Workman children who moved in from the ranch each school term.
- Named among the unidentified band members in the school-band caption in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter.
Dottie Turnipseed
- Named in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; alongside Dad Bill and Gram Lane, helped care for Charlie Matson through his final illness so that none of Creede's old timers would die alone. Possibly the same extended family as Les Turnipseed and Al Turnipseed, also named on this site; no confirmed relation stated.
- Named as "Kathleen (Dottie) Turnipseed" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Magic Age Is Five"; played piano at Milton "Tex" Allsworth's for sing-alongs.
- Named as "Kathleen (Dottie) Turnipseed" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Gentlemen Smoke Pipes"; alternated with Dad Bill and Gram Lane in the death-watch care of Charlie Matson.
Dottie Vidano
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Farewell to Jerritt Canyon"; packages pie for the Jacksons' last trip home from the Jerritt Canyon camp.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Wintertime Travelling Is Not for Us"; her Jerritt Canyon base-camp cooking added "eight pounds" to the author's midsection during a winter of Freeport Exploration Co. fieldwork.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Bless the Ladies"; her Jerritt Canyon camp kitchen was the site of a wiring repair when geologist Debbie's truck trouble prompted a prank fix with a borrowed mop handle.
Douglas Wolcott "Doug" Davlin
Dove McCaghren
Dovy Magee
- Named in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as a Missouri neighbor bitten by a copperhead snake during the family's visit, expected to die; she recovered.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Ozark Adventures" — the same story, differently detailed, as Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; a Missouri neighbor bitten by a copperhead snake during the family's visit, expected to die; she recovered.
Dr. Adkisson
Dr. B.B. Grichter
Dr. Huene
Dr. Lambert
Dr. Lokey
Dr. Samuel McKibbin
- Named in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; the Creede doctor who delivered the author, and who was impatient that night to get back to pulling a patient's wisdom tooth.
- Named as "Dr. McKibben" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Magic Age Is Five"; helped deliver the author at home, along with a midwife.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Introduction; as "Dr. McKibbin," sent for the author's father when a sheep-herder rode in with a hole in his belly from a blasting cap; cleaned the wound with the doctor's son and the author's father assisting.
Dr. Sprecher
Dr. Tarr
Duane Havens
E
E. D. Watson
- Named as "Mr. E.D. Watson" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Creede Ragamuffins Battled Valley Teams"; replaced Charles Mashburn as the Bulldogs' coach, admitted he knew nothing about basketball, and drove the team to Hooper in his own '38 Ford.
- Named as "Professor E. D. Watson" in the Acknowledgements of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," credited as an excellent teacher who drove his ball team to valley towns at his own expense; named again as the exhausted superintendent of "Bearly Heroes," Chapter III, below.
- Named as "E. D. Watson, Superintendent of Schools" in "Bearly Heroes," Chapter III of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; the exhausted high school principal who joined the boys' 1941 hunting camp a day late and left before season's end, his fried chicken eaten by the boys before he woke.
Earl
Earl J
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; the ringleader of John's boyhood gang, best remembered for popping paper sacks to startle the old miners dozing on the bench outside Soapy's Pool Hall.
- Named in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; credited with the trick of taping over a jukebox's nickel slot to run up to 20 songs, letting the gang learn to fox trot and waltz on a limited budget.
Earl Payne
Earl Wilson
Ed
Ed Hargraves
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Talking to Yourself OK, But Don't Start Believing It"; one of several Creede men, alongside the author, said to talk to themselves.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter IV, "I'll Drink to That (Or Anything Else)"; the bartender in a bar photograph with Ray Ball, Pete Walker, Lucky Keene and Archie "Spud" Fellows.
Ed Howard
Ed Johnson
Ed Mahoney
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Getting Ahead Can Be Golden"; a history teacher from Lee’s Summit, Missouri, who paid $200 for a pyrite "gold" specimen on a Colorado fishing trip.
- Named as "Ed Mahoney" in "Cold Goose and Warm Chickens," Chapter VI of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," visiting his farming neighbor George Perlmutter; whether this is the same Ed Mahoney of Lee's Summit, Missouri, who tells stories in "Echoes from the Thundermug," is not confirmed.
Ed McCargish
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; with Paul Weaver, one of the Amethyst Mine's hoistmen in 1947, a transplant from the coal mines near Trinidad.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed"; one of the postwar Amethyst hoistmen.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "'Act Your Age' Takes Fun Out of Seniors' Lifestyle"; takes a spectacular backward fall at the Phoenix mine above Creede.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, "Two Photograph Pages"; as "Edward McCargish," pictured in a full-page photograph with the couplet "Ed was a miner and a poet as well with many exciting stories to tell."
- Named in "'Board Stiff,'" Part II of "Third Stool from the Rear," "an experienced and careful hoistman" who plucked John off a broken board and cable after Skinner's signal.
- Central to "Ed and Cherokee" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; a Trinidad coal miner turned Creede hoistman and timberman, given to anti-clerical tirades and two back-to-back head injuries from ice falls in early 1952.
Ed Snow
- Named in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; a carpenter and prospector who lived next door to the Jackson family with his wife Eva, and was the unwitting victim of a Model T Ford prank pulled by the author and his brother Scooter.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Inside Plumbing Blesses Creede"; Dad Bill's well beneath an enclosed porch served his and Charlie Matson's households.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Let's Hear That One Again"; his garage was the boys' hiding spot for pelting the Allen sisters' cows with slingshot rocks.
- Central to "Echoes from the Thundermug," "So Long to Ed Snow"; the near-sighted boyhood friend turned electronics engineer, garbage-hauling partner, and Vietnam volunteer, remembered here at length through his death from cancer.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "College Recruits"; drinks two quarts of Muscatel with Bob Blackburn the night before Bob's move to Pueblo, and helps revive him in the snow afterward.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter III, "Why Dogs Shouldn't Chase Garbage Trucks"; as C. Edward Snow, John's helper on the Creede garbage route, nearsighted and sensitive to smell, who suggested masking it with Tokay wine and gave the Model T a slug through the radiator cap.
"Ed the Barber"
- Named as "Ed the barber" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Magic Age Is Five"; drove to Creede from Spar City in a buggy with fancy curled springs and a white walrus mustache, and let five-year-olds help grain and rub down his horse. No confirmed relation to Ed (the hoist man), Ed McCargish, or Ed Snow, also named on this site.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Prospectors Were a Visionary Lot Who Built the West"; prospected fissure veins near Spar City with Pete Weiss, but "for the most part, percolated sour mash in a small distillery," earning the dubious distinction of having the last still destroyed by federal agents in Mineral County.
Ed Wintz
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "'Act Your Age' Takes Fun Out of Seniors' Lifestyle"; falls in front of a horse doing a "soft shoe routine," and is recalled falling repeatedly some thirty years earlier — no confirmed relation to the site's existing Woody Wintz.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "Eat Beef and Help the Ozone Layer," grouped with Al "Hoots" Colville and Bill Steffens as readers John recommends the article to.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Advice for Bea Jean"; his vehicle became a temporary home for stray cats the author was trying to rehome; visited with wife Bea Jean, whose seat-belt driving trick nearly cost her a ticket.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "The Road Starts Here"; drove his mother, Dorothy Wintz, over Slumgullion Pass for a visit.
- Named as "Ed Wintz, manager of the 4UR Ranch" in "Bear Without Me, Ed," Chapter III of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," on an aborted bowhunt for a nuisance bear, and again in "The Bear Who Came for Breakfast," where he kills the bear with a bow rather than wake his sleeping children with a gunshot.
Eddie Cahoon
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Extra Curricular Activities"; laughed hardest at the author's first-day-of-school embarrassment and got rapped on the kisser for it after class.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Last Valentine From David"; refused to give the author a childhood Valentine on a dare, and was chased down and bloodied in an alley for it.
Edith Wintz
Edith Wintz
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," "Driver Meets Old Friend While Negotiating Tight Road"; Jerry Wintz's mother, married to Alvie Wintz, both described as recovering well from new hip joints. Disambiguated by key from this site's other Edith Wintz entry, confirmed by family history research to be Edith Helen Wintz (1920-1990), who married Paul Davis; the two are not known to be related.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "The Road Starts Here"; visited with husband Alvie and the Charles Steeles.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Which Day Would You Relive?"; recalled, with husband Al/Alvie, on a remembered Beartown camping trip with a favorite Spaniel and a beautiful catch of Cutthroat trout.
- Pictured near Beartown with husband Alvie in "Favorite Photos" in Part Two of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts."
Edna Cossitt
Edna Latitia Woodruff
Edna Rosamond Davis
- Child of Anna Maud Woodruff and Robert Abraham Lincoln Davis; per family account, later Rose Davis Cook (unconfirmed)
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter I, "Who Upset the Thundermug"; probably "Rose," the eldest daughter, courted by a handsome local cowboy until the thundermug spilled on them; per family account Edna Rosamond went by Rose, though this is not confirmed.
Edna Ruth Van Aken
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; won a Jitterbugging contest at the "Bucket of Blood" with Kenneth Snow.
- Named in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; seated beside Elsie Duncan when Miss Gortney's game-field appearance distracted brother Joey mid-pitch, and photographed on a porch step with Betty J. Walker and Elsie Duncan.
- Named as "Edna Ruth VanAkin" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Bloomers & Home Runs" — the same story, differently detailed, as Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; seated beside Elsie Duncan when Miss Gortney's arrival distracted brother Joe mid-pitch.
- Named in the Acknowledgements of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; thanked among the students of Professor E. D. Watson John hopes will forgive him.
Edna Ruth Van Akin
Effie Lee Bates
Eleanor Johnson (Lehman)
Eli Staggs
Elizabeth Conour
Ellie
- Named in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as the preacher's young daughter, rehearsed by her father for the Bible-class Heaven exercise and reciting streets of gold, evergreen flowers, and, breaking from the script, bushes loaded with jelly beans and springs that ran soda pop.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Going to Church Just Never Was John's Idea of Heaven" — the same story, differently detailed, as Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; the preacher's daughter, coached through streets of gold before breaking from the script with jelly-bean bushes and soda-pop springs.
Ellis Clampett
Ellis Nash
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Antiques in Yard, Waving Part of His Style"; one of the original 25 Colorado Courtesy Patrolmen in 1940, and an acquaintance of the author's.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Brush With Trooper Recalls Law's Rare Visits to Creede"; the Courtesy Patrolman nearly run over by a teenage John and friends around 1939.
Elmer (Let Me Put It Another Way)
Elmer Floyd Bates
Elmer Ottis Woodruff
Elmira
Eloise Blackford
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; Slim Blackford's wife, a talented piano player and opera singer who taught music and staged musicals with local students.
- Named in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; taught music and staged musical performances with local students, rehearsed in Bryan Beck's theatre, where boys hid under the stage to peer up through the cracks.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Bloomers & Home Runs" — the same story, differently detailed, as Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; taught music and staged musical performances, rehearsed in Bryan Beck's theatre, coaxing Charles Church into a singing role.
Elsie Duncan
- Named in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; her nose was broken by a wild pitch from brother Joey during a softball game, and she is photographed standing with Betty J. Walker and Edna Ruth Van Aken on a porch step. No relation stated to Christine and Marie Duncan, also named in this chapter, or to Gordon, Cloy, Hurtha, and James Duncan, the Alex Duncan family already documented on this site.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Bloomers & Home Runs" — the same story, differently detailed, as Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; her nose broken by a wild pitch from brother Joe during the softball game.
Elva Miller
Emil
Emma Mae Wilson
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Creede Ragamuffins Battled Valley Teams"; a member of the Creede pep squad that turned out for the Bulldogs' scrimmage against Monte Vista.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; pictured with Cherie Larson (printed "Cheri").
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "College Recruits"; Gavin Skinner's co-star in the 1941-42 junior-senior play, and the object of the stage kiss he struggled to deliver.
- Named in the Acknowledgements of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; thanked among those John hopes will forgive him.
Emmett Bruns
Emmett Dabney
Erick W. Nelson
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; General Manager of the Amethyst Mine in 1947, a self-taught geologist John calls "one of the very finest individuals I have known"; also elevated George Hatfield from tramming to miner's helper.
- Survived a runaway 1948 Ford pickup's wild wreck on Black Pitch grade with Scooter Jackson, in "Black Pitch Wins Again," with only bruised ribs and a sprained thumb.
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; in "Quirks of the Trade," his bushy moustache served as an early-warning system — blown out and up when he was riled.
- Named again as "Erick Nelson," superintendent, in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Mule Skinners of 40-Years Ago Were a Hardy Breed"; sent hungover skinners home or benched them to sleep it off.
- Named as "Erick Nelson" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed"; one of the postwar Amethyst supervisors.
- Named again as "Superintendent Erick ‘Swede’ Nelson" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Jackson Recalls Building of Ore Bins"; Bill Jackson’s superintendent on the Commodore 5 tunnel restoration.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, ""The Swede" Creede's Top Miner"; the subject of the story: John calls him "the Swede," a friend of John's father since childhood who rose from miner and leaser to General Manager of Emperius Mining Company, and describes the trip with him to find a plugged water line on the Last Chance levels.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, "The Big Kentuckian"; as "Mr. Nelson," sampling veins and asking newcomer George Hatfield how he liked the work.
- Quoted in "Third Stool from the Rear," "From the Barrel of Common Sense," page iv, on respecting the qualities that make a person worth respecting.
- Named as "Erick" in an untitled barroom vignette, Part II of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 11; caught a drunken mule skinner, Grover, dumping supplies rather than delivering them.
- Named as "Erick" in an untitled barroom vignette, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 44; a pinned miner vowed never to work for him again.
- Named as "Erick" in an untitled barroom vignette, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 47, on one of Glen's inspection rounds.
Ernie Barrett
Ernie Egan
Ernie Thompson
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Boxers Highlighted Old Traveling Circuses"; Creede's welterweight boxer, "a skillful boxer and hard puncher." Not confirmed related to Tommy Thompson, also named on this site.
- Named only as "Ernie" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed," among those the author remembers jumping "into battle in Europe with the 82nd and Screaming Eagles divisions." Believed to be this same Ernie Thompson.
Ernie Wilkinson
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Doc Leary Battles Handicap"; posted scores at a Rocky Mountain Regional Archery tournament hosted by the Piedra Bowhunters of Monte Vista.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "'Urpsus Horribilious' Faces Liquor Cost Hike"; a Monte Vista columnist and archery-tournament organizer, recalled from a bow-shop visit some 30 years earlier.
Esta Delia Helms
Esther Hosselkus Hinshaw
Esther Matzen
Ethel Manning
Eugene Dooley
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; one of Alma Wintz Dooley's three children in "Pards," raised with his siblings Floyd and Nora after their father's early death.
- Named again as "Gene Dooley" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "A View from the Barroom Floor"; helped take the census in Monte Vista while "all corned up."
- Named again as "Gene Dooley" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Of Hell Cats and She Ghosts"; jumped onto a sump bucket for a ride down the mine and was left hanging on a nail head.
- Named again as "Eugene Dooley" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; pictured with Robert Oates.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Early-Morning Call Jogs Memory of Days in Local Choir" as "Gene"; likely, though not stated outright, the same Gene Dooley named later in this chapter's frostbite story.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Hopeful Wife Can Be Trying"; frostbites his earlobes and nose during a snowslide-forced hike near the Amethyst mine in the winter of 1947-48.
- Named again, as "Gene," in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "Short Stuff"; son of "Red" Dooley in a schoolyard story told by John (Peterson) Keating.
- Named as "Gene Dooley" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Lynn Meets the She Ghost"; ran ore stopes near the West Drift Sump in the Amethyst Mine with the author and Lynn Lezotte after World War II, riding the rims of hoist buckets together.
- Named as "Gene Dooley" in "'A Rude Awakening,'" Part I of "Third Stool from the Rear," one of the crew at the barrel heater.
Eugene Groom
- Named in the Introduction of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; formerly managed the Derrick Lumber Company, then went into business for himself delivering hay, grain, flour and coal by truck in 1920s Creede.
- Named as "Gene Groom" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Magic Age Is Five"; delivered coal to the Moon tunnel's steam boilers at Sunnyside, and gave the author rides home.
Eugene Thom
- Named as "Gene Thom" and "Eugene Thom" in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; his house marked the start of the mesa's winter coasting road, and, as a barber in the Heinz building, gave the author his first remembered haircut before later becoming Creede's town marshal.
- Named again as "Mr. Eugene Thom" and "Gene" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Wheels for Reet"; as town marshal, pulled over Dr. Whitaker's car for the flagrant violation of a dog appearing to drive it.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Hard Water"; installed a water tank with a water jacket and a real cabinet sink, which promptly froze.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Twice Around the Barber Pole"; one of Creede’s three barbers in the author’s boyhood, running a spacious shop in the Heinz building.
Eunice Spillman
Eutana "Toni" Wolcott Davlin Shaw
- Named in the Acknowledgments of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug" with her husband Chuck, credited with giving Creede its first museum.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "So Long Chuck!"; Chuck Davlin's wife, who accompanies him to Cathedral Ranch before his last hunting trip with John.
- Named as "Toni Shaw" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Birthday Party Comes on the Wrong Day"; read the author's earlier article complaining that Mom Jo never gave the children birthday parties, and organized a surprise "Happy Birthday" party for the author and Inez in response; later credited as restoring the Wagon Wheel Gap Depot.
Ev Hammond
- Named in the Acknowledgments of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug" with her husband Dean.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Moves Keep 'Em Hopping"; with husband Dean, hosted the author and Inez a decade before a move that turned up a box of cedar sawdust from the visit.
Eva Snow
Everette Wyatt
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Silver Tongue Oil No Help With Poetry"; of Carthage, Missouri, visited with wife Jackie, bringing along novelty items including a "Cherokee scout named Tsali," also named on this site.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "This Soldier Says Navy Men Are All Wet"; a former paratrooper who offers to help defend John from Dan Dennehy, then wrenches his back on his own cane.
- Named in the Acknowledgements of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; engaged John in a 1947 drinking match, to the displeasure of his own new wife, Jackie Moore, John's girlfriend in the '30s.
Eythel Davis
F
Fay Franklin
- Named in the Introduction of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as Creede's Forest Ranger and Game Warden, who "never intruded as long as there was no waste of meat" on families supplementing their tables with deer and elk.
- Very likely the unnamed "Forest Ranger and Game Warden turned firefighter" in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug," who came home from the mercantile-block fire to a wife swinging a skillet at his face — though the book does not name him directly in this passage.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Boxers Highlighted Old Traveling Circuses"; sparred, trained and coached Creede's boxing team with Pete Bruns.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; pictured as a forest ranger and game warden.
Faye Duncan
Fifi ("the wild man")
Florence Arminda Staggs
Florence Woodruff
Floyd Dooley
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; helped Les Turnipseed raise his television antenna, an attempt that ended when the assembly came crashing down in a gust of wind.
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; one of the old friends and "pards" John imagines rejoining, seated with Freddie Seyfried, on his imagined Memory Lane bus ride.
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; the subject of "Pards," one of three children raised by their widowed mother, Alma Wintz Dooley, after their father's early death; became John's stope partner in the mines and, as a boy, looked out for a poorer friend, Harry Bucher.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "Short Stuff"; son of "Red" Dooley, recalled in a schoolyard-punishment story told by John (Peterson) Keating.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Miner Recalls Days in Amethyst"; a visit to Floyd and wife Darlene's home for a meat pie dinner during a hard winter of Amethyst and Commodore mine work; also recalled driving connecting tunnels together years earlier, and helping rescue Kenny Swinehart from a manway cave-in.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Miner's Trick Kept Friends Believing in 'Banana Belt'"; warmed a compressor-house thermometer each morning with a match to convince the crew the Amethyst portal ran twenty to thirty degrees warmer than the Commodore.
- Named in "Floyd Dooley," a poem in Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," printed with his photograph; John's partner in a record-setting contract stope, whose lungs were "peppered... with uranium dust" from carnotite mining.
- Pictured on the front cover of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts," top left, per the Dedication's own identification of the cover photos; a "best friend, top miner, who left us too soon."
Ford
Ford Davis
Forest Cadwell
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," "Sore Toe a Lesson to Prospector"; hosted Tom Steven's watermelon cookout at the family's Spring Creek ranch, giving it its name, Cathedral.
- Named again in "Eat Beef and Help the Ozone Layer"; laughed as John was dragged face-first through manure by a spooked Hereford steer. Father of Curt Cadwell and grandfather of Michael Cadwell, per family knowledge.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Dog Is the Dogies' Best Friend as Well as Master's"; with his son, Curt, "hogged the penicillin and warmest sheds" during a hard winter of makeshift veterinary care for ailing livestock.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter IV, "Forest Blows a 10-4"; the title character, a rancher at Cathedral on Spring Creek with a hunting clientele, fooled by hunter Leo Lockhart's disguised radio call into believing he had talked to a passing airplane pilot.
- Named as "Forest" in "A Feeling of Love" and again in "Reigning Cats and Dogs," Chapter II of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," moving cattle with John and laughing off the Husky Skeeter's territorial display; also named again in "Returning to the Fold," Chapter VI, below.
- Named in "Returning to the Fold," Chapter VI of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; John was helping him with a group of elk hunters, one of whom, Cal, tells the story of his own accidental self-inflicted gunshot wound.
- Named in "'We Remember Christie,'" Part IV of "Third Stool from the Rear"; shot his own cattle dog, Christie, after a tractor accident crushed her, and John buried her.
- Named in "'I Just Put a Little Salt on His Tail,'" Part IV of "Third Stool from the Rear," on the same elk hunt where Ralph Snyder found a poached bighorn ram.
Foster Elliot
Frances Jackson
Francis Jackson
Frank Bruns
- Named in the Introduction of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; with his wife Pinky and sons Dale and Emmett, ran a dairy near Sunnyside road and Road 149, delivering milk to town by sleigh in winter.
- Named in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; the Creede milkman the author mistook, as a small boy, for his own father after overhearing an adult joke.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Winter Like That of Memories"; had to park his milk-delivery team and sleigh and finish his rounds on foot when the mesa road grew too icy from sledding.
Frank Davis, Jr.
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; recalled among the old friends and "pards" on John's imagined Memory Lane bus ride, and, in "The Amethyst Crew '1947,'" leasing ground on the Last Chance and New York lodes with Paul Murray; served in the Army with the engineers who blasted holes in Okinawa's underwater defenses. Identified through family knowledge as Frank R. Davis ("Frank Davis, Jr."), son of John Franklin ("Uncle Frank") Davis and John Jackson's first cousin — not the same person as "Art" (Arthur M. Davis, John's uncle), also named on the same bus ride.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "A White Cross on Iwo Jima"; one of four boys who boxed Civilian Conservation Corps members of the Creede detachment. Identified through family knowledge as this same Frank R. Davis, John Jackson's first cousin.
- Named again as "Frankie Davis" (seated), photographed in "The Ranch Hands" with his brother Lee Davis, Scooter, Joey, and Raymond Lane (standing) in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; confirmed through family knowledge as this same Frank R. Davis.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed"; leasing ground on the 850 level with Paul Murray shortly after the war.
- Named again as "Frank Davis" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; one of "The Dragon Slayers of Moonshine Mesa," photographed in 1929 with Lee Davis, Scooter Jackson, Joel Jackson and Raymond Lane. Identified through the same established group: the same four boys, plus his brother Lee, appear together in "The Ranch Hands" photo in "Once Around the Thunder Mug."
- Named again as "Frank Davis" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "All Fabled Out"; took a day off from mine work with John to attend Bernie Soward's funeral, unwittingly supplying the raw material for one of John's tallest tales to Inez.
- Named in a front-matter photo caption in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," "Frankie Davis and Paul Snyder Clean the Cars"; identified per family knowledge as Frank Davis's son, John's first cousin.
- Named among the unidentified band members in the school-band caption in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter; per family knowledge, John's first cousin, Frank Davis's son.
- Named in "'A Rude Awakening,'" Part I of "Third Stool from the Rear"; one of the crew warming themselves at the barrel heater and watching the tunnel horse Teddy.
- Named as Lee Davis's brother in "Pink and Blue Booties" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; co-owner with Lee of "The Pick & Shovel Rock Shop" in Creede.
- Pictured as "Frank Davis" with Art Davis and Charles Lane in the family ranch photograph in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts," captioned "After a Visit to the Still."
- Named as "Frankie" in John's typed poem "I'm Called 'Mister' Mashburn," signed 1991; possibly Frank Davis, Jr., John's first cousin. Not confirmed.
Frank Powell
- Named in the Introduction of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; the clay mine's self-loading tipple, supervised by Ben A. Birdsey, stood near his home. No confirmed relation to Donald Powell, also named on this site.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Stealing Ain't As Easy As It Was In Times Past"; a trucker hauled scrap ore from the mine to a loading dock near his home.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Toils and Foibles of the Depression Kid"; operated the grader on Mineral County's road crew.
Frank Swank
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; found high-grade float in Mineral Creek prior to Wallace I. Leary's own limited prospecting there.
- Named in the Introduction of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; developed a commercial fish hatchery in 1920s Creede with Bert Hosselkus, supplying eastern markets with mountain-grown trout.
Frank Yanchunis
Fred "Soapy" Birdsey
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; the family friend whose account of William Thomas Jackson Sr.'s commitment, and blunt verdict — "He was crazier than hell!" — is the memoir's primary source for the story.
- Named as "Soapy" in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug," in "Lessons From a Barber's Chair"; ran a barbershop and nightly poker game at the lower end of the BPO Elks building, exacted a dollar-an-inch penalty for torn pool table felt, and beat a cocky young challenger in an exhibition pool game after letting him break.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Magic Age Is Five"; sang the boys little ditties learned in the hobo jungles of Illinois, with a slow shuffle and fast jig finale.
- Named as "Fred Birdsey" and "Soapy" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "A Short Tail About Ginger"; owned the Irish setter Ginger, who died after losing his tail saving him from an oncoming freight train on the D.& R.G.W. railroad bridge.
- Named again as "Fred 'Soapy' Birdsey" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Toils and Foibles of the Depression Kid"; an oldster who joined the county road crew as a laborer.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Twice Around the Barber Pole"; combined barbering with a pool table and poker games under the Elks Hall, one of Creede’s three tonsorial parlors in the author’s boyhood.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; pictured with his wife Mae as a barber and fisherman.
Fred Ast
Fred Baker
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; recalled with Paul Mitchell, having just "holed a tunnel through" on Corsair Avenue, on John's imagined Memory Lane bus ride.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Gas Was Easy to Borrow"; drove the 1931 Chevrolet that ran out of gas on a late-night excursion.
Fred Elliot
Fred Gulzow
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Prospectors Were a Visionary Lot Who Built the West"; prospected upper Red Mountain Creek southwest of Creede for years without a strike, a learned amateur geologist who "enriched the lives of all who knew him with exciting tales."
- Pictured in a photograph captioned "Fred Gulzow" in the front matter of "Who Upset the Thunder Mug"; the verse beneath has him telling Jack Fleming "the gold's in Red Mountain, as plain as can be."
Fred Jackson
Fred Lane
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Minnie Pearl Was a Smart Mining Mule"; a miner on the Reynolds Tunnel renovation project. Possibly related to the author's own Lane family (his grandfather Charles L. Lane and cousins Raymond and Charlotte Florella Lane); no relation stated.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Jackson Recalls Building of Ore Bins"; took over the Commodore tunnel contract with Lyle Alspaugh when Dave Brown moved to Silverton.
- Named, paired with Lyle Alspaugh, in the roll of "The Top Team Miners" of John's era, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 51.
Fred Monkemeyer
- Named in the Introduction of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; worked Windy Gulch's mineralized sediments alongside Charles Matson.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Prospectors Were a Visionary Lot Who Built the West"; listed among Creede's own everyday prospectors, running the North Creede power plant by night and working his own claim by day.
Fred Ryden
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; Creede's druggist and an avid prospector himself, who supplied — and then joined — the drinking session that led to John's barrel mishap.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Mother Bee's Tantrum Put an End to Party"; provided refreshments from next door for the "Upper Willow Creek Mineralogical Society's" meeting at Tomkins Hardware.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Prospectors Were a Visionary Lot Who Built the West"; listed among Creede's own everyday prospectors, working as the town druggist by trade.
Freddie Birdsey
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed"; trammed and hooked buckets with Chappie LeZotte for George Hatfield and James "Zero" Ott.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, "Forget About My Hat, Let's Get Outta Here"; printed "Freddie Bridsey"; coached two Kentucky newcomers on 7 level in hooking buckets and setting plasters.
Freddie Frank
Freddie Seyfried
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; one of the old friends and "pards" John imagines rejoining on a bus ride down Memory Lane.
- Named as "Fred Seyfried" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Prospectors Were a Visionary Lot Who Built the West"; Art Leonard's prospect in Cottontail Gulch lay just up the draw behind his home.
- Named as "Fred Seyfried" in "'Bill Graduates to Higher Mathematics,'" Part III of "Third Stool from the Rear"; averaged 40 tons daily tramming, narrowly outpacing Bill Horning in their friendly competition.
Futterer
G
Garnet Birdsey
Garret
Garry Marshall
Gavin Skinner
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; a family friend who joined the Jacksons' August 1947 Brewster Park camping trip, fishing and prospecting with John near Pole Creek.
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; with his father Lee, stoping the "42" vein and chute at the Amethyst Mine in 1947; also took a wild ride on the lip of a sump bucket with Paul Weaver at the hands of a novice hoistman.
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; working with John three levels below the haulage level in the Amethyst Mine when they became friends with a newcomer known only as "Sandy."
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Creede Ragamuffins Battled Valley Teams"; one of the 1941 Bulldogs' guards, fouled out alongside the author in the final quarter against Monte Vista.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Ben's Economy"; clerked for Ben Helmick's Economy Grocery and, while grinding hamburger, caught his fingers in the meat grinder.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "A View from the Barroom Floor"; "a philosopher of sorts" among the author's late-'40s drinking crew, and driver of the car Herb Hutchinson halted with a roadside prank.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed"; mining 42 raise with father Lee shortly after the war; survives a near-fatal free-spooling hoist drop with the author.
- Named at length in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Name in Society Page Prompts Memory of Partners"; briefs a novice hoistman moments before a near-fatal free-spooling drop with the author, saved by Reuben "Whitey" Wesander.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; printed as "Bavin Skinner," holding down the 5th Street bridge with Les Turnipseed, Woodrow Weaver and Gordon Hosselkus during the 1948 flood — almost certainly this same Gavin Skinner, given how often his family recurs elsewhere on this site; the printed spelling may be a typesetting slip.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Early-Morning Call Jogs Memory of Days in Local Choir" as "Gavin"; one of the group enjoying intermission refreshments during a choir practice at Les Turnipseed's cabin.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "College Recruits"; starred in the 1941-42 junior-senior play and, with some liquid encouragement from his friends, finally managed the stage kiss.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two"; stepped from a moving '39 Packard in "Sympathy Overflows His Heart," and helped John adjust to married life in the Rainbow Bar before his own bridal shower in "Wedding Reminds Us of Our Own."
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter III, "A Wake for Herb"; as "Skinner," in the car that mock-"killed" Pee Wee Hutchinson, his nose bleeding after Turnipseed shut the car door on him; also pictured with John and Les Turnipseed in a photograph captioned "The Executioners."
- Named in "Bearly Heroes," Chapter III of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; the most compassionate of the three teenage hunters of the 1941 camp, who alone tried to save Woodrow Weaver's borrowed burro from the bear circling their tent.
- Named as "Skinner" in "'Board Stiff,'" Part II of "Third Stool from the Rear"; John was left suspended on a broken board by two nails after a bucket lift, and Skinner signaled hoistman Ed McCargish to stop.
- Named in "'Chalk One Up for Blackberry,'" Part II of "Third Stool from the Rear"; John's partner in the J & S Mining Company leasing venture, operating the Phoenix claim's main shaft hoist.
- Named as "Gavin" in "'Lou Oppey's Snow Bred Red McClures,'" Part II of "Third Stool from the Rear."
- Possibly the same Gavin Skinner named in several stories in Part II, though the book does not say so directly here; named as "Skinner" in an untitled barroom vignette, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 47, tramming ore in a gassy stope at the Equinox.
- Central to "Looking The Devil Right In The Eye" in Part Two of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; ran the hoist during the 1949–1951 Phoenix claim dynamite accident and lowered the bucket that saved John and Scooter Jackson.
Gene "Pat" Patten
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; with Leo "Hoot" Moore, credited with bringing Creede's first snowy television images by scouting mountain signal sites with a Jeep, generator, and small set.
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; recalled with the Johnsons, Tom and Red, among the old friends and "pards" on John's imagined Memory Lane bus ride.
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; with Shorty Dunkel, one of the two miners whose infectious good cheer John most looked forward to seeing at the start of a shift.
- Named as "Gene Patton" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Miner Recalls Days in Amethyst"; standing clear of falling timber when a manway collapsed on Kenny Swinehart in the Amethyst Mine. Printed spelling differs from "Patten" used elsewhere on this site and later in this same chapter; not yet checked against the original scan.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Miner's Trick Kept Friends Believing in 'Banana Belt'"; confirmed, along with the foreman, that the Amethyst portal always felt warmer than the Commodore — unaware Floyd Dooley was warming the thermometer with a match each morning.
- Named as "Pat Patten" in "'Bill Graduates to Higher Mathematics,'" Part III of "Third Stool from the Rear," coming up the shaft with Hoot Moore, Jack Kehr, and Fred Seyfried; the fuller name is confirmed by the roll of top team miners in Part V.
- Named as "Gene 'Pat' Patten," paired with Leo "Hoot" Moore, in the roll of "The Top Team Miners" of John's era, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 51; confirms the fuller spelling of "Pat Patten" from Part III.
Gene Barrett
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; with his brother Ernie, introduced Jitterbugging to Creede on their arrival in 1937, and taught it to anyone willing to try.
- Named again as "Eugene 'Dagwood' Barrett" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; pictured with Betty Powell. Likely this same Gene Barrett, pictured here as an adult rather than the teenage jitterbugger of "Please Go to Hell"; not stated as certain.
Gene McClure
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; owner/manager of Tomkins Hardware Company in Creede, who told John and Les Turnipseed about the stocked high-country lake that turned out to be Trinity Lake.
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; one of "these McClure men," with Harry and John, recalled on John's imagined Memory Lane bus ride as having "drilled a million holes."
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; excused himself from a growing drinking session at Tomkins Hardware and came back with a quart, part of the bender that led to John's drunken barrel mishap.
- Named in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; worked mine development with the author and John Slater, tricked Bernie Soward's mule Minnie Pearl into a runaway with a can of rolled oats, and needled the author about his dancing.
- Central to "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Minnie Pearl Was a Smart Mining Mule"; spooked Bernie Soward's mule with a coffee can of rolled oats, overturning three loaded tunnel cars.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Jackson Recalls Building of Ore Bins"; leased part-time with John Slater and brother Harry on a Commodore Mine silver vein, and drilled the ore-bin foundation.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Mother Bee's Tantrum Put an End to Party"; "ended up out" in the aftermath of sister-in-law Bee McClure's tantrum at a Tomkins Hardware gathering.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Birthday Party Comes on the Wrong Day"; with James French, filmed the home movies of old Creede stalwarts played at the author and Inez's surprise birthday party.
- Named, paired with Harry McClure, in the roll of "The Top Team Miners" of John's era, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 51.
- Named as "Eugene D. McClure, manager of Tomkins Hardware Company" in "Survival of the Fittest" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts," matching this site's existing identification; took over "conducting" one of John's comic drinking sessions from Newt Turnquist.
Gene Tankersley
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; one of the old friends and "pards" John imagines rejoining on a bus ride down Memory Lane, an "ornery cuss" who nearly broke the driver's neck.
- Named as "Gene ‘Tank’ Tankersley" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Cebolla Visitors"; the runaway-chili mining-tunnel anecdote with Jack Nelson; wife named "Joanne" here.
- Named only as "Tank" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed," among those the author remembers jumping "into battle in Europe with the 82nd and Screaming Eagles divisions." Confirmed by Shannon's mother as this same Gene "Tank" Tankersley.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One" as "Seth E. 'Tank' Tankersley"; the baritone of the Snowshoe Mountain Glee and Choir Club.
- Named again, as "Tank," in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "New Year's Just Not the Same When Faced Sober"; his rearranged nose and a joint car-modification scheme with Charlie Kipp are recalled for visiting former colleague Jeanne Downing.
- Named as "'Tank' Tankersley," paired with Jack Nelson, in the roll of "The Top Team Miners" of John's era, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 51.
Gene Wardell
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; helped Les Turnipseed raise his television antenna, an attempt that ended when the assembly came crashing down in a gust of wind.
- Joins John and Les Turnipseed on a weekend fishing trip to Trinity Lake in the San Juan Mountains, fishing eighteen-inch Rainbow trout stocked years earlier by Carroll Wetherill.
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; recalled with Norman Birdsey waiting on Commodore, on John's imagined Memory Lane bus ride.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Decibels Unlimited"; hosted a New Year’s gathering with wife Bonnie that led into an Elks Hall dance.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Doc Leary Battles Handicap"; shown off trophies with Mike McClure and Inez at a Rocky Mountain Regional Archery tournament.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Rough Troop Rides Range to Jackson's Quiet Retreat"; twenty-three years earlier, joined the author and Scooter Jackson on a camping-prospecting trip along the route later ridden by a horseback troop returning to the author's Spring Creek retreat; also stopped a budding forest fire on the West Fork with the author.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Advice for Bea Jean"; recovered well from heart bypass surgery; nearly thirty years earlier, prospected Mineral Creek headwaters with the author, staking claims and fishing.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "The Road Starts Here"; with daughter Laurie, found the author's Spring Creek home during hunting season.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Dog a Big Help on Prospecting Expedition"; co-staked, with the author, the mining claim a modified V-2 rocket nose later struck.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter IV, "Forest Blows a 10-4"; as the friend who was driving a tunnel with John near Forest Cadwell's ranch at Cathedral.
- Named in "A UFO Visits Harley," Chapter V of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; driving a tunnel near Bondholder with John in 1966 when the two saw the first of the story's UFOs.
- Pictured on the front cover of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts," top center, per the Dedication's own identification of the cover photos; a "best friend, top miner, who left us too soon," named there as "Eugene Wardell."
Genevieve Hargraves
Genevieve Sullivan
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Creede Ragamuffins Battled Valley Teams"; a member of the Creede pep squad that turned out for the Bulldogs' scrimmage against Monte Vista.
- Named in the class-photo roster in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter, seated row, and again in the Acknowledgements, thanked among those John hopes will forgive him.
George
George Ameel
George Downing
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," "New Year's Just Not the Same When Faced Sober"; Jeanne Downing's husband, toured Creede with her on a southern swing through the state.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Inez Hooks the Big One"; Jeanne Downing's husband, whom she retired to help "smell the flowers and travel."
George Hatfield
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; with James "Zero" Ott, one of the Amethyst Mine's stope miners in 1947, from Kentucky and, per John, one of the original feuding "Hatfields and McCoys." Hired and later promoted to miner's helper by Erick Nelson. Called "Big Kentucky" in the manuscript's "The Hog Killin'" and "Pass the Chicken, Zero"; see those pieces.
- Central to both "The Hog Killin' (1947)" (tells the story of Zero Ott's disastrous double date with his Uncle Bud to a brothel in Alamosa) and "Pass the Chicken, Zero" (a two-week bender with Ott that cost them both their jobs).
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Sweet Beetles"; "the big 'Kentuckian'" whose beetle-in-the-rice story finished off the author's queasy stomach.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed"; Freddie Birdsey and Chappie LeZotte trammed and hooked buckets for him and James "Zero" Ott.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, "The Big Kentuckian"; the title character, from Kentucky with his growing family; a member of the "Hatfield and McCoys" who never talked about it, stoping with John and Zero Ott. His grits-and-molasses beetle story is told again in Echoes.
George Hibler
George Horne
- Quoted in "Third Stool from the Rear," "From the Barrel of Common Sense," page iv: "I ain't never had much but I guess I never wanted much except a warm house and good friends."
- Named in "T-Bone" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts" as "the only black man in Creede," whose house appears in the background of the truck photograph; John's own description, kept as printed, and "our good neighbor for years."
George Kershner
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; with Bill Mathews, one of the Amethyst Mine's "mule skinners" in 1947 (horses, not mules), a postwar migrant from Oklahoma who became a top skinner and motorman.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Mule Skinners of 40-Years Ago Were a Hardy Breed"; one of the Emperius Mining Co. skinners during the author's first years there.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed"; one of the muleskinners in the postwar Amethyst crew.
- Named in "'Lynn Rides a Hellcat and She Ghost Bareback,'" Part II of "Third Stool from the Rear," a mule skinner who passed on word that Lynn LeZotte had been reassigned to the Albion raise.
George Logue
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; recalled among the old friends and "pards" on John's imagined Memory Lane bus ride, and, in "The Amethyst Crew '1947,'" a Pacific war veteran of the retaking of Attu and Kiska Islands who worked a good team with John Dabney driving an exploratory raise.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed"; helped recapture two Aleutian islands in the war, then drove a prospect raise (61) with John Dabney.
- Named in "Hell Cats of a Different Breed" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; worked an inclined raise of the Amethyst mine in 1947–48 with John Dabney, near a stope where John Jackson was working.
- Named again in "Hell Cats" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; traded punches with a "spud roller" in the same Rainbow Bar and Grill brawl.
George Perlmutter
George Webber
- Named in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as the son of Charles Webber; struck in the arm when the author, aiming for the top of his father's delivery wagon, scored a rare long-distance hit in a boyhood urinating contest.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Inside Plumbing Blesses Creede"; his deep well with windmill supplied clear, potable water to several mesa homes.
George Wintz
Gerald MacCaulley
Gia
Ginny Davlin
Ginny Thompson
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Name in Society Page Prompts Memory of Partners"; Tommy Thompson’s wife, recalled from South Fork newspaper mentions.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Trials in Smog City"; addressed directly in John and Inez's letter about their Los Angeles trip, having invited them to visit.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "Sympathy Overflows His Heart"; one of the readers John jokingly expects a scathing letter from, over his latest jab at Heinie Leonard.
Gish
Glen Bowers
Glen Hinshaw
Glen Holzworth
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Wintertime Travelling Is Not for Us"; with wife Blanche, pulled a trailer "in every conceivable kind of weather" well into their eighties, cited by Inez as reassurance before a winter trip.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter III, "A Wake for Herb"; as "Glen Holzworth, the town Marshal," whom the three planned to notify of the "body"; the story does not say whether he is the Glen Holzworth of Echoes.
Glen Hunt
Glen Sammons
Glenn Archer
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; Foreman at the Amethyst Mine in 1947, one of the most helpful leaders John worked under, who couldn't adjust to retirement and took a job sinking a winze near Idaho Springs — until he was let go after two weeks.
- As foreman, told John and Gavin Skinner that military policemen had come asking after a newcomer known as "Sandy" and escorted him out of town.
- Named as "Glen Archer" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Jackson Recalls Building of Ore Bins"; followed Travis McAtee’s morning pickup route with his own load of miners.
- Named as "Glen ‘Curly’ Archer" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Name in Society Page Prompts Memory of Partners"; drove miners to work in his 1940 Chevy pickup, and, as foreman, found Clinton Fairchild’s overturned log truck at the foot of Black Pitch in 1947.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, "Forget About My Hat, Let's Get Outta Here"; as "Glen Archer," who placed two Kentucky newcomers with Freddie Bridsey and later told John they had collected their pay and left town.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, "Red the Medicine Man"; as "Glen archer" (lowercase as printed), drove Red Johnson to town and offered to find him a doctor in Del Norte.
- Named as "Glen Archer, foreman" in "'A Rude Awakening,'" Part I of "Third Stool from the Rear"; gathered time cards and assay samples for the crew at the end of shift.
- Named as "Glen" and "Old Archer" in an untitled barroom vignette, Part II of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 11; could "smell whiskey on a man's breath a mile away."
- Recalled, as "Glen," in "'Low Pressure Waterworks,'" Part III of "Third Stool from the Rear," in his former capacity as town marshal.
- Named as "Glen Archer" in "Mine Is Not to Question Why," Part III of "Third Stool from the Rear"; introduced John to new mucker Clarence Martin and later moved him to a level where he would not have to ride sump buckets.
- Recalled, as "Glen," in an untitled barroom vignette, Part IV of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 36, having fired a shotgun blast into the wall of the bar where the outlaw Bob Ford was said to have been killed, to show a visitor the bullet holes.
- Recalled, as "Glen," in an untitled barroom vignette, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 47, as a shifter who "didn't mind a little mud on his face."
Goldie Woodruff
Gordon Duncan
- Named in the Acknowledgments of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug" with his sister Cloy, a neighbor and ally on "the mesa" who contributed photos and memories. Per Shannon's mother, a close family friend from Creede who stayed in touch until his death; born 2 Oct 1917 and died 7 Nov 1996, both Rio Grande County, Colorado, buried Del Norte Cemetery, per Find a Grave. His father Alex and siblings Hurtha and James also appear in the book's Chapter II, "Of Bagpipes, Coasting and Firemen."
- Credited as the source of a photograph in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug," captioned "And still champion."
- Named in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as one of the Duncan siblings — with Cloy, Hurtha, and James — who joined the mesa platoon after their father Alex Duncan moved to a house across the gulch from Frank Davis.
- Named as "Gordon Pfeiffer Duncan" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Costs, Salary Statistics Given"; one of two Creede schoolchildren suspected of playing hooky in 1924, per a family record his bride found among old papers. Plausible given his 1917 birth year, though not independently confirmed as the same Gordon Duncan.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One" as "Gordon Pfeiffer Duncan"; sends John a photo of Mildred Hosselkus Hoffman and Esther Hosselkus Hinshaw that prompts this gas-siphoning story.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Retirement Means Kicking Back"; retired, and, with wife Cloy, took to dressing "like Internal Revenue Service agents" and touring around to scare old friends.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Campaign '88 Leaves Wheeler in Las Vegas"; picks up the slack for the author's mock presidential campaign in the West while Shorty Wheeler is stranded in Nevada, short 49,990 signatures for the California ballot.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Acknowledgements; thanked, with Cloy Duncan, as one "who contributed several photographs."
- Named among the unidentified band members in the school-band caption in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter. A "Gordon Duncan of San Jose" is also named among the contributors to John's mock 1984 Presidential campaign in "Thundermug for President," Chapter V, below; not confirmed to be the same Gordon Duncan.
- Named as "Gordon Duncan of San Jose" among the contributors to John's mock campaign in "Thundermug for President," Chapter V of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; not confirmed to be the same Gordon Duncan named in this book's own front matter.
Gordon Hosselkus
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; A.J. Hosselkus's cousin, who joined John and A.J. on a hunting trip remembered chiefly for an oversized bedroll and a night spent fending off mice and pack rats in the Jack Fleming cabin.
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; recalled joining John's imagined Memory Lane bus ride and offering to pay everyone's fare.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; holding down the 5th Street bridge with Les Turnipseed, Gavin Skinner (printed "Bavin") and Woodrow Weaver during the 1948 flood.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Early-Morning Call Jogs Memory of Days in Local Choir" as "Commissioner Hosselkus"; a charter member of the Snowshoe Mountain Glee and Choir Club, organized around 1973.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter III, "Revolutions and Bloodletting"; one of four men crammed on the seat of the pickup that rolled three times or more chasing "split-tail quail" on the Bachelor Road.
Gracie (Rocky Mountain Fever)
Granddad Lane
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Hopeful Wife Can Be Trying"; a late winter hunting trip with him froze two of John's fingers.
- Named in "'The Last Straw on the Camel's Back,'" Part I of "Third Stool from the Rear"; led a winter elk hunt on horseback into Gardnier Gulch with John, his father, and the ailing Robert, who was coughing blood from tuberculosis.
Grant Matzen
Grover Plunkett
Grover Reinbold
Gus Haigner
Gus Prince
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; with Gus Swanson, one of the Amethyst Mine's ore sorters in 1947, hand-sorting pay ore from waste rock over the bin.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter III, "9 Bells for a Shower"; a "wonderful old gentleman" with a fabulous memory and an exciting mining career; spoke through a hole in his throat after a cancer operation removed part of his larynx.
Gus Swanson
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; with Gus Prince, one of the Amethyst Mine's ore sorters in 1947, hand-sorting pay ore from waste rock over the bin.
- Named in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as one of the regulars at Soapy Birdsey's nightly poker game; a Swedish immigrant and former weight-lifting champion who could raise a 75-pound anvil to arm's length by its horn.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Magic of Barbershops"; a regular at Soapy Birdsey's poker game, and, retelling the same anecdote as Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug," the Swedish immigrant and former weight-lifting champion who could raise a 75-pound anvil to arm's length by its horn.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter III, "9 Bells for a Shower"; the stocky, tireless tramhouse worker John first saw unlatching ore buckets as a boy, later one of the old timers in the Amethyst dry room; told stories in a heavy Swedish accent.
Gustaves Jackson
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; photographed with his record moose in the Territory of Alaska in 1938. The caption does not say how he is related to the author's own Jackson family; now confirmed (see below) as William Thomas Jackson Sr.'s son, the author's own uncle.
- Named as "Gust Jackson" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "It's There — All You Need Is Shovel, Willing Back"; with Scooter Jackson, dug by hand a water-supply hole for the Wright-Williams reduction mill behind Creede's cemetery. As with this site's other Gustaves Jackson appearance, no relation was stated here — now confirmed elsewhere (see below) as the author's own uncle.
- Named as "Gustaves" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "In Respectful Memory Of"; confirmed there as William Thomas Jackson Sr. and Selma’s son — William Thomas Jackson Jr. ("Billy")’s brother and the author’s own uncle, resolving the open relation question on this site’s other two Gustaves Jackson appearances.
Guy Timmons
H
Hal
Hal
Hanford Lyons
Hank McCaulley
Hank Slaght
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; recalled with Raymond Ball among the old friends and "pards" on John's imagined Memory Lane bus ride, driving close enough to leave "a little yellow paint along the canyon wall." Likely the same extended family as Charles "Charlie" Slaght and Clarence "Kayo" Slaght, also named in the manuscript; no relation stated.
- Named in the Origin of Title of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; moved from a lower level in the Amethyst Mine to frame and place square sets for John, an epitome of the "tramp miner" and the source of the book's title line, "I've been around the pisspot a time or two."
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, "A "Runner" in 66 Raise"; lowered with John to the 850 level when the hoist lost pressure, laughing as blasts knocked out their lamps; also pictured with Raymond Ball in a photograph captioned 'Henry "Hank" Slaght and Raymond Ball.'
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter III, "Never Let Your Mouth Overload Your Rectum"; fought San Luis Valley "spudrollers" at Blue Creek dances and was picked up off the turf twice by friends before telling them, "Don't any of you sonsabitches pick me up again."
Hap
Harl Spillman
Harley
Harold Hawkins
Harold McCaulley
Harold Workman
- Named in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as one of Dollie Workman's children, alongside Dorothy and Walter.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Extra Curricular Activities" as one of the "Workman boys," cousins delegated to sketch Christmas scenes in colored chalk on three schoolroom blackboards — the target of Rupert Burns's nighttime prank.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "A White Cross on Iwo Jima"; Dorothy and Walter's brother, who with Frankie Davis, Les Turnipseed and Clifton Hudson boxed CCC boys from the Creede detachment.
Harris
Harry Bucher
Harry Larson
- Named in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug," in "Bernie, Harry and the Blond Bomber"; with Bernie Soward, a longtime friend who struck a rich silver discovery in the "Big Six" tunnel of the Silver Horde Lode in Sunnyside, and who fled Bernie's household on the morning of the thundermug incident.
- The thundermug story that gives the book its title is told again, nearly word for word, in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Harry, Bernie & the Blond Bomber" — see the cross-reference note on both pages.
- Named at length in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," "Respectability Comes Late to Some of Us"; recalled at nearly 80, his decades-long friendship and rivalry with Bernie Soward, the Mercantile Block fire, and a wartime close call abandoning ship.
- Named again as Sheriff in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Finding Body Set Off Long Day on Divide"; joined the author in a rough, foggy recovery of a helicopter-crash victim's body on the divide above Spring Creek on June 3, 1963, and was seriously injured — a crushed vertebra — when his own Jeep rolled on the way down.
- Named in "'Bernie Folds His Sails,'" Part III of "Third Stool from the Rear"; leased the Silver Horde mine with Bernie Soward in the 1930s.
- Pictured with Monte Larson and Tommy Phillips in "Favorite Photos" in Part Two of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts."
Harry McClure
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; one of "these McClure men," with John and Gene, recalled on John's imagined Memory Lane bus ride as having "drilled a million holes."
- Named with his brother Gene in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as part-time lessees of a silver-lead vein above the Commodore tunnel level, working part-time on development jobs alongside the author.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Minnie Pearl Was a Smart Mining Mule"; Gene's brother, leasing the Archimedes claim.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Jackson Recalls Building of Ore Bins"; leased part-time with John Slater and brother Gene on a Commodore Mine silver vein, and drilled the ore-bin foundation.
- Named, paired with Gene McClure, in the roll of "The Top Team Miners" of John's era, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 51.
Harry Saltzgaver
Harry Zeiler
Hazel Lewis
- Named in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as daughter of W. S. and Mrs. Lewis, who owned a grocery store in Creede; taught the puppet-molding class in which the author sculpted an anatomically candid clay bust of Principal Bogue.
- Named as "Miss Lewis" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Extra Curricular Activities"; took over as the author's third-and-fourth-grade teacher, inheriting his and cousin Lee Davis's truancy schemes from Miss Marie Duncan.
Heinie Leonard
- Named in the Acknowledgments of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug" with his wife Vivian.
- Named as "Hendricks 'Heinie' Leonard" in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; Grant and Esther Matzen's nephew, who spent school vacations with his Aunt Esther and teamed with Billy Matzen to cause more trouble than the rest of the mesa kids combined; photographed with the group, credited as the photo's source.
- Named as "H. Heinie Leonard" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Costs, Salary Statistics Given"; the other of two Creede schoolchildren suspected of playing hooky in 1924, per the same family record — his own time better spent, the author writes, at "on-the-job training" at Bill Tingley's still.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "New Year’s Greetings"; mailed the author an article on a shared "physical problem."
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "JJ Not Worth the Powder"; a mock "Reader's Right" letter, one of several exchanged in print with the author over his 1984 mock presidential campaign.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "John's Friends Looking for Place to Stash Gin-Guzzling Comrade"; another mock letter to the editor about the author.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Jackson Strikes Back"; the author's mock reply-letter target, along with wife Vivi.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Thundermug in the White House"; as "Adorable Jones," chairman of the author's mock presidential campaign.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Campaign Woes"; as "Adorable Jones," unable to help draft foreign-policy statements after "the spring sale at Loco Liquors."
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Powderhorn Party Pulls Plug on Thundermug Bid"; a mock letter announcing the end of the author's presidential bid.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Jackson's Mug Is Empty"; as "Adorable Jones, Chairman," announcing the Powderhorn Party's bankruptcy and the campaign's end.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Open Season Declared on Jackson"; on the mock "Federated Commission on Wild Life" that declared open season on Jacksons.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; pictured in Creede around 1926 with Norma Matzen, Mildred Matzen, Dorothy Leonard, Don Leonard and Billy Matzen.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Jackson Doctors Medicine, Says He'll Run"; agrees to serve again as campaign chairman for John's renewed 1988 mock presidential bid.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Jackson Finds His Plugs Fouled While in for Tune-up"; John jokes about offering him up to his neck specialist as a curiosity.
- Named repeatedly in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two"; the butt of a mock-sympathetic column after a bad fall ("Sympathy Overflows His Heart"), acquires a dog named Dugan in "Dog Gets Sharp Lesson," and is slated as "Director of Internal Affairs" in John's mock presidential campaign in "Campaigns & Growing Pains."
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Retirement Means Kicking Back"; retired decades earlier from manual labor and, more recently, from "show and tell"; planned for retirement with a lifetime TV service contract, a standby ice-cube maker, and four shares in "Loco Liquors," taking his dividends in 90 proof.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Thundermug John Apologizes to His Friends, Family — Almost"; left for Arizona to avoid facing the public after the author's revelations about his bathroom habits, in a tear-stained letter the author found so moving he "even dropped a tear or two."
- Named again as "Heinie 'Adorable Jones' Leonard" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Campaign '88 Leaves Wheeler in Las Vegas"; won a mock sheep-shearing contest in Kayenta, Ariz., clipping fourteen sheep with a car bumper and license plate, and was made an honorary member of a Navajo tribal council.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Anything's Better Than Being Alone"; sent condolences and comic strips instead of a food basket, and wrote a rash-addled, sour-mash-scented letter confusing the author with someone named Jesse.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Lower Roost for In-Laws"; offered his one cure for in-laws — "the larger the caliber the faster the cure."
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Acknowledgements; as "H. Heinie Leonard," thanked "for critique and encouragement."
- Named as "Heinie 'Adorable Jones' Leonard" in "Thundermug for President," Chapter V of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; chairman of John's mock 1984 campaign, caught trying to hot-wire a van in a Safeway parking lot and later shearing fourteen sheep on the Navajo Highway, both incidents also told in "Echoes from the Thundermug."
Helen Jackson
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "In Respectful Memory Of"; daughter of William Thomas Jackson Sr. and Selma, William Thomas Jackson Jr. ("Billy")'s sister and the author's aunt, who "lost your daughter, Helen, in the waters of Willow Creek." The same drowning is independently pictured in this book's "Memories" section, whose caption reads: "William Jackson House on left and two others were spared. A child, Helen, drowned here in 1906" — the two pages, read together for the first time here, confirm the same event and give it a year.
- The "child, Helen" who "drowned here in 1906," per the Stringtown flood photo caption in "Memories"; identified in full via "In Respectful Memory Of" as Helen Jackson, daughter of William Thomas Jackson Sr. and Selma.
Helen O'Connor
Helton
Henry
Henry
Henry Fry
Henry Hosselkus
Henry Slaght
Herb Hutchinson
- Named in John Jackson's 1988 tribute to Joel; drove to Denver with Joel on 8 Dec 1941 to enlist but failed the physical for a bad ankle, then drove Clinton Fairchild's car back to Creede
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; mastered Jitterbugging after the Barrett brothers introduced it to Creede in 1937, including rolling his partner over his back without a misstep.
- Named again as "Herb Hutchinson" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "A View from the Barroom Floor"; "our poet, thespian and stand up comedian," recalled staging a roadside prank that nearly earned him a broken neck from Les Turnipseed.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Talking to Yourself OK, But Don't Start Believing It"; one of several Creede men said to talk to themselves.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," as "Herbert 'Pee Wee' Hutchinson"; a solo singer at Les Turnipseed's cabin, set alight — briefly — mid-performance by his own friends.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter III, "A Wake for Herb"; as Herbert "Pee Wee" Hutchinson, the "victim" of the mock killing and its wake, a good dancer and reciter of "The Ballad of Dan McGrew"; also pictured seated on a '39 Ford.
Herbert D. Barnhart
- Named in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; an English gentleman who served as Mineral County Clerk, and whose two-fingered pipe grip the author tried to imitate. Photographed with his wife.
- Named as "Herbert Barnhart" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Costs, Salary Statistics Given"; Mineral County's clerk in 1924, per a family record his bride found among old papers.
- Named as "Mr. Herbert Barnhart, the English gentleman," in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Gentlemen Smoke Pipes" — the same two-fingered pipe-grip detail as Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug."
- Named as "Herbert Barnhart" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Inside Plumbing Blesses Creede"; his mesa well served the Shillings and Comstock families.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "It's There — All You Need Is Shovel, Willing Back"; Lynn Lezotte struck a coal seam digging his water well, coal he reportedly burned in his own kitchen stove; Jack Kehr now lives in his former home, the well long since gone.
- Named as "Herbert Barnhart" in "Curiodditie s" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts," matching this site's existing identification; the only Mineral County officer of his era without additional employment.
Hollister
Homer Kendall
- Named in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; Mineral County's judge, who suffered a fatal heart seizure during his morning outhouse visit, complicating the coroner's and mortician's work.
- Named as "Judge Homer Kendall" in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug," among the regulars at Soapy Birdsey's nightly poker game.
- Named as "Judge Homer Kendall" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Magic of Barbershops"; a regular at Soapy Birdsey's nightly poker game.
Hoot Elliot
Horace Wheeler
Hortense Burton
- Named in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; the author's grammar-school desk-mate, won as his musical-chairs partner, recipient of an anonymous valentine from "Johnny Jackson," and, by age 14, no longer interested in him.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Big Chief Boogers" — the same story, differently detailed, as Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; the author's desk-mate, won as his musical-chairs partner, recipient of an anonymous valentine from "Johnny Jackson."
Howard Barber
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; a Gardnier Gulch moonshiner and gifted storyteller who, after moonshining ended, became a Commodore Mine shifter and renewed his friendship with John underground.
- Named in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug," hosting a birthday dinner for son-in-law Bob Bennett with his wife Pearl; engrossed in a hunting story, he was the first to notice — and loudly enjoy — the author's dinner-table mishap.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Flatus Before Dessert" — the same birthday dinner, differently detailed, as Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; hosted Bob Bennett's birthday dinner with his wife Pearl, wound up in a hunting story as the author's flatulence erupted.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Winter Like That of Memories"; his home, with Britt McCormick's, was a stopping point on the author's boyhood sledding runs.
Howard Midkiff
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, "A "Runner" in 66 Raise"; came from Illinois in the '30s to mine silver ore; drove his partners crazy with his unhurried lighting of fuses but always reached safety before the first blast.
- Named in "Jigaboo Bowels Out," Chapter I of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; played banjo and guitar with left-handed fiddler Loyd Wanzer for the Saturday-night sidewalk dances that raised money in the fur-lined thundermug.
- Possibly the same Howard Midkiff named in the roll of top team miners in Part V, though not confirmed directly; in an untitled barroom vignette, Part I of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 8, cleaned up and put to bed a badly soiled Uncle Bud.
- Named, paired with Walt Randolph, in the roll of "The Top Team Miners" of John's era, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 51.
- Possibly the same Howard Midkiff named in the roll of top team miners in this Part, though not confirmed directly; in an untitled barroom vignette, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 44, sawed the suspenders off a miner pinned by his own drill as payback for shorted timecards.
Hurtha Duncan
- Named in John Jackson's 1988 tribute to Joel; worked alongside him at the Federal Fish Hatchery in Creede, ca. 1938–1941
- Named in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as one of the Duncan siblings — with Gordon, Cloy, and James — who joined the mesa platoon after their father Alex Duncan moved to a house across the gulch from Frank Davis.
- Named with her brother James in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; taught the author a few simple dance steps ahead of a school dance.
I
Inez Mae Schriver
- Wife of John Richard Jackson (unverified); no marriage license or date located
- Accompanies John to Denver's first 3D movie and to her family's home in Cherryvale, Kansas, where the family saw their first television, Christmas 1951
- Packs John's gear and joins him fishing at Wyley Lakes and the headwaters of Rat Creek in the late 1950s and 1960s, preferring grasshoppers as bait
- Named in John's closing "Hindsight" essay as the one decision he never regretted; married fifty-one years
- Named alongside John in the opening line of "Wormology," recalling their early married life with no indoor plumbing
- Named at the opening of "The Price of Glory," recalling the many moves she and John made together after leaving Creede.
- Named in the Acknowledgments of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as his wife, sweetheart and companion "who has tried so valiantly to reform me."
- Named as "Inez Mae" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Black Drought Basics"; greeted the author, years after his Lake Cliff Ranch summer, with the same "march yourself back out" order Loraine Wills once gave him.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Harry, Bernie & the Blond Bomber"; peels potatoes and confronts the author with a hunting knife over a forgotten wrong, in the story that gives the book its title.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Hard Water"; weathered the last freezeup with the author in the winter of 1966-67, undone by a neighbor's hibernating pet groundhog.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Twice Around the Barber Pole"; has cut the author’s hair for over 40 years, opening only one wound in that time a butterfly patch couldn’t close.
- Named at length in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Decibels Unlimited"; the author’s account of a drunken New Year’s Eve drive home, and of a later, jarringly loud Elks Hall dance.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Doc Leary Battles Handicap"; shown off trophies with Mike McClure and Gene Wardell at a Rocky Mountain Regional Archery tournament.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Silver Tongue Oil No Help With Poetry"; joined Jackie Wyatt in sampling "silver tongue oil" on a visit to Cebolla Creek.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "New Year’s Greetings"; the vacuum-cleaner routine that ends every argument in the author’s favor, or so he claims.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Wisdom of Age"; the two-day yard sale that sold off years of accumulated "treasures."
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "A Present for Mary"; on the receiving end of Lucy the cat's prize live mouse, delivered to the living room.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Separate Beds"; the whole piece is a tall-tale account of a mock "trial separation" touched off by an anniversary chain saw.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Smooth as a Biscuit"; found a dead mouse in the ranch's water sump.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Old Tom Just Never Could Adjust to Retirement Life"; cried alongside the author when their old tomcat was put down.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Family Feud Follows Forgetfulness"; the whole piece is a tall-tale account of an anniversary argument, including the author's account of injuring her hand in a door in 1951.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Brush With Trooper Recalls Law's Rare Visits to Creede"; waits on the lawn, armed with a poker and ball bat, when John comes home after the wreck.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Housecleaning Is a Breeze When Done Jackson's Way"; misreads John's digging in the garden as burying her mistakenly "deceased" father, Paul Schriver.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "You Get Caught Doing Darndest Stuff"; rushes her father Paul to the hospital after the oxygen-line mix-up.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Hopeful Wife Can Be Trying"; reads seed catalogs by the wood heater on a subzero morning while John clears a watering hole for the cattle.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Wife Is All Thumbs"; the central figure of this story about a temperamental vacuum cleaner and sewing machine.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Thundermug John Apologizes to His Friends, Family — Almost"; gave her husband a stern lecture on relaxation techniques during his "enforced sabbatical," deflected by his reminder of a wilder version of himself thirty years earlier.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Paul's Recipe"; kept the author posted, during his travels, on her father Paul's expanding garden "recipe" and its casualties, real and invented.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Birthday Party Comes on the Wrong Day"; co-honoree, with the author, of Toni Shaw's surprise "Happy Birthday" party.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Dog a Big Help on Prospecting Expedition"; packed Skeeter's ziplock bag of Kibbles and Bits and meat scraps for a prospecting trip.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Geologist Seeks Ore With Fly Rod and Reel"; fielded office calls covering for the author's unexplained field absences with invented quad names.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Lower Roost for In-Laws"; the whole piece is a tall-tale account of her return from a leave of absence, including her own theory linking in-laws and relatives.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Inez Hooks the Big One"; the title story's central figure, drawing blood rather than a fish while ice fishing with the author on Blue Mesa Lake.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Marriages Weather Storms With Love"; the author's own marriage to her is held up, in this piece, against his parents' quieter, harder-to-read one.
- Addressed by the handwritten inscription on the title page of the scanned copy of "Who Upset the Thunder Mug" as "the love of my life" and "my beautiful Inie," signed "Your old Thundermug."
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter III, "Wedding Bells and Chesapeake Retrievers"; John's wedding to Inez, told as a surprise marriage before a Spanish-speaking Justice of the Peace with the Sheriff of Taos County as witness, "well over 40 years" before the book; she then helped choose their first registered Chesapeake Retriever puppy.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter IV, "Let Me Put It Another Way"; as "Inez," who arrived at the Elk's bar to take home a very drunk John while "a perturbed husband" looked on.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter IV, "Records Were Made To Be Broken"; as John's "bride" and "the little gal from Kansas," in a story of early married life in a one-room cabin, a bridal shower in the old Red Cross Hall, and a photograph captioned "Inez M. Jackson and Skeeter."
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter IV, "Purse Your Lips Before You Blow"; as "Mrs. Jackson" and "my bride," scolding John after meetings of the "Upper Willow Creek Mineralogical Society and Glee Club" and trimming the gray hair in his ears.
- Named as "Inie" in "Old Tom was Color Blind," Chapter II of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; her husband's embarrassment when their black tomcat coughs up a telltale blue feather after her sidewalk mishap.
- Named as "Inez Jackson" in "Synopsis," Chapter VI of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," captioned "Trainer, Inez Jackson and Author (at obedience school)"; also worried, elsewhere in the same chapter, about the author's bowel habits in "The Golden Years."
- Named in "'Long Distance Indigestion,'" Part II of "Third Stool from the Rear"; a 19-year-old bride startled by an unannounced, long-winded visitor who commandeered the telephone and, eventually, a cup of coffee.
- Named in "Marriage Is a Partnership," Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear"; credited with perfecting "several methods to control" John's "errant behavior."
- Pictured and named in the Dedication, the book's actual final page, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear"; John's wife, to whom the book is dedicated, "Because I Love You, That's Why!"
- Addressed as "Inie" in the handwritten title-page inscription of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts," "To Glen and Jerrie Bowers... with love & respect, Inie & John"; a spelling of her nickname not used elsewhere on this site.
- Named as "my loyal wife, Inez Schriver Jackson" in the Dedication of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts," "who was advised to kill me 50 years ago and tried but could never find a sharp knife."
- Central to "Survival of the Fittest" in "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; given a .30-.30 rifle in 1951 to join John hunting, and the subject of his comic "calculated psychological survival" anecdotes, including a jalapeño-pepper routine.
- Named in "Looking The Devil Right In The Eye" in Part Two of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; picked up Mom Jo for a surprise visit to the Phoenix claim workings, unknowingly helping alert Gavin Skinner to the 1949–1951 mining accident below.
- Central to "Short and Shorter" in Part Two of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; fell asleep in the truck during a 1953 fishing trip and was startled awake by a water snake Joel Jackson had draped over the window.
- Pictured standing with Ted Bennett in a "Favorite Photos" birthday-party photograph in Part Two of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts."
Iris Birdsey
Irma Slaght
Irvie
Isaac D. Crawford
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; Superintendent of the Amethyst Mine in 1947, known to all as "I.D."; rigged his own pickup with a homemade steam-injection device for better traction in wet weather, but never patented it.
- As Superintendent, gave John an ultimatum in "Pass the Chicken, Zero": get Zero Ott and George Hatfield back on the job by Monday or he'd fire them. He kept his word.
- Helped skid and right an overturned truck's wreck on Black Pitch grade in 1958, in "Black Pitch Wins Again," then towed the wrecked party over the steepest grades to the Midwest Mine.
- Named as "I.D. Crawford" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed"; one of the postwar Amethyst supervisors.
- Named again as "I.D. Crawford" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Jackson Recalls Building of Ore Bins"; welded the dollies used to move timber for the Commodore ore-bin construction.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, "Mr. Lehman Draws a Joker"; as "I.D. Crawford," the foreman who told Dick Lehman about his new partner from Picher, Oklahoma.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter IV, "Well! I Wiped It Off On My Apron"; as "Ikie," the Minnesota youth of the story, tied to "I. D." Crawford by the photo caption that tells the same journey; he hired on at Creede as a mucker at three dollars a day and became foreman.
- Named as "I. D. Crawford, the superintendent" in "A Nodding Acquaintance," Chapter IV of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; assigned Tank Tankersley and John Wardell to open up a blossom of white quartz on (9) level of the Amethyst Mine.
- Quoted in "Third Stool from the Rear," "From the Barrel of Common Sense," page iv, on tightening pipe fittings in a mine.
- Named as "Crawford" in an untitled barroom vignette, Part III of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 29.
- Named as "Crawford" in an untitled barroom vignette, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 46, deciding a raise was too dangerous to continue through a mud slip.
Ivan
Ivan Teems
Ivan Van Aken
Ivan Van Akin
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Winter Like That of Memories"; owned the longest sled among the author's boyhood sledding-party friends, a six-foot Flexible Flyer. Possibly related to the site's existing Edna Ruth Van Aken/Van Akin; not confirmed.
- Named, paired with "Bud" Miles, in the roll of "The Top Team Miners" of John's era, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 51.
Ivan Weaver
- Named in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as Creede's town electrician, who led the mesa kids on tours of the Pelton Wheel powerhouse, caught a resident bootlegging the town's first underground power line, and was outfoxed for a time by Uncle Woody's meter tampering. Possibly related to Billy, Johnny, and Paul Weaver, also named on this site; no relation confirmed.
- Named again, with wife Doris, in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "Respectability Comes Late to Some of Us"; their house was near where the thrown thundermug finally landed.
- Named as a child of Arthur and Minnie Weaver, and as a Creede town electrician, in "Curiodditie s" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts."
J
J.C. Ott
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Regarding 'Thundermug'"; served in the Army with Noel Loyd Roberts after they worked together on the tram at the Pride of the West mine in Silverton.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "New Year's Just Not the Same When Faced Sober"; alongside Noel L. "Bolo" Roberts, introduced a young John to "the long arm of the law."
J.W. White
Jack Comstock
Jack Cunningham
Jack Fleming
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; owned the cabin near the Equity Mine, used each summer to work his claims for the yearly assessment, where John, A.J., and Gordon Hosselkus sheltered for the first nights of a hunting trip.
- Named in the Introduction of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; prospecting alongside Noel Roberts, "only a round away from bonanzas."
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Prospectors Were a Visionary Lot Who Built the West"; listed among Creede's own everyday prospectors, "the Irish tenor."
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Introduction; described as "a venerable prospector" whose place was the first on the left for visitors entering Creede from the east in the 1930s; an optimist with "a foot of gold ore on the footwall" or silver or uranium as prices required.
- Pictured in a photograph captioned "Jack Fleming" in the front matter of "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," with a verse that begins "The ore's in West Willow," we heard him say.
Jack Kehr
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "It's There — All You Need Is Shovel, Willing Back"; eats breakfast, unknowingly, within 30 feet of a bituminous coal bed struck by Lynn Lezotte while digging Herbert Barnhart's water well, and now lives in Barnhart's former home.
- Named in "'Bill Graduates to Higher Mathematics,'" Part III of "Third Stool from the Rear," coming up the shaft with Hoot Moore, Pat Patten, and Fred Seyfried.
Jack Nelson
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; a fellow miner who caught out a young coworker's tall tales, first a Fairplay bedroom shoot-out with far more than six shots from a six-shooter, later an implausible 18,000-foot Colorado mine needing oxygen-fed compressors. Identified through family knowledge as a different person from John Nelson, the Amethyst Crew blacksmith, named in "Dedication and The Amethyst Crew '1947.'"
- Named at length in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Cebolla Visitors"; visited Cebolla Creek with wife Janice; the runaway-chili mining-tunnel anecdote with Gene "Tank" Tankersley.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Early-Morning Call Jogs Memory of Days in Local Choir"; an "old hardrock miner" who directed the Snowshoe Mountain Glee and Choir Club's evening arrangements — possibly, but not confirmed, the same Jack Nelson named elsewhere in this chapter.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Regarding 'Thundermug'"; visited the Jacksons' Cebolla ranch with wife Janice, per Noel Loyd Roberts's letter -- the same Jack and Janice Nelson already named in "Cebolla Visitors."
- Named, paired with "Tank" Tankersley, in the roll of "The Top Team Miners" of John's era, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 51.
Jack Thompson
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; kneeling with the author and four others at Jimmy Mason's 1936 birthday party.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two"; kneeling at Jimmy Mason's 1936 birthday party in "No Birthday Party for Him," and, with his dog Rufus, the subject of a boyhood confession in "Let Us Duel It Out With Ink, Mr. Dennehy."
Jack Whitaker
Jackie Hawkins
Jackie Lucille Bates
Jackie Moore
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Magic Age Is Five"; a blonde-haired girl who arrived from Kansas and, at age six, sparked the author's first interest in girls. No confirmed relation to Jiggs Moore, Lee Moore, or Leo "Hoot" Moore, also named on this site.
- Named in the Acknowledgements of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug" as Everette Wyatt's wife and John's own girlfriend "in the '30s"; unhappy with Everette's condition after his 1947 drinking match with John.
Jackie Wyatt
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Silver Tongue Oil No Help With Poetry"; of Carthage, Missouri; a childhood friend and neighbor of the author’s in 1930s Creede, later visiting as an adult with husband Everette.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "This Soldier Says Navy Men Are All Wet"; promises, on Everette's behalf, a forced march from Missouri with a camper trailer and half a parachute.
Jake McClure
James "Zero" Ott
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; with George Hatfield, one of the Amethyst Mine's stope miners in 1947, originally from Arkansas.
- Central to both "The Hog Killin' (1947)" (George Hatfield's story of Zero's disastrous double date with his Uncle Bud to a brothel in Alamosa) and "Pass the Chicken, Zero" (a two-week bender with Hatfield that cost them both their jobs).
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, "The Big Kentuckian"; as "James Ott" and "Zero," starting a new stope with John and George Hatfield near the West Drift; finished the bottle Pete Morowski had bought.
James "Zero" Ott
James Duncan
- Named in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as one of the Duncan siblings — with Gordon, Cloy, and Hurtha — who joined the mesa platoon after their father Alex Duncan moved to a house across the gulch from Frank Davis. Anticipated on Gordon Duncan's own entry before this chapter was built.
- Named with his sister Hurtha in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; taught the author a few simple dance steps ahead of a school dance.
James French
James Morrow
James Muir, Jr.
James Workman
Jamie
Jan Jacobs
Janelle Kukuk
Janice
Janice Nelson
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Cebolla Visitors"; Jack Nelson’s wife, visited Cebolla Creek on a return trip from Grand Junction.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Regarding 'Thundermug'"; visited the Jacksons' Cebolla ranch with husband Jack, per Noel Loyd Roberts's letter -- the same Jack and Janice Nelson already named in "Cebolla Visitors."
Jaylee
Jeanne Downing
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," "RSVP"; the Freeport Exploration Co. administrative assistant John jokingly claims to be in love with.
- Named again, with husband George, in "New Year's Just Not the Same When Faced Sober"; toured her old home town with him and was royally entertained by museum curator Seth E. Tankersley.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Inez Hooks the Big One"; the Freeport administrative assistant whose farewell party the author attended before her retirement; "dried my tears" and "expedited my expense accounts" over the years.
Jerrie Bowers
Jerritt Collord
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Family Feud Follows Forgetfulness"; Jim and Leta Collord's son, who retreated to the creek during his parents' visit to the Jacksons' domestic spat.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Solitary Journeys"; the Collords' "youngest offspring," present when the author calls ahead to Elko.
Jerry Dean "Lucky" Bates
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Brush With Trooper Recalls Law's Rare Visits to Creede"; Pauline "Bubbles" Jackson Bates's husband, confirmed per family knowledge -- had earlier had a moving van stop against the rear of his own Dodge sedan at the same spot.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Birthday Party Comes on the Wrong Day"; with wife Polly (Pauline Roberta Bates), drove in for the author and Inez's surprise birthday party.
- Named as "Lucky" in the handwritten title-page inscription of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," addressed "To Lucky & Polly, and another embarrassment for you to suffer but bear with us."
- Named as "Lucky" in "Holly's Lucky," Chapter II of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; revives his collapsed cow dog Holly with artificial respiration during a hay-wagon mishap.
- Pictured at the piano with grandson Blane in "'Lucky' Bates Harmonizing with Grandson Blane," in "Favorite Photos" in Part Two of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts."
Jerry Dean Bates
Jerry Loughran
Jerry Wintz
Jerry Zeiler
Jess
Jesse Earl Bates
Jesse Leslie Bates
Jiggs Moore
Jim
Jim Basham
Jim Brink
Jim Collord
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Family Feud Follows Forgetfulness"; an old friend from Nevada, married to Leta, who visited the Cebolla ranch with their son Jerritt and got dog-bitten three times finding it.
- Named as "Big Jim Collord" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Solitary Journeys"; expecting the author's arrival in Elko for a stay with Freeport Exploration Co. before a return to the Jerritt Canyon base camp.
- Named again as "Big Jim Collord" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Wintertime Travelling Is Not for Us"; expecting the author and Inez's arrival in Elko for a stay before returning to the Jerritt Canyon base camp.
- Named as "Jim Collord" in "A Quarter Moon for Big Jim Collord," Chapter V of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; a six-foot-six geologist John worked with in Nevada, later manager of the Jerritt Canyon gold mine at Elko.
Jim Goodjion
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Hopeful Wife Can Be Trying"; coyotes sing from the hill above his place on a subzero Powderhorn morning.
- Named as "Jim Goodjion" in "Old Dave Skins a Cat Backwards," Chapter VI of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; a retired neighbor who tells John the story of Old Dave's black tomcat, then falls flat on his face leaving Old Dave's trailer, drunk.
Jim Morrow
Jim Ratte
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; a U.S. Geological Survey geologist, with Tom Steven, among the first from the agency to visit and study Creede's geology.
- Named again, as "James Ratte," in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "Sore Toe a Lesson to Prospector"; co-authored, with Tom Steven, one of the finest geologic reports on the Creede area's San Juan volcanic field.
Jimmy
- Named in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; a classmate called on first in the minister's Bible-class Heaven exercise, describing a Promised Land with no school, no vegetables, and no whippings.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Going to Church Just Never Was John's Idea of Heaven" — the same story, differently detailed, as Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; called on first to describe Heaven, envisioning a Promised Land with no school, vegetables, or whippings.
Jimmy
Jimmy
Jimmy Barber
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; Howard and Pearl Barber's only son, who swam with John and his friends in the Rio Grande off Moonshine Mesa and died of spinal meningitis in the mid-1930s, believed at the time to have been contracted from the river.
- Named in the class-photo roster in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter, as "Jim Barber," top row, and again in the band-photo roster as one of the members not individually pictured.
Jimmy Burkholder
Jimmy Comstock
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Gas Was Easy to Borrow"; drove to Idaho with Les Turnipseed on five gallons of used oil and a siphon hose.
- Named in the class-photo roster in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter, as "Jim Comstock"; top row.
Jimmy Mason
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; the Creede boy whose 1936 birthday party is pictured, standing among Bob Blackburn, Ted Bucher and Robert Bishop.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "No Birthday Party for Him"; the same 1936 fish-hatchery birthday party pictured under "Memories" is retold here in prose, football and all.
- Named in the class-photo roster in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter, as "Jim Mason"; second row.
Jimmy Owen Bates
Jimmy Rearick
Jimmy Workman
Jo Ann Comstock
Jo Jackson
Joan Tankersley
- Named as "Joan Tankersley" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Women Can Scare Strongest Man"; Gene "Tank" Tankersley’s wife, who could stop her tough, World War II airborne-veteran husband cold. Called "Joanne" elsewhere in this chapter, in "Cebolla Visitors."
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Introduction; as "Joanne Tankersley," thanked by John for "a painstaking job of researching history of Mineral County oldsters" that turned up an error in his first book. The book does not say who she is. "Echoes from the Thundermug" calls the wife of "Tank" Tankersley both Joan and Joanne, but nothing in this book confirms she is the same woman.
Joe Doney
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; the mortician driving the pallbearers' limousine at Ivan's funeral, visibly rattled by Slim Anderson's needling of John along the way.
- Named again as mortician in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Finding Body Set Off Long Day on Divide"; thrown from Sheriff Harry Larson's rolling Jeep during a 1963 helicopter-crash body recovery on the divide, suffering a broken collar bone and internal injuries.
Joe Hawkins
Joe Kantor
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," "RSVP"; also cited for indecent exposure at the same Freeport Exploration Co. pig roast, and nearly went home with the wrong blond before being talked out of it.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Inez Hooks the Big One"; immobilized in a straightjacket by his own wife at a Freeport office party, a geologist who "continues his explorations at office parties and pig roasts."
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter IV, "I Didn't Hear It 'Til It Was Already Passed"; as "Senior Geologist Joe Kantor," who knocked himself unconscious when Denny Heyrman "unloaded" beside him in a parked Chevy Blazer on a job in Idaho.
Joe Keating
Joe McEnaney
Joe Ray Bates
Joe Youmans
Joel Tankersley
Joel Thomas "Joe" Jackson
- Full profile
- Named repeatedly in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; nearly expelled from school for sharing a riddle their Uncle Woody taught him, and accidentally grazed John's knee with a ricocheted .22 shot while rabbit hunting in 1937
- Called "Joel" and "Joey" in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; nearly caught by rock-throwing brothers while occupying the outhouse, and used a beanie flipper made by Uncle Woodruff Davis to spook the Allen sisters' dairy herd.
- Called "Joey," "Brother Joe," and, in one section title, "Brother Joel" in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; told a rabbit's-hole riddle to teacher Christine Duncan, sculpted an anatomically candid clay bust of Principal Bogue in Miss Hazel Lewis's puppet class, pitched the fateful softball that broke Elsie Duncan's nose, made the game-saving tackle of Martin N. B. Holm in a game of touch football, and, with Mom Jo, taught the author to dance.
- Called "brother Joe" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Bloomers & Home Runs" — the same story, differently detailed, as Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; pitching for his side, distracted twice by Miss Gortney's arrival at the game.
- Named as "Joel" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Extra Curricular Activities"; with Scooter, deputized by Mom Jo to walk the author to his first day of school.
- Named as "Joel Jackson" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Wheels for Reet"; drove Dr. Whitaker's Plymouth from underneath the dashboard while Jack Whitaker's dog Reet appeared to steer.
- Named again as "Joel Jackson" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; one of "The Dragon Slayers of Moonshine Mesa," photographed in 1929 with Lee Davis, Scooter Jackson, Frank Davis and Raymond Lane.
- Named again as "Brother Joe" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "Thundermug John Returns to Bosom of His Family"; a member of "The Forgotten Battalion" island-hopping from Guadalcanal to Iwo Jima in WWII, recalled for a boyhood habit of adding "we would be older but we were sick a lot when we were babies" to his age.
- Named as "Joel T." in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Here and There"; listed, with William C. (Scooter), among the two brothers who predeceased the author in his own mock obituary.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter III, "Wedding Bells and Chesapeake Retrievers"; as "Joel," helping "Mom Jo" raise strawberries in Missouri while John was back in Creede with their father.
- Possibly named among the unidentified band members in the school-band caption in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter, as "Joey Jackson"; not confirmed.
- Pictured in the 1929 "Trio" and 1945 "Reunion" photographs in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts."
- Central to "Short and Shorter" in Part Two of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; visited Creede from his Postal duties in Fort Collins in 1953 and draped a water snake over the truck window nearest sleeping Inez, to his own regret.
- Named as "Joe" in John's typed poem "I'm Called 'Mister' Mashburn," signed 1991; possibly John's brother Joel, called Joe elsewhere in John's writing. Not confirmed.
John "Jack" Cass
John "Smiles" Doyle
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; pictured with Joe Keating as one of Colorado's state mine inspectors.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Mother Bee's Tantrum Put an End to Party"; state mine inspector, attended the "Upper Willow Creek Mineralogical Society's" meeting at Tomkins Hardware and never returned to Creede after Bee McClure's tantrum broke it up.
- Named as "John 'Smiles' Doyle" in "'Smiles Forgot to Smile,'" Part II of "Third Stool from the Rear"; a state mining inspector who found John thawing dynamite on a wood stove and wrote him up for several safety violations.
John (Peterson) Keating
John Dabney
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; an old timer with a resort near the Continental Reservoir who worked winters in the Creede mines, driving an exploratory raise with George Logue at the Amethyst Mine in 1947.
- Named as "John Albert Dabney" in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" — a fuller form of the same name used elsewhere on this site; let the mesa kids ride a steer he was fattening in a corral by the Dabney home, and, with Shirley Wills, provided saddle and bridle for the spring cattle drive.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed"; drove a prospect raise (61) with George Logue.
- Named as "John Albert Dabney" in "'A Rude Awakening,'" Part I of "Third Stool from the Rear"; the tunnel horse Teddy retired on his ranch.
- Named in the ranch-history opening of "Snakes Alive" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; the homestead passed from Chester Garnier to Carl Gilbreath to John Dabney before the Lane family's tenure.
- Named as one of "the Dabneys, Emmett and John," ranchers near Spring and Clear Creeks, in "Hell Cats of a Different Breed" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts."
John Farney Woodruff
John Farney Woodruff Jr.
John Franklin "Frank" Davis
- Child of Anna Maud Woodruff and Robert Abraham Lincoln Davis
- Called "Uncle Frank Davis" in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; married to "Aunt Caroline," whose kitchen and homemade bread the author visited often, and photographed with her and two of their children, Polly and Nancy.
- Named as "Frank Davis" in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; Alex Duncan moved to a house across the gulch from him.
- Named as "Uncle Frank" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Geologist Seeks Ore With Fly Rod and Reel"; entrusted his rifle and skinning knife to a young John and Lee Davis for a hard-times-season rabbit hunt in the mid-1930s, then nearly walked them back out to "finish" a deer they'd invented. Husband of the site's existing Aunt Caroline, father of Lee Davis and of the site's existing Frank Davis, Jr.
John Gjellum
John Gulzow
John Hamm
- Named in "'Chalk One Up for Blackberry,'" Part II of "Third Stool from the Rear"; rented John a compressor and jackhammer after finishing a gold prospect near Saguache.
- Named in "Looking The Devil Right In The Eye" in Part Two of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; leased equipment to the Jackson mining venture after closing his own Crystal Hill gold mine near Saguache.
John LaFont
John Martin
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; a neighboring rancher southwest of the Jacksons' place on Cebolla Creek, who drove past John floundering in the icy creek in January 1994 without realizing anything was wrong, in "The Coldest Day."
- Named in "Please Moo Before You Drop In," Chapter VI of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; enjoying his morning newspaper on an outdoor toilet at a ranch on Spring and Cebolla Creeks when a cow's misstep over the cesspool sends up a "reverse flush." Named again in "Hold It's Tail and It Won't Spray," sprayed by a skunk while pulling hay bales. The same John Martin named in "Please Go to Hell"; per family knowledge, the only John Martin John knew.
John McCaghren
John McClure
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; one of "these McClure men," with Harry and Gene, recalled on John's imagined Memory Lane bus ride as having "drilled a million holes."
- Married Charlotte Florella Lane, per family knowledge a great-aunt on this line, daughter of Anna Maud Woodruff and Charles Lane.
- Named as "the John McClures" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Decibels Unlimited"; sat shell-shocked at the same table as the author after a disco band’s opening blast.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Women Can Scare Strongest Man"; shared lunch with the author and wife Charlotte the day Bea Jean Wintz stormed in.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "New Year's Just Not the Same When Faced Sober"; given last rites by his wife after a rough New Year's, just a block from the Jacksons.
John McKenzie
John Nelson
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; a blacksmith, miner, and leaser who worked in nearly every mine around Creede, learning blacksmithing after contracting silicosis young; John calls him "the finest blacksmith around" in his early mining years. Identified through family knowledge as a different person from Jack Nelson, named in "Truth Stretchers"; disambiguated by key and listed separately.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; pictured as a blacksmith, alongside "Pug" Sutherland.
John Pemble
John Picoti
John Richard Jackson
- Full profile
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories" as "John Jackson"; kneeling among the boys at Jimmy Mason's 1936 birthday party, alongside Bernard Shaw, Wallace Leary, David Manning and Jack Thompson, as a teenager. Per family knowledge, any "John Jackson" named on this site is the author himself.
- Named in full as "John Richard Jackson" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Here and There"; writes his own mock obituary at 70, "formerly of Creede Colorado and lately of Cedaredge, Colorado," requesting no services and any memorial contributions go to the Creede Historical Society.
John Schofield
John Slater
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; the blacksmith recalled with Billy Weaver on John's imagined Memory Lane bus ride.
- Named as "John Slater" in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug," visiting the Jackson home with his wife Lena the night of the author's electrical-socket mishap.
- Named as "John Slater" in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; worked mine development with the author and Gene McClure, spiked John's own pants cuff to a log as a prank, and teased the author about his dancing at a school dance.
- Named again as "John Slater" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Minnie Pearl Was a Smart Mining Mule"; leasing the Archimedes claim with the McClure brothers.
- Named again as "John Slater" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Hard Water"; taught Dad Bill to operate a gasoline blow torch for thawing waterlines.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Jackson Recalls Building of Ore Bins"; blacksmith on the Commodore 5 tunnel restoration crew, leasing part-time with Eugene and Harry McClure on a Commodore Mine silver vein.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "'Act Your Age' Takes Fun Out of Seniors' Lifestyle"; Babe Fulton's obstacle-course fall happens between his house and cabin.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "Short Stuff"; John (Peterson) Keating returned to Creede for many years running to visit the Slaters, his neighbors.
- Named as "John" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Winter Like That of Memories"; with wife Lena, bought the author's boyhood rabbit-hunting bag at a quarter apiece.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Introduction; while working with a crew of oldsters at the Commodore Mine, told the young author, "You're a real hot-shot, Kid, but you'll see the day when a good bowel movement will be the most exciting thing you can look forward to."
- Named in "'Didn't Have to, the Boot Had a Hole in It,'" Part I of "Third Stool from the Rear"; the Commodore Mine blacksmith, who pranked both a tourist and John himself with a wolf whistle and a rigged forge air valve.
John Van Buskirk
- Named in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; a barber, first in Center and later in Creede north of the post office, whose years-long whiskey-for-a-shave feud with Grant Matzen ended with a spiked bottle of Croton Oil and a gunshot threat.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Prospectors Were a Visionary Lot Who Built the West"; listed among Creede's own everyday prospectors, working as the town barber by trade.
- Named in "'A Rude Awakening,'" Part I of "Third Stool from the Rear"; walked the tunnel horse Teddy to the barn for a rub-down, and was recounting a story when Teddy bit Woody Wintz's coat collar and shook him for teasing the horse.
- Named in "'Fiddling Around with the Judge,'" Part II of "Third Stool from the Rear"; as the duly elected Judge of Mineral County, broke up a brawl involving fiddler Loyd Wanzer on election night, 1948, then joined him at the bar.
- Named in "Hell Cats of a Different Breed" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; hand-tunneled with Emmett Dabney at the Midwest Mine in the early 1940s.
John Vess
John Wardell
John Weaver
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Costs, Salary Statistics Given"; Mineral County's assessor in 1924, per a family record his bride found among old papers. No confirmed relation to Ivan, Billy, Johnny, or Paul Weaver, also named on this site.
- Named as "Johnny Weaver, county assessor" in "Curiodditie s" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts," matching this site's existing identification as Mineral County's 1924 assessor; also named as a child of Thomas and Mary Weaver, Mineral County's Democratic Weaver family.
Johnny Mattern
Johnny Weaver
Johnny Youngsavage
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; wrecked a Model T Ford on Little Timber Hill in 1940 while returning to his job at Beartown for "Beartown Maude" Townsend, and later joined the Army.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Which Day Would You Relive?"; wrecked his Model T backing down a steep pitch on a Beartown supply run while carrying "a full load of liquid nourishment," leaving its rusted remains on Little Timber Hill.
Jolly Bittick
Joshua Woodruff
Joyce Lusty
Joyce Wills
Juan Chavez
Judge Joseph Thomas
Judge Richard
K
Karl Nicholason
- Credited for the front cover illustration of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," a pen-and-ink cutaway drawing of a two-story outhouse scene, reprinted again inside the front cover.
- Credited for the front cover illustration of "Third Stool from the Rear," a color cartoon of a bartender swinging a rolling pin at two brawling barstool patrons; the same illustration, in black-and-white line art, is printed again with a vignette on page 33.
Kate Owsley
Kearney Higgs
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Toils and Foibles of the Depression Kid"; foreman of Mineral County's summer road crew, and intervened to keep a speeder from beating up Jolly Bittick over a tobacco-juice prank.
- Quoted in "Third Stool from the Rear," "From the Barrel of Common Sense," page iv, on loading a shovel.
Keeler
Keith Duncan
Kelsey
Ken "Kenny" Wyley
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Rough Troop Rides Range to Jackson's Quiet Retreat"; "intrepid guide" of a horseback troop that lost the trail in East Mineral Creek, worn through the uppers of his boots after four miles of buck-brush and swamp. Possible relation to this site's Nell Wyley not stated.
- Named as "Ken Wyley" in the closing lines of "Working Stiffs" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts" as a Creede entrepreneur staging mining contests, matching this site's existing identification.
Ken Schmittel
Kenneth Snow
Kenny Hosselkus
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," "Rifle, Pen Face-Off Suggested"; came trudging to the Jackson house for help with a flat tire, alongside Henry. Possibly related to the site's existing Hosselkus family (Gordon, Allen "A.J.," Bert, Paul), though no relation is stated.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "The Road Starts Here"; hunted near the author's Spring Creek home with A.J., Henry and Trent Hosselkus.
Kenny Swinehart
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; helped Les Turnipseed raise his television antenna, an attempt that ended when the assembly came crashing down in a gust of wind.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Miner Recalls Days in Amethyst"; trapped by a collapsed manway while driving a service raise in the Amethyst Mine with John Picoti; rescued after the author, Floyd Dooley and others cleared debris by hand.
Kenola "Kenny" Wintz
Kevin Scott Jackson
Kid Caplan
Kim Wintz
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Rough Troop Rides Range to Jackson's Quiet Retreat"; part of a horseback troop arriving at the author's Spring Creek retreat, riding behind captive Jaylee with worn-through boots after four miles of buck-brush and swamp; Inez mistook the wear for real alligator skin. Possible relation to this site's other indexed Wintzes (Kenola "Kenny" Wintz, Ed Wintz, Bea Jean Wintz, and others) is not stated.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "The Road Starts Here"; practiced a soft-shoe routine with Randy McClure; Inez mistook his worn boot uppers for real alligator skin.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Birthday Party Comes on the Wrong Day"; one of the "'Lite' riders of the sky" who rode in for the McClures' Cebolla barbecue.
- Named as one of "the kids (Lisa and Kim)" in "The Bear Who Came for Breakfast," Chapter III of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; asleep in the house while their father dispatched the bear with a bow rather than a gunshot.
L
L. Z. "Bun" Bates
L.S. Officer
Lane
Laurie
Laurie Wardell
Lawrence Cruthers
Leanne Cadwell
- Named only as "Leanne" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Jo Jo Joins the Herd"; Michael Cadwell’s mother, whose rock gardens and pansies "Jo Jo" the goat repeatedly raided. No surname given.
- Named again as "Leann Cadwell" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "The Road Starts Here"; her washline, strung between Spring Creek and the top of Los Piños Pass, was twice knocked down by a spooked JoJo the goat. Printed as "Leann," not "Leanne" as spelled in "Jo Jo Joins the Herd"; confirmed per family knowledge as the same person: Curt Cadwell's wife and Michael Cadwell's mother.
Leck Fuson
Lee Davis
- Named in John Jackson's 1988 tribute to Joel; downed by Japanese fire on Saipan or Tinian
- Grandson of Anna Maud Woodruff, named for his uncle Lee Roy Woodruff, in the note for his father John Franklin "Frank" Davis
- Named as "Lee" in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; recalled among the old friends John imagines rejoining near the end of old Amethyst Way on his bus ride down Memory Lane. Identified through family knowledge as this same Lee Davis, not Lee Skinner, also named in "The Amethyst Crew '1947.'"
- Named in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as the author's and Scooter's companion on rock-throwing expeditions to Gus Haigner's and the lumber shed, and photographed with a sheepherder's burro named Dynamite.
- Named in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" among the boys spellbound by Tanana Cimarron's campfire stories, one of the group with cowboy chaps in "Cowboys and Gentlemen," and photographed in "The Ranch Hands" with Scooter, Joey, and Raymond Lane.
- Named in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as the author's partner in a puppet-class scandal sculpting Principal Bogue, and present, with Grandma Lane, for Witt Thomas's mare's difficult foaling.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Extra Curricular Activities"; with the author, mastered truancy excuses and diverted supposed illnesses into fishing trips or burro rides to Sunnyside.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Let's Hear That One Again"; pictured holding the reins of "Old Dynamite," a white burro, and shared bandanna neckerchiefs and Bull Durham smoking sessions with David Manning behind Mortensen's shed.
- Named again as "Lee Davis" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; one of "The Dragon Slayers of Moonshine Mesa," photographed in 1929 with Scooter Jackson, Joel Jackson, Frank Davis and Raymond Lane.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Geologist Seeks Ore With Fly Rod and Reel"; with the author, wasted a box of .25-20 shells shooting at rock rabbits in Sawmill Gulch in the mid-1930s, then spun an elaborate false deer-hunting tale for his father, Uncle Frank.
- Named in the class-photo roster in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter; third row.
- Central to "Pink and Blue Booties" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts" as "Clifton 'Lee' Davis"; John's cousin and childhood companion in a wrecked Essex sedan, later a wounded WWII Marine and, with brother Frankie, co-owner of "The Pick & Shovel Rock Shop."
Lee Love
Lee Moore
Lee Roy Woodruff
Lee Shillings
Lee Skinner
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; Gavin Skinner's father, stoping the "42" vein and chute together at the Amethyst Mine in 1947; son of early-day Creede miner Wylie Skinner.
- Named in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; a CF&I Wagon Wheel Gap miner who nearly came to blows with Dad Bill over Adeline Officer and a ruined box of chocolates, and whose near-fight with Dad years later at a Del Norte movie house turned out to be the same man reconciling.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed"; mining 42 raise with son Gavin; the butt of a lunch-bucket prank involving his false teeth.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Jackson Recalls Building of Ore Bins"; followed Travis McAtee’s morning pickup route with his own load of miners.
Lena Slater
- Named in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as John Slater's wife, visiting the Jackson home the night of the author's electrical-socket mishap.
- Named as "Lena" in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; John Slater promised she and he would be at the school dance to watch the author dance with his girl.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Winter Like That of Memories"; with husband John, bought the author's boyhood rabbit-hunting bag at a quarter apiece.
- Pictured seated at a birthday party with Mary Larson and Jo Jackson in "Favorite Photos" in Part Two of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts."
Leo "Hoot" Moore
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; with Gene "Pat" Patten, credited with bringing Creede's first snowy television images by scouting mountain signal sites with a Jeep, generator, and small set.
- Named as "Hoot Moore" in "'Bill Graduates to Higher Mathematics,'" Part III of "Third Stool from the Rear," coming up the shaft with Pat Patten, Jack Kehr, and Fred Seyfried.
- Named as "Leo 'Hoot' Moore," paired with Gene "Pat" Patten, in the roll of "The Top Team Miners" of John's era, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 51.
Leo Lockhart
Leo Zeigler
Leola
- Named only as "Leola" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Fate Deprived Me of Fame and Fortune"; called last call at Dolly’s Bar and Grill, cutting short the author’s overalls-strap epiphany. No surname given.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter III, "A Wake for Herb"; as "Leola," behind the bar at the Silver Dollar Bar & Grill, who asked John "You didn't really kill him did you?"; the story does not say whether she is the Leola of Dolly's Bar and Grill in Echoes.
Leonard Gustafson
LeRoy Brown
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; recalled with Scooter Jackson among the old friends and "pards" on John's imagined Memory Lane bus ride.
- Named as "Roy Brown" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Decibels Unlimited"; sat "shell shocked" nearby after a disco band’s opening blast at an Elks Hall New Year’s dance.
Les
Les Turnipseed
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; the first in Creede to buy his own television and antenna, an installation attempt with friends that ended when a gust of wind brought the whole assembly crashing down.
- Joins John and Gene Wardell on a weekend fishing trip to Trinity Lake in the San Juan Mountains, and is startled awake by a mule deer at their camp.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Toils and Foibles of the Depression Kid"; caught the brunt of a disgruntled ex-coworker's revenge during a turkey-picking shift for A. H. Major.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "A White Cross on Iwo Jima"; boxed CCC boys alongside Harold Workman, Frankie Davis and Clifton Hudson.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "A View from the Barroom Floor"; part of the late-'40s drinking crew, and hauled Herb Hutchinson off the ground by one hand after a roadside prank.
- Named only as "Les" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Fate Deprived Me of Fame and Fortune," presumed this site’s established Les Turnipseed; picking a fight with the new owner of Blue Creek Lodge at Dolly’s Bar and Grill.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; holding down the 5th Street bridge with Gavin Skinner, Woodrow Weaver and Gordon Hosselkus during the 1948 flood.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Brush With Trooper Recalls Law's Rare Visits to Creede"; John is thankful Les wasn't along for his traffic stop, given his temper.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Early-Morning Call Jogs Memory of Days in Local Choir"; hosts a choir gathering at his cabin and sets fire to a rag near "Pee Wee" Hutchinson mid-performance.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Gas Was Easy to Borrow"; drove to Idaho with Jimmy Comstock on five gallons of used oil and a siphon hose.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Solitary Journeys"; a quick stop at his and Charlotte's home in Eckert during a solo winter drive to Nevada, where Charlotte relays an urgent message to call home.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Wintertime Travelling Is Not for Us"; hosted the author and Inez at his and Charlotte's home in Eckert on a winter drive to Nevada, reminiscing over "mining experiences and drunken brawls of the forties and fifties."
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Finding Body Set Off Long Day on Divide"; led the way down from the divide in his Jeep with the recovered body of a 1963 helicopter-crash victim, during a rough evening recovery effort.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Miner Recalls Days in Amethyst"; "loaded" alongside Frank Yanchunis and the author on a visit to Floyd and Darlene Dooley's home for a meat pie dinner during a hard winter of mine work.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Winter Like That of Memories"; his sled held the boyhood neighborhood's speed and distance records, even against a longer Flexible Flyer.
- Credited in "Echoes from the Thundermug" for compiling the book's list of Creede and Mineral County residents circa 1920–1930, printed on the page immediately before "In Respectful Memory Of"; named there in full as "A.L. ‘Les’ Turnipseed."
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, "George and the Glory Hole"; worked a lower level of the vein with John and told a new Utah miner about "the big cave," a joke exposed by shifter Dick Lehman.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter III, "A Wake for Herb"; as "Turnipseed," in the car that mock-"killed" Pee Wee, who ordered "kill the little bastard" and insisted on facing the music; also pictured in "The Executioners."
- Named within Mary E. Schriver's quotation in "Third Stool from the Rear," "From the Barrel of Common Sense," page iv, paired with John Jackson as two the Lord "could have tried a little harder with."
Leta Collord
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Family Feud Follows Forgetfulness"; Jim Collord's wife, visiting from Nevada with their son Jerritt.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Solitary Journeys"; Jim Collord's wife, having lunch with her family when the author calls ahead to Elko.
Lieutenant O'Neill
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; a "feisty little Irishman" and fellow officer in the labor-supervision company overseeing German prisoners of war during the 1946 occupation, and a friend John made there.
- Central to "Hero For A Day" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts" as "1st Lt. Richard O'Neill"; a Battle of the Bulge POW whose homecoming ends in his arrest for killing a neighbor's barking dog with a war-souvenir bayonet.
Lila
Lillian Hargraves
Lillian Jackson
Lisa
"Little Freddie"
- Named (first name only) in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as one of the children the author hoped would take the blame for his dinner-table mishap at Bob Bennett's birthday dinner. Disambiguated by key from Freddie Seyfried, also named on this site; no relation stated.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Flatus Before Dessert" — the same birthday dinner, differently detailed, as Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; one of the children the author hoped would take the blame for his mishap.
Little Joe Vigil
Lloyd Clark
Lola Lemke
Lonesome Joe
- Named as "Loathsome Joe" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Retirement Means Kicking Back"; a running-joke nickname, not heard from for weeks after the newspaper firm most recently "declared a dividend."
- Named as "Lonesome Joe, alias Adorable Jones" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Thundermug John Apologizes to His Friends, Family — Almost"; the subject of a mock apology retracting anything written that might suggest he wasn't "a gentleman and a scholar." Likely the same running-joke nickname as "Loathsome Joe," named earlier in this same chapter grouping; almost certainly a persona for a real Creede drinking companion rather than a given name, which is not stated.
Loraine Wills
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Black Drought Basics"; a transplant from Oklahoma who ran her Lake Cliff Ranch household, and the author, like a first sergeant, dosing him with a home remedy called Black Drought when he tested her patience.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "New Year’s Greetings"; Billy Wills’s wife, undefeated in their arguments per the author’s telling.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Women Can Scare Strongest Man"; the "war clouds" that sent husband Billy Wills into retreat.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Thundermug in the White House"; the author's mock choice for Ambassador to the United Nations.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "Thundermug John Returns to Bosom of His Family"; her annual letter full of advice on managing a husband is a standing tradition Inez looks forward to.
- Named alongside husband Billy in "Working Stiffs" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts," feeding John and Harold McCaulley in her kitchen the summer of 1937.
Lou Oppey
- Named as "Mountain Man Lou Oppey" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Prospectors Were a Visionary Lot Who Built the West"; found rich float on Red Mountain in the early days of the Depression, assayed as high-grade gold ore by Jack Comstock, touching off a mad staking rush; gave one of his claims to the author's father in friendship.
- Named as "Louis Oppey" in "'Sure He's Okay, I Saw Him a Couple of Months Ago,'" Part I of "Third Stool from the Rear"; spent winters alone on the Roaring Fork or at Red Mountain.
- Quoted, "richer than bullshit," in "'Chalk One Up for Blackberry,'" Part II of "Third Stool from the Rear," on first sight of the Phoenix claim vein.
- Named as "Mountain Man Lou Oppey" in "'Lou Oppey's Snow Bred Red McClures,'" Part II of "Third Stool from the Rear"; planted potatoes in a spring snow flurry two months early, and delivered a bushel of Red McClures to the Phoenix Mine crew that August.
Loyd Wanzer
- Named in "Jigaboo Bowels Out," Chapter I of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; a left-handed fiddle player in the Saturday-night sidewalk dances of the Depression years. Distinct from this site's Charles Wanzer, not stated to be related.
- Named in "'Fiddling Around with the Judge,'" Part II of "Third Stool from the Rear"; a left-handed fiddle player and war veteran who was pummeling a bulldozer operator in a Main Street brawl on election night, 1948, when reminded by John Van Buskirk that he was the duly elected Judge of Mineral County.
Lucille Wilson
Lucky Keene
Lyle Alspaugh
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Minnie Pearl Was a Smart Mining Mule"; a miner on the Reynolds Tunnel renovation project. Possibly related to Norman and Phyllis Alspaugh, also named on this site; no relation stated.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Jackson Recalls Building of Ore Bins"; took over the Commodore tunnel contract with Fred Lane when Dave Brown moved to Silverton.
- Named, paired with Fred Lane, in the roll of "The Top Team Miners" of John's era, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 51.
Lynn "Key" Lezotte
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "It's There — All You Need Is Shovel, Willing Back"; struck a coal seam digging Herbert Barnhart's water well, coal Barnhart reportedly burned in his kitchen stove; the well and seam are both long gone. A different LeZotte, Chappie LeZotte, is also named on this site; no relation stated.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Moves Keep 'Em Hopping"; per a 1927 Creede Candle clipping, mashed one hand between two tram cars at the Fluorspar Mine in Wagon Wheel Gap, swelling it to double size with no broken bones.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Lynn Meets the She Ghost"; obituary-style tribute on his death, recalling a childhood illness that left him "severely handicapped," decades loading ore and concentrate for Emperius Mining Co. alongside the author and Gene Dooley, and a running joke about a lost "Mother Lode" mine up East Willow Creek he wanted shared among Creede's widows and children.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Acknowledgements; one of the two "good friends and co-workers" (with Monte Jay Larson) to whom John dedicates the collection, described as having "left us several years ago." Printed "Lezotte" here and "LeZotte" in Chapter I.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter I, "The Con Boss Conned"; as Lynn "Key" LeZotte, John's work partner shoveling silver concentrates at the Emperius reduction mill, and later his partner in the Amethyst Mine, where he always left half a sandwich for the Tommyknockers. Also pictured in a photograph captioned "The Tommyknocker's pal and my good friend."
- Named as "Lynn 'Key' LeZotte" in "'Lynn Rides a Hellcat and She Ghost Bareback,'" Part II of "Third Stool from the Rear"; physical problems kept him from riding the rim of a sump bucket, and he coined the phrase that gives the story its title after a rough, spinning ride down a winze.
- Named as "Key" in "'Board Stiff,'" Part II of "Third Stool from the Rear," immediately after "Lynn Rides a Hellcat and She Ghost Bareback"; rapped the pipe code to signal the hoistman.
- Subject of the poem "Ode To Lynn 'Key' LeZotte" that opens "Hell Cats And She Ghosts," naming him alongside more than a dozen other Creede miners and tradesmen he worked with.
- Central to "Hell Cats And She Ghosts: Origin" in "Hell Cats And She Ghosts," which credits him with coining the book's title phrase and recounts him hitting John between the eyes with a beer bottle at an Elks dance.
M
Mabel Allen
- Named in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; with her sister Olive, herded milk cows past the Jackson boys' hiding spot and stormed the Jackson kitchen after Joel spooked her herd with a beanie flipper, coining the line "I don't chew my tubakkur twice."
- Named as "Mabel" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Let's Hear That One Again" — the same story, differently detailed, as Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug," "Allen Sisters; We Don't Chew Our Tubakkur Twice."
Mabel Wright
Mac
Mae
Mae Birdsey
Mae Lucette
Maes
Mandy (Wilson Tabor's mother)
Mandy Russell
Marceline Ann Duncan
- Wife of William Charles "Scoot" Jackson, married 1947
- Per family knowledge, niece of Christine and Marie Duncan, both named in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as Missouri-born Creede schoolteachers; Marceline came to Creede straight out of high school to babysit for an aunt — likely Marie — and stayed on, eventually marrying Scoot Jackson and becoming one of Shannon's beloved aunts.
Marcy Bates
Margaret McCrone (Lamb)
Marge
Marie Birdsey
Marie Duncan
- Named with her sister Christine in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as one of the Duncan sisters who came from Missouri to teach at the grade school. Identified through family knowledge as an aunt of Marceline Ann Duncan, who married William Charles "Scoot" Jackson — likely the aunt Marceline came to Creede straight out of high school to babysit for, before marrying Scoot herself. No relation stated to Gordon, Cloy, Hurtha, and James Duncan, the Alex Duncan family already documented on this site, or to Elsie Duncan, also named in this chapter.
- Named as "Miss Marie Duncan" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Extra Curricular Activities"; the author's first grade teacher, quick to paddle him for playing hooky in the boxcars by the depot during his first days of school.
Marjorie Birdsey
Mark Fahrion
Martha
- Named (first name only) in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as one of the children the author hoped would take the blame for his dinner-table mishap at Bob Bennett's birthday dinner. Disambiguated by key from "little Freddie," named in the same passage, and from Freddie Seyfried, also named on this site; no relation stated.
- Named (first name only) in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Flatus Before Dessert" — the same birthday dinner, differently detailed, as Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; one of the children the author hoped would take the blame for his mishap.
Martin (young miner)
Martin N. B. Holm
Martin Wagner
Mary
- Named (first name only) in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as Harry Larson's apparent wife, who "always came out second best" in exchanges with Harry; low-confidence identification, disambiguated by key from Bernie Soward's wife, called only "the Blond Bomber" in the same passage.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "Respectability Comes Late to Some of Us"; took Harry by the nape of the neck after the Mercantile Block fire and put him back to household duties.
Mary
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Harry, Bernie & the Blond Bomber"; Harry Larson's wife. No surname given; presumed Larson by marriage.
- Pictured with husband Harry Larson, Monte Larson, and Tommy Phillips in "Favorite Photos" in Part Two of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts," matching this site's existing identification as Harry Larson's wife.
Mary (Davis) Hagerman
- Called "Aunt Mary" in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug," photographed with her brother "Grandfather Lynn Davis" in "Long Green and Short Stuff"; her wash tub was ruined killing a trapped tarantula during the family's Missouri visit. Very likely Mary (Davis) Hagerman, Robert Abraham Lincoln Davis's sister, already documented on his page as his 1943 death-certificate informant, living at Sulphur Springs, Arkansas, near his McDonald County, Missouri home.
- Robert Abraham Lincoln Davis's sister, of Sulphur Springs, Arkansas; informant on his 1943 death certificate.
Mary E. Woodruff
Mary Elizabeth Robinson
Mary Frances Bates
Mary L. Johnson
- Named in the class-photo roster in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter, seated row.
- Possibly named again, without the middle initial, as "Mary Johnson" in the Acknowledgements of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," thanked among the students of Professor E. D. Watson; not confirmed the same person.
Mary N. Oates
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Costs, Salary Statistics Given"; Mineral County's superintendent of schools in 1924, per a family record his bride found among old papers. No confirmed relation to Barney or Bob Oates, also named on this site.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; pictured captioned "Superintendent of Schools," matching her role recorded elsewhere on this site.
Mary Schriver
- "Mother Mary" is John’s mother-in-law, Mary Schriver.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "A Present for Mary"; startled, mid-soap-opera, by Lucy the cat's live mouse.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Housecleaning Is a Breeze When Done Jackson's Way"; greets John from in front of the television on his return home.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "Thundermug John Returns to Bosom of His Family"; keeps a sound relationship with John so long as he doesn't interrupt her "soapies."
- Named as "Mother Mary" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "The Road Starts Here"; pleased, with daughter Inez, to have company and swap tales with visiting old friends the author missed while away.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Paul's Recipe"; came to live with the author and Inez near Montrose in January 1981 with husband Paul, and coped with Parkinson's disease.
- Quoted, as "Mary E. Schriver," in "Third Stool from the Rear," "From the Barrel of Common Sense," page iv, on the Lord not trying hard enough with Les Turnipseed and John Jackson.
Mary Slaght
Mary Thom
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; pictured with Faye Duncan and Lillian Hargraves under the caption "Best Friends."
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter III, "A Wake for Herb"; as "Mary Thom, Pee Wee's mother," who asked whether the boys had seen Herb that morning; the story does not say whether she is the Mary Thom pictured in Echoes' "Memories."
Mary Weaver
Mary Weaver
Matt Bartlett
Maude Townsend
Maurice Chaffee
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; a geology graduate student who chose the Creede District as his thesis area for Homestake Mining Company and, mapping near John's own claims in the spring of 1964, discovered the wreckage of a runaway Pershing missile that had nearly struck the town months earlier, in "Bullseye Creede."
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Dog a Big Help on Prospecting Expedition"; the geologist who found the modified V-2 rocket nose that had impacted 20 years earlier, squarely inside a claim the author had staked with Gene Wardell.
Max Martinez
Maxine
Melvin "Red" Johnson
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," "Respectability Comes Late to Some of Us"; seated with John at Bernie Soward's funeral, asked to be remembered as "a good son-of-a-bitch." Disambiguated by key from Red Dooley and Red, the Dooley family friend, also named on this site.
- Named as "Melvin 'Red' Johnson" in "'Bernie Folds His Sails,'" Part III of "Third Stool from the Rear"; at Bernie Soward's wake, asked only that someone tell the preacher "old Red was a good son of a bitch" when his own time came.
- Named as "'Red' Johnson," paired with "Shorty" Dunkel, in the roll of "The Top Team Miners" of John's era, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 51.
Michael Cadwell
Michael Kanuch
Mike McClure
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; one of the Creede old-timers who kept reminding John, on his return visits, of his local fame for wrapping a barrel around his truck's axle while drunk.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Doc Leary Battles Handicap"; shown off trophies with Gene Wardell and Inez at a Rocky Mountain Regional Archery tournament.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Rough Troop Rides Range to Jackson's Quiet Retreat"; part of a horseback troop arriving unannounced at the author's Spring Creek retreat, so crippled-looking from having his boots on the wrong feet for three days that the author feared he had gout.
- Named again as "Michael McClure" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Mother Bee's Tantrum Put an End to Party"; six years old, tended bar with a cash-award-winning "double washer cocktail" invention at a Tomkins Hardware gathering, until his mother Bee ended the party.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Birthday Party Comes on the Wrong Day"; one of the "'Lite' riders of the sky" who rode in for the McClures' Cebolla barbecue.
- Named as "Michael 'Mahone' McClure" in "Working Stiffs" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts," tentatively this same Mike McClure given the recurring name and mining-family background on this site; the nickname "Mahone" is not used elsewhere here. Hired around 1969 on the Gateway Access Corporation tunnel crew.
Mike O'Rourke
Mildred Hosselkus Hoffman
Mildred Matzen
- Named in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as Grant and Esther Matzen's daughter, described as one of the "normal kids" the mesa platoon got along with, and photographed with her sister and the Leonard siblings.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; pictured in Creede around 1926 with Norma Matzen, Dorothy Leonard, Don Leonard, Billy Matzen and Heinie Leonard.
Milla Woodruff
Millicent McCarthy Crabtree
Millie Harmon
Millie Kistler
Milton "Tex" Allsworth
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Magic Age Is Five"; hosted song sessions where Kathleen (Dottie) Turnipseed played piano and everyone sang along.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter III, "A Hot Dog Story"; as "Tex Allsworth," whose police dog Old Yeller beat twice on his way to the heart of Jimmy's female dog.
Minnie Weaver
Minnie Weaver
Miss Bayne
Miss Gortney
- Named in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as the third-and-fourth-grade teacher whose sideline seat at a softball game distracted brother Joey mid-pitch, breaking Elsie Duncan's nose with the wild throw.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Bloomers & Home Runs" — the same story, differently detailed, as Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; her sideline seat at a softball game distracted brother Joe mid-pitch, breaking Elsie Duncan's nose with the wild throw.
Miss Schroeder
Miss Young
Monte Jay Larson
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Acknowledgements; one of the two "good friends and co-workers" (with Lynn "Key" Lezotte) to whom John dedicates the collection, who "left us several years ago." Not named elsewhere on this site.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter I, "The Con Boss Conned"; pictured in a photograph captioned "Monte Jay Larson," with the couplet "A dangerous load for the tunnel crew but our motorman will see it through." The story itself does not name him.
- Named as "Monte Jay" in an untitled barroom vignette, Part IV of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 41; saw a runaway ore motor and thought it would knock down the whole ore bin.
Monte Larson
Mortensen family
Mother Bee McClure
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Women Can Scare Strongest Man"; shut down the "Upper Willow Creek Mineralogical Society" after its first — and last — meeting, some 30 years before this column.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Mother Bee's Tantrum Put an End to Party"; as Bee/Elizabeth McClure, disbanded the "Upper Willow Creek Mineralogical Society's" annual meeting at Tomkins Hardware in a tantrum, ending the evening by snatching her six-year-old son Michael from bartending duty.
Mr. Arlow
- Named (surname only) in the Introduction of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; plugged a rival moonshiner's irrigation ditch, touching off a rifle-fire feud across a canyon that Undersheriff Bill Jackson had to intervene in.
- Named in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; plugged a rival moonshiner's irrigation ditch, touching off a rifle-fire feud that Bill Jackson, as Undersheriff, had to break up.
Mr. Beauchamp
Mr. Bessy
- Named (surname only) in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; his mine east of Creede was the site of a 1937 rabbit-hunting accident in which Joel accidentally grazed John's knee.
- Named in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; his mine at the head of dumpground gulch was the site of the boys' long-distance urinating contest, "The Bessy's Cabins Olympics."
Mr. Comstock
Mr. Eaves
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Magic Age Is Five"; ran a business on Creede's west side, cranked out his red-and-white striped awning each morning, and always asked the boys whether they'd been going to church.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Introduction; as "Mr. Joel Eaves," lowering his "candy striped canvas" awning on an early-morning ritual of upper Creede businessmen.
Mr. Gillespie
Mr. Goade
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Magic Age Is Five" as Creede's game warden, who would have taken exception to the author's out-of-season elk kill at age ten.
- Named as "Clarence Goade of Alamosa" in "'The Last Straw on the Camel's Back,'" Part I of "Third Stool from the Rear"; the game warden who "didn't take kindly to farmer's season" on an elk hunt that fed Robert's family out of season.
- Named as "the game warden, Clarence Goade of Alamosa" in "The Lawbreakers" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts," matching this site's existing identification; caught Vern and Eugene with an illegally shot deer in 1933.
Mr. Hix
Mr. James
Mr. Keith
Mr. Listy
Mr. Lundy
Mr. Owsley
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Magic Age Is Five"; lowered his orange awning each morning on Creede's west side and always asked the boys about their fishing luck, an opening for his own latest fish story.
- Named as "'Hoot' Owsley" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Let's Hear That One Again"; Dad Bill and the author were on their way to his Emporium when they met Hal staggering down the sidewalk.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Introduction; as John "Hoot" Owsley, a favorite with locals and tourists, who fished for trout with his wife Kate every free minute and thrilled tourists with stories of the big ones he had caught.
Mr. Thompson
- Named (surname only) in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as a Missouri neighbor observed relieving himself in his garden during the family's visit. Distinct from Tommy Thompson, a Creede-based person also named on this site; keyed separately since only a surname is given here.
- Named (surname only) in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Ozark Adventures" — the same story, differently detailed, as Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; a Missouri neighbor observed relieving himself in his garden during the family's visit.
Mr. Warren
Mrs. Billy Barnett
Mrs. Broadhead
- Named in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; a gentle, Dutch-accented rancher who hosted the author and Charlotte Lane with milk, biscuits, and fishing at her ranch's lake and stocked ditch.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Introduction; as "Elsie Broadhead"; John corrects an error in his first book, where he "tried to make a Hollander" of her and learned "she came directly from Scotland." Read here as the Mrs. Broadhead of Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug."
Mrs. Graeser
Mrs. Herbert D. Barnhart
Mrs. McGregor
Mrs. McKay
Myrna Allen
Myrt
N
Nancy Davis
Nancy Jane Berry
Nate Hyam
Neil Walker
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; a Marine Corps veteran of the Pacific war and, with Bob Oates, one of the Amethyst Mine's miners in 1947 — by then one of the mine's mule skinners.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed"; one of the muleskinners in the postwar Amethyst crew.
- Named in the roster for the class photograph "Lookout World Here We Come" in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter; top row.
Nell Wyley
Newt Turnquist
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; a Union Supply Company salesman and "veteran tippler" who added his own bottle to the impromptu drinking session at Tomkins Hardware.
- Named again as "Newton Turnquist" of Union Supply Co. in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Mother Bee's Tantrum Put an End to Party"; attended the "Upper Willow Creek Mineralogical Society's" meeting and never returned to Creede after Bee McClure's tantrum broke it up.
- Named in "Survival of the Fittest" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; a Denver mine-equipment salesman who "conducted" one of John's comic "Upper Willow Creek Glee and Choir Club" drinking sessions.
Nicholas C. Creede
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Prospectors Were a Visionary Lot Who Built the West"; prospected Spring and Cascade Creeks with C.F. Nelson before their discoveries on Campbell Mountain — the discoveries for which the town of Creede, Colorado is named.
- Thanked at length in the Acknowledgements of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," the same closing tribute repeated, nearly word for word, in "Once Around the Thunder Mug" and "Who Upset the Thundermug."
Noel L. Roberts
- Named in the Acknowledgments of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as a "tough and durable 'urban Creede Hoodlum'" who contributed photos and memories; named again in the Introduction, prospecting alongside Jack Fleming, "only a round away from bonanzas."
- Named as "Noel 'Bo' Roberts" in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; joined Grant Matzen and Lee Shillings on drinking trips to Center, Saguache, and Bonanza, and photographed with Charles Lane and Charles Wanzer, a photo credited to him.
- Named as "Bo Roberts" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Cebolla Visitors"; one of the most knowledgeable miners to ever enter Creede, per the author, and father of Noel Lloyd Roberts ("Bolo"), also named on this site. Confirmed by Shannon's mother as this same Noel L. Roberts.
- Possibly named, unqualified, as "Bo" in "Thundermug for President," Chapter V of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," an old friend in Missouri who wrote in with unsolicited campaign advice; also named, as "Noel 'Bo' Roberts (right)," in the Whiskey Drinking Contest photo caption in this book's front matter.
Noel Lloyd Roberts
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Cebolla Visitors," as "Noel Lloyd Roberts" and "Bolo"; an Army cook, of Croker, Missouri, remembered for a hard early life and a thunderously loud visiting truck. Son of "Bo Roberts," confirmed by Shannon's mother as this site’s existing Noel L. Roberts entry (elsewhere "Noel ‘Bo’ Roberts").
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Regarding 'Thundermug,'" signed "Mountain Filasifer"; writes a long reader's letter recalling his own father's birthday and a WWII-era army cooking assignment.
- Named again as "Noel L. 'Bolo' Roberts" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "New Year's Just Not the Same When Faced Sober"; John jokingly blames him for a run-in with the law and for going on to become an Army cook. Possibly named again, as "Loyd 'Bo' Roberts," in "This Soldier Says Navy Men Are All Wet" — a 20-year career in the "Big Red 1" infantry division and a wife named Cleta are new details not stated elsewhere on this site, so the identification with this entry is offered as likely, not confirmed.
- Named as "Noel L. 'Bo' Roberts" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Retirement Means Kicking Back"; wrote a consoling letter on the author's retirement, with a photo showing how well his own life of leisure had treated him.
- Named again as "Bo" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "The Road Starts Here"; threatens a spring visit with wife Cleta, soon to be fitted for a third artificial leg; his old junkpile-on-wheels truck still terrifies JoJo the goat from a prior visit.
Noel Oates
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter IV, "Victor Miller and Noel Oates"; photographed with Victor Miller: "where the ore was blasted by our good friend, Noel." Not named elsewhere on this site.
- Named as "Noel 'Snuffy' Oates" in "Looking The Devil Right In The Eye" in Part Two of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; his West Willow Creek mine connected the family to nephew-by-marriage James Muir, Jr.
Nora Dooley
Nora Minnie Bates
Norm
Norma
- Named in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; a classmate in the author's Bible class, giggled at the minister's Heaven exercise and was sure Heaven would have chocolate cake and ice cream every day.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Going to Church Just Never Was John's Idea of Heaven" — the same story, differently detailed, as Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; giggled at the minister's Heaven exercise.
Norma Matzen
- Named in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as Grant and Esther Matzen's daughter, described as one of the "normal kids" the mesa platoon got along with, and photographed with her sister and the Leonard siblings.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; pictured in Creede around 1926 with Mildred Matzen, Dorothy Leonard, Don Leonard, Billy Matzen and Heinie Leonard.
Norman Alspaugh
Norman Birdsey
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; recalled with Gene Wardell waiting on Commodore on John's imagined Memory Lane bus ride. Disambiguated by key from Sam Birdsey, Garnet Birdsey, and Fred "Soapy" Birdsey, also named in the manuscript; likely the same extended family, no relation stated.
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; in "Quirks of the Trade," his cap and headlamp would never point straight underground, a fixed quirk John could never talk him out of.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Of Hell Cats and She Ghosts"; dislodged the rock that struck Paul Hosselkus's hard hat, with a memorable "kerwhop."
O
Olive Allen
- Named in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; with her sister Mabel, herded milk cows daily from the outskirts of Creede to pasture at the head of Slaughterhouse Gulch, selling eggs and milk along the way.
- Named as "Ollie" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Let's Hear That One Again" — the same story, differently detailed, as Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug," there named "Olive."
Ollie Platz
Olrich Miller
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Extra Curricular Activities"; with Sam Church, built the new duplex schoolhouse toilets, the target of Rupert Burns's spruce-limb prank. No confirmed relation to Whitey Miller, also named on this site.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; pictured with his wife Elva, captioned "carpenter."
Otto Herman
P
"Packrat" Jackson
- Named (by nickname) in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; explicitly "no relation" to the author's family, despite sharing the Jackson surname. His unnamed wife, who had given birth around the same time as Mom Jo, wet-nursed the infant author.
- Named as "Mrs. Packrat Jackson" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Magic Age Is Five" — the same wet-nurse story as Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug," here noting she fed both her own new arrival and the author "with little effort."
Parmelia Farney
Pat
Pat
Pat Madill
Pat McKee
Patrolman Nash
Patsy Louth
Paul "Dunk" Dunkel
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; Shorty Dunkel's son, a methodical novice tunneler whose common sense about which end of a dynamite stick to tamp first proved out over a DuPont engineer's own instructions, measured with a steel tape. Still called "Dunk" as an adult, later a miner at the Equity Mine.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "'Dunk' Recalls Feuds With Jackson"; a mock newspaper column recounting his running political arguments and hoist-phone feud with the author at the Commodore mine.
- Named again as "Paul Dunkel" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; pictured captioned "Miner, Minister."
Paul Barton
Paul Davis
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; Mine Engineer for Emperius Mining Company who taught John geology and physics starting in 1939, later founding Davis Engineering Company. No known relation to the Robert Abraham Lincoln Davis family line documented elsewhere on this site.
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; the mine engineer John studied geology under as a young miner, turning his daily hike to the working face into something closer to a classroom.
- Named in the Acknowledgments of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as "a partner in work, a symbol of strength and integrity," credited with furnishing John a belated high school diploma.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Decibels Unlimited"; seen dancing "in his advanced years" at a New Year’s Eve gathering.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "New Year’s Greetings"; of Del Norte, married Edith Wintz, sent the author a novelty gift by mail.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "New Year's Just Not the Same When Faced Sober"; felt as bad as John the morning after New Year's.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Fame Is Short; Failure Forever"; the most exacting man the author ever worked for, running a control survey line on Nelson Mountain with John Schofield on the chain and Duane Havens and the author clearing brush; also recalled, more than 40 years earlier, as the author's chainman on a survey from the Commodore Lode to Bachelor.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Moves Keep 'Em Hopping"; with Alvie Wintz, prepared a mining report for Dr. B.B. Grichter of Des Plaines, Ill., on the Champion and Monte Carlo mines in the late 1940s, chipping a sample that assayed over 6,000 ounces of silver per ton.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, "Two Photograph Pages"; named in the same four-man photograph caption; the book does not say whether this Paul Davis is the mine engineer described elsewhere on this site.
- Possibly named in an untitled barroom vignette, Part III of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 29, as an engineer by training who preferred mining to running a transit and had mined in Grass Valley, California before coming to Creede; the book does not confirm this is the same mine engineer documented elsewhere on this site.
- Named, paired with Alvie Wintz, in the roll of "The Top Team Miners" of John's era, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 51.
Paul Hosselkus
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Stealing Ain't As Easy As It Was In Times Past"; helped the author load ore cars at the Holy Moses claims in 1954, and, unprompted, gave away their bridge-lumber theft at Allen Hosselkus's dinner table the following spring. Likely the same extended family as Allen "A.J.," Gordon, and Bert Hosselkus, also named on this site; no relation confirmed.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Of Hell Cats and She Ghosts"; struck on the hard hat by a rock Norman Birdsey kicked loose in the South Manway.
- Named in "Working Stiffs" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; hired at 18 in 1954 to help tram ore from the Holy Moses #2 tunnel despite an earlier hand injury from a blasting cap.
Paul Lemke
Paul Mitchell
Paul Murray
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; leased ground on the Last Chance and New York lodes at the Amethyst Mine in 1947 with Frankie Davis.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed"; leasing ground on the 850 level with Frankie Davis shortly after the war.
- Named in "'A Rude Awakening,'" Part I of "Third Stool from the Rear," seated beside Frankie Davis at the barrel heater.
Paul Schriver
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; Inez Mae Schriver's father, in whose Cherryvale, Kansas home John saw his first television, Christmas 1951
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Wisdom of Age"; tagged for $2 (with "price can be negotiated") at the Jacksons’ yard sale, his own suspenders included.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Welcome Home"; visited, along with wife Mary, in Montrose, tending his manure concoction.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Fish Dish Gave Jackson's Clan, Neighbors a Hot Time"; the author's father-in-law, nearly a casualty of Cynthia Haynes's fish fillet casserole.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Housecleaning Is a Breeze When Done Jackson's Way"; a Medicare letter mistakenly reports his death, and John jokes with Inez about giving him a proper burial.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "You Get Caught Doing Darndest Stuff"; moved to the San Juan Nursing Center in Montrose after John is caught "tampering" with his oxygen line.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "Thundermug John Returns to Bosom of His Family"; suspects John of designs on his daughter, one of the household's running jokes.
- Named as "Paul M. Schriver" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Thundermug John Apologizes to His Friends, Family — Almost"; the author's father-in-law, mock-apologized to for feeding him so much "arsenic" that his toenails "curled back like an old ram's horns," and for the daily showers he took to keep the residue off his skin.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Paul's Recipe"; came to live with the author and Inez near Montrose in January 1981 with wife Mary, farmed a rich garden fertilized by his own foul-smelling "recipe," and coped with a spinal disorder.
Paul Sittler
Paul Snyder
Paul Weaver
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; with Ed McCargish, one of the Amethyst Mine's hoistmen in 1947, from an old-time Creede mining family. Possibly related to Billy Weaver, named elsewhere in the manuscript, and to Johnny Weaver, named in John's 1988 tribute to Joel; no relation confirmed.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed"; one of the postwar Amethyst hoistmen.
- Named in "Mine Is Not to Question Why," Part III of "Third Stool from the Rear"; a hoistman who worked with Clarence Martin and confirmed he still carried raw vegetables for lunch.
- Named in "Ed and Cherokee" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; Ed McCargish replaced him on the hoist serving John's level.
- Named as a child of Thomas and Mary Weaver in "Curiodditie s" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; John worked with him at the Amethyst mine.
Pauline Roberta "Bubbles" Jackson Bates
- Child of Alice Josephine Davis and William Thomas Jackson. Living; identifying details withheld to protect a living family member's privacy.
- Shannon's mother; credited co-author of her brother John's memoir "Please Go to Hell," introduced by name in the manuscript's Prologue to the Preface. Living; identifying details withheld as elsewhere on the site.
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; accompanies the family to Denver's first 3D movie, where she screams and spills her drink when an actor throws a chair toward the audience.
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; a student at the Creede schoolhouse where her brother's drunken barrel mishap came to a stop, in full view of her peers, teachers, and the resident minister.
- Named as "our sister, Pauline, later to be known as Bubbles" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Powder Smoke and Sawdust from a Colorful Creede Character"; as an infant, contentedly pulled at Whiskey Bill Tingley's beard while he visited, bringing western magazines for her brothers. Living; identifying details withheld as elsewhere on the site.
- Named as "Pauline" and "Pauline Roberta" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Silver Tongue Oil No Help With Poetry"; as a small child, the subject of a babysitting mishap involving a poem meant for Helen O’Connor.
- Named as "Bubbles Jackson Bates" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "For Love of a Brother"; author of the poem "Getting Even," recounting rescuing her drunken brother John from a truck stuck near Cebolla Creek.
- Named again as "Pauline ‘Bubbles’ Bates" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "New Year’s Greetings"; the author’s good-natured reply to her poem "Getting Even."
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Brush With Trooper Recalls Law's Rare Visits to Creede" as "Sister Pauline's (Bubbles)"; John's traffic stop happens near her home west of Gunnison, and she and her husband Lucky help him afterward.
- Wrote the poem "Getting Even," reproduced here in full under her own byline. Per family knowledge, the newspaper's owner at the time refused to print it and accused her, in a poison-pen letter, of trying to destroy her brother's reputation; a later owner found the letters years afterward and published the poem without asking either sibling first. Also embedded, with an editor's note, in her brother John's 1997 collection "Echoes from the Thundermug," under his own column heading, "For Love of a Brother." Living; identifying details withheld as elsewhere on the site.
- Named as "Polly Bates" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Birthday Party Comes on the Wrong Day"; with husband Lucky, drove in for the author and Inez's surprise birthday party. A nickname variant for this site's existing Pauline Roberta "Bubbles" Jackson Bates, in her own brother's words. Per family knowledge, Bubbles was known by that name to family, friends, and the wider community her whole life; when she married, her husband's family considered "Bubbles" improper and called her Pauline or Polly instead, so both parents were known growing up through various combinations — Jerry/Lucky and Bubbles/Pauline/Polly — depending on who was speaking. Curiously, John himself used "Lucky" and "Bubbles" everywhere else, per family knowledge; why he chose "Polly" here, in print, isn't clear — left as an open question rather than guessed at. Distinct from this site's other "Polly," first cousin Anna Maude "Polly" Davis (daughter of Uncle Frank Davis, Jo's brother); per family knowledge, Shannon's father Lucky is not believed to have met cousin Polly, and the passage names "Polly Bates" — Pauline's married surname — so this appearance is confidently Shannon's mother, not the cousin.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Acknowledgements; John dedicates the book to "my beloved sister, Pauline Roberta Jackson Bates," who "was embarrassed unto tears so many times as I was trying to find myself."
- Named as "Polly" in the handwritten title-page inscription of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," addressed "To Lucky & Polly, and another embarrassment for you to suffer but bear with us."
- Named as "my sister, Polly" in "Holly's Lucky," Chapter II of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; visited with her husband Lucky and his latest dog, and John recalls her daughter's breath-holding tantrums.
- Named as "my sister Pauline Jackson Bates" in the Preface of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; she and her daughters were John's suggested source of computer help for his writing, which he declined to use.
- Named as "my loyal sister, Pauline 'Bubbles' Bates" in the Dedication of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts," "who prevented the killings by dulling the knives and alerting me to danger."
Pauline Wills
Pearl Barber
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; Howard Barber's wife, one of John's favorite people as a youngster. She and Howard lost their only son, Jimmy, to spinal meningitis in the mid-1930s.
- Named in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug," hosting a birthday dinner for son-in-law Bob Bennett with her husband Howard; tried to console the mortified author afterward with, "slips don't count, Johnny."
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Flatus Before Dessert" — the same birthday dinner, differently detailed, as Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; consoled the author with "Slips don't count Johnny."
Peg Wheeler
- Named in the Acknowledgments of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug" with her husband Shorty, credited with showing "that perseverance and a large rolling pin are the keys to a lasting marriage."
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "Shorty's Café on the Mount"; objected, with Inez, to Shorty's plan to add a brothel to their long-imagined "Café on the Mount."
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Thundermug John Apologizes to His Friends, Family — Almost"; credited with doing "a remarkable job of housebreaking" her husband Shorty, in a mock-apology column.
Peggy
Pete Bruns
Pete Cane
Pete Hess
Pete Kane
Pete Morowski
Pete Piloski
Pete Walker
- Named in John Jackson's 1988 tribute to Joel; serving on Guam alongside William Charles "Scoot" Jackson during the Saipan/Tinian fighting
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; hauled ore from several mines with Slim Blackford and Charles Slaght, rounding out Slim's working career in Creede.
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; caught Slim Anderson with Millie Kistler on the porch above the stairs at the Elks Bar, then disputed with him afterward over exactly how many steps it took him to "disengage."
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Smooth as a Biscuit"; hauled ore and drank from the same tainted First Gulch water tank as the author, thirty years earlier.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Solitary Journeys"; recalled, with the author, for a joking note hung in the cage during a stockholder mine tour: "the hymn for tonight will be Rock of Ages; Chuckie Lehman will conduct the services."
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Mother Bee's Tantrum Put an End to Party"; "ended up down" in the aftermath of Bee McClure's tantrum at a Tomkins Hardware gathering.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, "Two Photograph Pages"; as Ralph "Pete" Walker, in the same four-man photograph; the couplet on the page reads "Come gather around me, I'll tell you how they earned their pay by the sweat of their brow."
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter IV, "I'll Drink to That (Or Anything Else)"; second at left in a bar photograph with Ray Ball, Lucky Keene, Archie "Spud" Fellows and bartender Ed Hargraves.
- Named as "Pete Walker" in "Smooth as Silk A'Goin' or A'Comin'," Chapter I of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; John's ore hauler at the Holy Moses, who drank his fill from the same tainted First Gulch water tank.
- Named in "'Lou Oppey's Snow Bred Red McClures,'" Part II of "Third Stool from the Rear," calling out to Lou Oppey from the truck.
Pete Weiss
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Prospectors Were a Visionary Lot Who Built the West"; prospected fissure veins near Spar City for years without reaching his bonanza, but achieved fame as a Creede stone mason.
- Named as "Peter Weiss" in "'Sure He's Okay, I Saw Him a Couple of Months Ago,'" Part I of "Third Stool from the Rear"; a stone mason who spent winters driving a tunnel on Palo Alto Creek toward the Emma Shaft, hiring Roy La Font one winter to help break rock.
Phil Bethke
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; a U.S. Geological Survey geologist from the agency's Reston, Virginia office who, with Paul Barton, produced a comprehensive report on the geology of the Creede district and its widely accepted deposition model.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; pictured with Tom Steven under the title "The Low Riders," captioned "Geologists."
- Named as "Phil Bethke of Maryland" in "Thundermug for President," Chapter V of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," among the contributors to John's mock campaign; "Echoes from the Thundermug" places him at the U.S. Geological Survey office in Reston, Virginia.
- Pictured with John in "The Author and Phil Bethke in a Younger Year," closing "Hell Cats And She Ghosts."
Phoebe Mary Cease
Phyllis Alspaugh
Pinky Bruns
Pokey
Private Duncan
Professor Josef Radermacher
Pug Sutherland
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Of Hell Cats and She Ghosts"; left Melvin "Red" Johnson bruised and one-eyed after a mine-pickup scrap.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; pictured as an ore sorter, alongside John Nelson.
- Named in "Pug Loses Directions," Chapter IV of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; punched Red Johnson square in the face after promising to "whip his ass," the same exchange told, with more detail, in "Echoes from the Thundermug."
- Named in "Hell Cats" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; traded punches with Bryan Beck in the 1949 Rainbow Bar and Grill brawl.
Q
Quayle Lusty
Quentin Underwood
R
Ralph Ellithorpe
Ralph Snow
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Creede Ragamuffins Battled Valley Teams"; a forward on the 1941 Bulldogs, and, with the author, one of only two boys able to take the full shock of an electric-novelty machine in Hooper.
- Named in the Acknowledgements of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; thanked among the students of Professor E. D. Watson John hopes will forgive him.
Ralph Snyder
Randy McClure
- Youngest son of John and Charlotte Lane McClure, per family knowledge. Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Rough Troop Rides Range to Jackson's Quiet Retreat"; "new champion single-jack driller," led a horseback troop from Creede that arrived unannounced at the author's Spring Creek retreat, startling the household.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "The Road Starts Here"; with Kim Wintz, practiced a soft-shoe routine to show off on a future trip to Nevada.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Birthday Party Comes on the Wrong Day"; one of the "'Lite' riders of the sky" who rode in for the McClures' Cebolla barbecue.
Raymond Ball
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; recalled with Hank Slaght among the old friends and "pards" on John's imagined Memory Lane bus ride.
- Named again as "Ray Ball" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; waiting for the doors to open with Charles Slaght, Charles Dabney, Burl McAdams and Robert Phillips.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, "A "Runner" in 66 Raise"; pictured with Hank Slaght in a photograph captioned 'Henry "Hank" Slaght and Raymond Ball,' with the couplet "Are you hiring or firing?"
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter IV, "I'll Drink to That (Or Anything Else)"; as "Ray Ball," first at left in a bar photograph with Pete Walker, Lucky Keene, Archie "Spud" Fellows and bartender Ed Hargraves.
- Named among the unidentified band members in the school-band caption in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter.
Raymond Bucher
Raymond Lane
- Charles Lane's son by a prior marriage, adopted by Anna Maud Woodruff per family account and the 1930 census
- Named in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; rode bareback leading the author and Charlotte on trips to the Broadhead Ranch bull and fished with the author at the Broadhead lake.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; one of "The Dragon Slayers of Moonshine Mesa," photographed in 1929 with Lee Davis, Scooter Jackson, Joel Jackson and Frank Davis.
- Named in the school-band caption in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter, playing saxophone.
- Named in "'Sure He's Okay, I Saw Him a Couple of Months Ago,'" Part I of "Third Stool from the Rear"; delivering milk on his route, found Thomas Reardon frozen to death partway out of his cabin.
- Named as "Raymond E. Lane" in John's typed poem "I'm Called 'Mister' Mashburn," signed 1991; possibly this Raymond Lane. The middle initial is not otherwise recorded on this site. Not confirmed.
Red
Red Branson
Red Dooley
- Named in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as one of "the Dooley brothers," alongside Ambrose Dooley; worked with Bill Jackson at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Corporation's fluorspar mine and mill at Wagon Wheel Gap. Disambiguated by key from the unrelated "Red," a Dooley family friend, also named on this site.
- Named again as "'Red' Dooley" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "Short Stuff"; father of Gene and Floyd, took twelve licks from Miss Schroeder ahead of his brother Ambrose.
Red Ewell
Red Johnson
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; recalled with his brother Tom among the old friends and "pards" on John's imagined Memory Lane bus ride, and, in "The Amethyst Crew '1947,'" one of the mine's best stope miners, paired with the teetotaling Shorty Dunkel — Red was the drinker of the two. Previously worked at Summitville. Disambiguated by key from Charles Johnson, also named in the manuscript; no relation stated.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "A View from the Barroom Floor"; announced he was through going to bars after too many nights of people stepping on his hands.
- Named again as "Melvin 'Red' Johnson" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Of Hell Cats and She Ghosts"; came off shift bruised and one-eyed after a scrap with Pug Sutherland.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed"; stoping on 6 level off the Albion cross-cut with Shorty Dunkel shortly after the war.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, "Red the Medicine Man"; as Melvin "Red" Johnson, who mashed his left big toe, declined a doctor, and was back in his stope within a week after pouring bourbon on it.
- Named as "Red Johnson" in "Pug Loses Directions," Chapter IV of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; the same black-eyed exchange with Pug Sutherland told, with more detail, in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Of Hell Cats and She Ghosts."
Reuben Wesander
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; recalled among the old friends and "pards" on John's imagined Memory Lane bus ride, and, in "The Amethyst Crew '1947,'" one of the ex-servicemen who settled in Creede after the war — killed in a premature explosion while driving an incline with Tommy Thompson.
- Named as "Ruben Wesander" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed"; killed by a premature blast while mining in 63 raise with Tommy Thompson.
- Named at length as "Reuben ‘Whitey’ Wesander" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Name in Society Page Prompts Memory of Partners"; a hoistman, "the towheaded Finlander," who saves the author and Gavin Skinner from a runaway drop, then is killed by a premature blast that same year.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, "A "Runner" in 66 Raise"; killed in the only premature explosion of John's mining career, igniting fuse in an incline from a raise while Tommy Thompson waited below.
Rev. Mary Grubbs
Reverend Mary Grubbs
Rich Carleno
Richard Fairchild
Rob Wolkoski
Robert
Robert "Bob" Kendall
Robert Abraham Lincoln Davis
- Full profile
- Named as "Lynn Davis" in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; Anna Maud Woodruff's first husband, from whom she divorced in Creede before he returned to his native Missouri.
- Called "Grandfather Davis" in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug," in "Long Green and Short Stuff"; the reluctant Missouri host of a Jackson family road trip, and pictured with his sister Aunt Mary in a nighttime photograph captioned "Aunt Mary and Grandfather Lynn Davis."
- Named as "grandfather Davis" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Ozark Adventures" — the same Missouri road trip, differently detailed, as Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug," "Long Green and Short Stuff."
- Author of "Womans Love," a poem enclosed in a letter to his daughter Jo, written years earlier for a widow he was courting — named in the poem itself as "Cora Dear," and, possibly, the same Cora Martin he went on to marry in 1931.
- Author of an untitled elegy, written after the 1918 death of his son Robert Lincoln Davis; recovered decades later by Shannon's mother from a now-lost book of poetry and confirmed by her as Robert's poem about his son.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter I, "Who Upset the Thundermug"; appears as "Lynn," working with two sons at a sawmill on Kerber Creek near Bonanza; read as Robert Abraham Lincoln Davis from the family pages. The story gives no surname or date.
Robert Bishop
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; standing beside Bob Blackburn, Ted Bucher and Jimmy Mason at Jimmy Mason's 1936 birthday party.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "No Birthday Party for Him"; his neatly creased trousers and sweater come off worse for wear at Jimmy Mason's 1936 birthday party.
Robert Franklin Woodruff
Robert L. Jackson
Robert Lincoln Davis
Robert Phillips
- Named in the Introduction of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; ran one of Creede's two full-time barber shops alongside Fred "Soapy" Birdsey.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; waiting for the doors to open with Charles Slaght, Ray Ball, Charles Dabney and Burl McAdams.
Robert Webster Bates
Roberta "Bertie" Bruns
Roger Workman
- Named in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as one of Tom Workman's sons, who became the author's fast friends after the family moved to lower Creede.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Extra Curricular Activities" as one of the "Workman boys," cousins delegated to sketch Christmas scenes in colored chalk on three schoolroom blackboards — the target of Rupert Burns's nighttime prank.
Rosalie Cruthers
Roy Autrey
Roy LaFont
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," "Short Stuff"; stopped on the road to Sunnyside to trade wisecracks with Granddad Lane about a loose wheel rim. Possibly related to the site's Don and John LaFont, though no relation is stated.
- Named as "Roy La Font" (printed with a space, unlike the "LaFont" spelling used elsewhere on this site) in "'Sure He's Okay, I Saw Him a Couple of Months Ago,'" Part I of "Third Stool from the Rear"; hired by Peter Weiss to help break rock on Palo Alto Creek, and recalled heating the "pisspot" on the stove during a cold winter on his own claim.
Roy Phillips
- Named in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as one of the regulars at Soapy Birdsey's nightly poker game. Possibly related to Tommy Phillips, also named on this site, though likely a different generation; no relation confirmed.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Magic of Barbershops"; a regular at Soapy Birdsey's nightly poker game.
- Named in "Hell Cats of a Different Breed" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; took over Sis Parson's Beer and Billiards Parlor after her death, also catering to cowboys.
Roy Raupe
Royal Fisher
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Costs, Salary Statistics Given"; Mineral County's coroner in 1924, per a family record his bride found among old papers.
- Possibly named as "Roy Fisher," selling light rail for the Phoenix claim lease, in "'Chalk One Up for Blackberry,'" Part II of "Third Stool from the Rear"; the book does not confirm this is the same Royal Fisher documented elsewhere on this site.
Royce Hackworth
Ruby (bar patron)
Rupert Burns
Russ Allen
Rusty Ainsworth
S
Sam Birdsey
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; with his wife Garnet, held well-attended square dances in their garage that taught many Creede youngsters to "Dosey Do and Swing their Partners" in the 1950s. No confirmed relation to Fred "Soapy" Birdsey, also named in the manuscript.
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; as county roads supervisor, assigned Slim Anderson to widen a curve by the Midwest Mine for better access.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Buying a Car Big Event for a Couple of Country Boys"; employed Thurston Bittick for a year's labor maintaining the West Willow Creek mines roads.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Jackson Recalls Building of Ore Bins"; excavated the foundation benches for the Commodore ore storage bins with a Hansen Brothers bulldozer.
Sam Church
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Extra Curricular Activities"; with Olrich Miller, built the new duplex schoolhouse toilets, the target of Rupert Burns's spruce-limb prank.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Winter Like That of Memories"; sharpened the author's ice skates for boyhood hockey games in the canyon above Creede.
Sam Funk
Sam Hutchinson
Sammy Wright
Sandy
Sandy Dietzel
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Hard Water"; Will Dietzel's wife and the author and Inez's neighbor.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Bless the Ladies"; greased a stop-and-waste valve cover as a prank while her husband Will's house was under construction, then was pranked in turn when the author greased her walkway.
Santiago de Montoya
Sarah Coker
Selma Mathilda Carlsson Henriksdotter
- Mother of William Thomas Jackson (1895–1957); Swedish immigrant, known as Selma Carlson/Jackson
- Called "Grandmother Jackson" in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; her visit from Bellingham, Washington disappointed the boys, who had expected a large, boisterous pioneer woman rather than the frail lady who arrived. The book notes she would live only three more years.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "In Respectful Memory Of," the memorial her grandson John dedicated to her and her husband William; the book gives her birthplace as Stockholm, Sweden, which does not match the site's own primary-source research placing her birth in Bjurtjärn (or possibly Bjurkärna) parish, Värmland — flagged, not resolved, on this page.
Senator Phipps
- Named as "Senator Phipps" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Magic Age Is Five"; hosted an annual birthday baseball game (usually Creede versus Del Norte) at his La Garita ranch, with Tom Drysdale's band and all the Nehi soda the children could drink from tubs of ice. Likely U.S. Senator Lawrence C. Phipps of Colorado (1862–1958), who owned La Garita Ranch; probably a relation of Allan R. Phipps, also named on this site as a La Garita Ranch resident, though the connection is not independently confirmed.
- Named in the caption to the 1934 school-band photograph in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter, as "Senator Lawrence Phipps"; the band played "Happy Birthday" and marches at his annual La Garita Ranch birthday celebration, as also told in "Echoes from the Thundermug."
Serena Alice Woodruff
Sergeant Kent
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," "The Last Auction"; jumped clear with John of a runaway 6x6 truck driven by a drunken corporal near Mainz, in the same wartime memory. First name not given.
- Central to "Der Schwein Hunters" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts" as "Cpl./Sgt. Jim Kent"; led the 1946 unauthorized boar hunt near Giessen in a "borrowed" Weapons Carrier.
Seth E. Tankersley
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," "New Year's Just Not the Same When Faced Sober"; museum curator who gave Jeanne and George Downing royal treatment on a visit to Creede.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Solitary Journeys"; recalled by old friend Dave Deci in an Elko reunion story — even his own family calls him "Tank," confusing a caller who asked for "Seth."
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter III, "Never Let Your Mouth Overload Your Rectum"; as Seth E. "Tank" Tankersley, a paratrooper "built like a tank" whose nose was rearranged by his own buddy's hambone in a carnival fight.
- Named as "Seth E. 'Tank' Tankersley" in "A Nodding Acquaintance," Chapter IV of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; struck between the eyes by his own double-jack partner after a miscommunicated signal.
Shane Birdsey
Shirley Wills
Shorty Dunkel
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; one of the Amethyst Mine's best stope miners in 1947, paired with the hard-drinking Red Johnson though he never touched alcohol himself; John never saw him without a smile.
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; with Pat Patten, one of the two miners whose infectious good cheer John most looked forward to seeing at the start of a shift. His son, Paul "Dunk" Dunkel, is a central figure in the same piece.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed"; stoping on 6 level off the Albion cross-cut with Red Johnson shortly after the war.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, "Red the Medicine Man"; running a short stope with Red Johnson near the winze where John worked.
- Named in "'A Rude Awakening,'" Part I of "Third Stool from the Rear," one of the crew at the barrel heater.
- Named, paired with "Red" Johnson, in the roll of "The Top Team Miners" of John's era, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 51.
Shorty Heilman
Shorty Wheeler
- Named in the Acknowledgments of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug" with his wife Peg. Disambiguated by key from Shorty Dunkel, also named on this site; no relation stated.
- Named as "Gordon ‘Shorty’ Wheeler" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "New Year’s Greetings"; paired with Heinie Leonard as the butt of the same joke.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Wisdom of Age"; subject of an unflattering 70th-birthday "paunch" photo.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "JJ Not Worth the Powder"; co-funded the author's 1984 mock presidential campaign with Heinie Leonard.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "John's Friends Looking for Place to Stash Gin-Guzzling Comrade"; co-signer of a mock letter about the author.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Jackson Strikes Back"; defended as guilty only of trying to reform Heinie Leonard.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Thundermug in the White House"; pictured, in the mock campaign literature, on the Capitol steps with the author and Adorable Jones.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Powderhorn Party Pulls Plug on Thundermug Bid"; traveled to the Mexican border raising campaign pesos for the author's mock candidacy.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Open Season Declared on Jackson"; on the mock "Federated Commission on Wild Life."
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Jackson Survives California Trip"; writes a reader's letter to John about his own California trip and neck troubles, signed from South Fork.
- Named repeatedly in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two"; his Rock-a-way restaurant and an old shared scheme for a "Café on the Mount" get a full retelling in "Shorty's Café on the Mount," and he is slated as "Director of External Affairs" in "Campaigns & Growing Pains."
- Named as "Mr. Wheeler" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Thundermug John Apologizes to His Friends, Family — Almost"; the target of a mock apology for the "poison pen" — blamed for spreading cholesterol awareness via his own prime rib and shrimp Creole, and "housebroken" by his wife Peg, though he "still can't pass a fireplug without pausing."
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Rough Troop Rides Range to Jackson's Quiet Retreat"; credited as a wildlife authority of "considerable repute" fifty years earlier, in a joking aside about a Crested Butte column.
- Named again as "Gordon 'Shorty' Wheeler" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Campaign '88 Leaves Wheeler in Las Vegas"; the mock campaign's coordinator, "rolled" in Las Vegas and reduced to pearl-diving for bus fare home.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Anything's Better Than Being Alone"; invoked as the subject of a cautionary tale about "trading" in Las Vegas, per a rambling letter from Heinie Leonard.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Lower Roost for In-Laws"; cited, with Heinie Leonard, as an old friend whose becoming respectable was "extremely hard on every bodily function."
- Pictured in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "In Respectful Memory Of"'s closing tribute page, captioned "The old chef, ‘Shorty’ Wheeler, slices his famed prime rib roast" — the same prime rib already a running joke elsewhere on this site (see "Thundermug John Apologizes to His Friends, Family — Almost").
- Named as "Gordon 'Shorty' Wheeler" in "Thundermug for President," Chapter V of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; co-conspirator of John's mock 1984 campaign, "diseased from a trip to the South" and later rolled in Las Vegas by a little old lady working her way through college.
Sid Klecker
Simon Peter Davis
Sis Parsons
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Introduction; named across the street from Hoot Owsley, "fitting his crank to the slot" of his awning in the early-morning ritual of Creede's upper businessmen.
- Named as "Sis Parson" in "Hell Cats of a Different Breed" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; her Beer and Billiards Parlor stood near Bill Lewis's grain shed.
Slim Anderson
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; the story's namesake, a professional horseman and thirty-year friend of John's who was as reckless behind the wheel of a bulldozer as he was skilled on a horse; needled John from a pallbearers' limousine and settled a bar-room dispute over being caught with Millie Kistler.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Early-Morning Call Jogs Memory of Days in Local Choir"; tried out for the Snowshoe Mountain Glee and Choir Club.
Slim Blackford
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; the story's namesake, a nickname that outlasted his birth name entirely. A butcher, then diesel-engine operator and ore weigher for Emperius Mining Company; John's favorite story of his is the casket-showroom prank he played on Mrs. McGregor in retirement.
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; his old mill lunch bench, shared with a crew of "boneheaded characters," is the frame for the tall tales that open "Truth Stretchers."
Slim Earle
Slim Meutze
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; a heavy equipment operator and coworker of John's on a 1977 Nevada gold exploration job, who stood up and told a long-winded senator at an environmental hearing to sit down. Disambiguated by key as a third "Slim" on the site, after Slim Blackford and Slim Anderson; no relation stated.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Poached Eggs for Slim"; a Nevada native and WWII Navy veteran nicknamed "Mitz," got new false teeth through the VA as a young rancher, then lost them a second time — fused inside a scorched suitcase — when a Bureau of Land Management flatbed truck caught fire from a leaking fuel barrel.
Smitty
Stanley McDonough
Stanley Parker
Stanley Weaver
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Name in Society Page Prompts Memory of Partners"; ran Stanley’s Beer Parlor, with poker in the back room, a favorite postwar Creede haunt.
- Named in "Jigaboo Bowels Out," Chapter I of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; his beer parlor is one of the landmarks between which the sidewalk dances took place.
- Named as a child of Arthur and Minnie Weaver in "Curiodditie s" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts."
Steve Haynes
- Byline of "On the Rio Grande," a mock newspaper column reprinted as "'Dunk' Recalls Feuds With Jackson" in "Echoes from the Thundermug." Per family knowledge, Cynthia Haynes's husband.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Brush With Trooper Recalls Law's Rare Visits to Creede," addressed as "Steve"; John recounts his patrol-car story to him directly.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two"; editor of John's newspaper column, challenged (in jest) to a duel with reader Dan Dennehy in "Rifle, Pen Face-Off Suggested," and drawn into the Dennehy feud again in "Can You Get Charge Out of Bed?"
Steve North
Steve Pollock
- Named in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; an ex-lawman who lived by the lumber shed and once recruited the author and his brothers to help flush a timber rattlesnake into the open, a job they abandoned as soon as they realized what he was asking.
- Named as "E.S. ‘Steve’ Pollock" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Costs, Salary Statistics Given"; Mineral County's sheriff in 1924, per a family record his bride found among old papers.
Steve Zahony
Stevens
Sue Brink
Sue Steward
T
T. Black
Tard Wardell
Ted Bennett
Ted Bucher
- Named in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; snapped the ball to Martin N. B. Holm on the play that ended with Brother Joe's game-saving tackle.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; standing with Bob Blackburn, Robert Bishop and Jimmy Mason at Jimmy Mason's 1936 birthday party.
- Named again as "Teddy Bucher" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "No Birthday Party for Him"; his nose, already reset in a fight with Bobby Oates, gets re-christened by the birthday football.
Ted Duggins
Ted Lewis
Teddy
- Named in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; hit his first home run ever off brother Joey's pitching once Miss Gortney's arrival distracted the pitcher, winning the softball game for his side.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Bloomers & Home Runs" — the same story, differently detailed, as Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; hit his first home run ever off brother Joe's pitching once Miss Gortney's arrival distracted the pitcher a second time.
Terry Ferrell
"Tex" (Tanana Cimarron)
Theodore Wheeler
Thomas Lloyd Bates
Thomas Reardon
Thomas Weaver
Thurston Bittick
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Buying a Car Big Event for a Couple of Country Boys"; saved $300 from a year's road-maintenance labor with Sam Birdsey and traveled with the author to Denver to buy his first car. Brother of Jolly Bittick, also named on this site, per family knowledge.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Gas Was Easy to Borrow"; an expert gasoline siphoner among John's Creede friends.
Tina
Tina Gonzales
Titus
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Jackson's Stab at Home Surgery Goes Up in Smoke"; an eccentric friend who arrived, sent by someone named "Tim," to treat the author's injured knee with marijuana rather than medicine. Whether Titus and the "Dr. S. Tisdal Jones" the author calls at the story's end are the same person, playing along with the joke, or two separate people is unclear from the text.
- Named in "Titus Takes the Hippocratic Oath (or curse)," Chapter IV of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; treats John's injured knee with a homemade bamboo bong rather than medicine after John's own iodine-and-pocketknife surgery fails, a variant of the story already told in "Echoes from the Thundermug."
Tom Drysdale
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Magic Age Is Five"; directed the band at Senator Phipps's annual birthday celebration, opening with "Happy Birthday" before moving into marches.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Prospectors Were a Visionary Lot Who Built the West"; listed among Creede's own everyday prospectors, working as the town band leader.
- Named as "director Thomas Drysdale" in the school-band caption in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter, leading the band at Senator Phipps's birthday party; a "Tommy Drysdale" is also listed among the band members "not identified" in the same caption, possibly the same person listed twice or a relation, not stated.
Tom Johnson
Tom Payne
Tom Porter
Tom Steven
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; a U.S. Geological Survey geologist, with Jim Ratte, among the first from the agency to visit and study Creede's geology.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; pictured with Phil Bethke under the title "The Low Riders," captioned "Geologists."
- Named at length in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," "Sore Toe a Lesson to Prospector"; a USGS colleague remembered for a hammer-smashed toe, a retired trout-fishing partnership, and a beloved mare named Sam who out-argued him on his weight.
Tom Workman
Tommy Eden
- Named in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; a house painter and paperhanger who painted and papered the Jackson family's little white house before the author's birth, and later became the boy's unwitting model for smoking a pipe upside down.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Gentlemen Smoke Pipes" — the same upside-down pipe-smoking detail as Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; "the little painter and paperhanger, who always expected wet weather."
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Twice Around the Barber Pole"; opened a barbershop opposite Al Hibbs’s on Main Street.
Tommy Nance
Tommy Phillips
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; recalled among the old friends and "pards" on John's imagined Memory Lane bus ride, and, in "The Amethyst Crew '1947,'" a leaser with Dick Lehman who ran the first diesel bulldozer in Mineral County in 1936 and later became a very able foreman.
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; Creede's Marshal and maintenance man, flown in by helicopter with the town's metal detector to pinpoint the buried nose cone of a runaway Pershing missile after grad student Maurice Chaffee found the wreckage, in "Bullseye Creede."
- The same Tommy Phillips elsewhere on the site (Creede's Marshal and maintenance man in "Please Go to Hell"), confirmed per family knowledge, here named as "Tom Phillips," foreman at Amethyst Five, in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Of Hell Cats and She Ghosts."
- Named in "'Bill Graduates to Higher Mathematics,'" Part III of "Third Stool from the Rear"; foreman over trammers Bill Horning and Fred Seyfried, baffled by Bill's arithmetic joke about tonnage.
- Pictured with Monte Larson and Harry Larson in "Favorite Photos" in Part Two of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts."
Tommy Thompson
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; a Marine Corps veteran and, with Reuben Wesander, one of the ex-servicemen who settled in Creede after the war — injured alongside Wesander in a premature explosion that killed him.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed"; mining in 63 raise with Ruben Wesander shortly after the war; severely injured in the premature blast that killed Wesander.
- Named at length in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Name in Society Page Prompts Memory of Partners"; a Marine Corps Pacific veteran; survives a near-fatal free-spooling hoist drop with the author and Gavin Skinner, then is badly injured in the premature blast that kills Reuben "Whitey" Wesander.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, "A "Runner" in 66 Raise"; knocked from a stull and fell 80 feet in the blast that killed Reuben Wesander, but kept his head covered and was not buried. Echoes tells the same accident differently.
Toots Matzen
Travis McAtee
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Jackson Recalls Building of Ore Bins"; drove the 1940 International truck that carried Creede’s miners to the Amethyst and Commodore workings, waiting for no one.
- Named in "'Didn't Have to, the Boot Had a Hole in It,'" Part I of "Third Stool from the Rear"; hauled the Commodore Mine crew to town.
Trent
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," "Rifle, Pen Face-Off Suggested"; grouped with Allen "A.J." Hosselkus as a regular companion, sidelined this time by mending knees. Surname not given.
- Named again as "Trent" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "The Road Starts Here"; had "his hands full" convincing a Hosselkus hunting party that none of the author's Herefords qualified as elk.
Tsali
Ty Poxson
U
Uncle Bud
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; Zero Ott's uncle, taken by Zero to a brothel in Alamosa in "The Hog Killin' (1947)," as told by George Hatfield; the trip ends with a drunken car wreck into a farmer's hogs on the road home. First name only; disambiguated by key from Bud Miles, named in "Dedication"; no relation stated.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, "The Big Kentuckian"; tipped up Pete Morowski's pint of bourbon for "two fast gurgles" and passed it to Zero.
- Named in an untitled barroom vignette, Part I of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 8; boiled and ate the neck meat of a rutting buck with near-disastrous digestive results, then had to be hosed off and put to bed by Howard after soiling himself on the walk home.
"Uncle Herb"
V
Van
Vesta G. Jackson
Vic Miller
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Mule Skinners of 40-Years Ago Were a Hardy Breed"; one of the Emperius Mining Co. skinners during the author's first years there. Not confirmed related to Whitey or Olrich Miller, also named on this site.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter IV, "Victor Miller and Noel Oates"; as "Victor Miller," photographed with Noel Oates: "Vic was a mule-skinner in The Commodore Hole." The match to Echoes' Vic Miller rests on the name and the job.
Vivi Leonard
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "Trials in Smog City"; Heinie Leonard's wife, recalled for once setting the clocks ahead an hour on Daylight Saving Eve.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "'Urpsus Horribilious' Faces Liquor Cost Hike"; her beauty-salon allowance gets cut in half to fund Heinie's liquor stand.
- Named as "Vivi" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "Dog Gets Sharp Lesson"; cries happy tears as Heinie takes Dugan off to be neutered, believing it a knighting.
Vivian Leonard
- Named in the Acknowledgments of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug", thanked for having "removed one terror from the streets" — her husband Heinie.
- Named as "Vivi" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Jackson Strikes Back"; Heinie Leonard's "patient wife," joked about trying to dispose of him.
- Named as "Vivian" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "Sympathy Overflows His Heart"; has to remind Heinie of things that used to come naturally.
W
W. S. Lewis
- Named in the Introduction of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; ran a grocery store extending credit to dependable patrons in 1920s Creede, alongside A. H. Major.
- Named as "Mr. Lewis" and "Bill Lewis" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Magic Age Is Five"; ran the grocery store later occupied by Edna Miles's gift shop, delivered coal by truck, worked behind the meat counter, always found a lad a job for a nickel or dime, and with his wife Bessie housed and fed struggling Depression families. "W. S." is presumed to be the same Lewis called "Bill" here, though this is not independently confirmed.
- His grain and salt shed appears in a front-matter photograph in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug" captioned "A common scene in summer behind the Wm. S. Lewis Grain & Salt Shed in Mid Creede" (sheep-herders' burros waiting to load).
Wade Brown
Wade Ellett
Wallace I. Leary
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; a prospector whose encouraging assays, taken 45 years earlier, steered John to his own most rewarding prospecting work in Mineral Creek. Identified through family knowledge as "Doc" Leary, a veterinarian from Alamosa.
- Named at length in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Doc Leary Battles Handicap"; a veterinarian and archery rival, self-deprecating about a poor tournament finish.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part One," in "'Urpsus Horribilious' Faces Liquor Cost Hike"; a bare bow archery competitor at Ernie Wilkinson's tournaments.
Wallace Leary
- Named as "Wallace" in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; made a heart with his fingers to tease the author over Hortense Burton, and is seated with the author in a porch photograph identified as Wallace Leary.
- Named as "Wallie" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Big Chief Boogers" — the same story, differently detailed, as Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; made a heart with his fingers to tease the author over Hortense Burton.
- Named as "Mayor Wallace Leary" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Toils and Foibles of the Depression Kid," approving student hiring for street and alley maintenance; presumed the same "Wallace"/"Wallie" of the Once Around and Echoes Chapter 1 schoolyard stories grown into a civic role, though not confirmed. Not the same person as the separately keyed Wallace I. Leary, identified through family knowledge as a veterinarian ("Doc") from Alamosa.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; kneeling with the author, Bernard Shaw, David Manning and Jack Thompson at Jimmy Mason's 1936 birthday party.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," in "No Birthday Party for Him"; kneeling with the author at Jimmy Mason's 1936 birthday party, the same photograph described under "Memories."
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Rough Troop Rides Range to Jackson's Quiet Retreat"; prospected silver-bearing rock near a volcanic neck along East Mineral Creek, on a route later ridden by a horseback troop returning to the author's Spring Creek retreat.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Last Valentine From David"; received "the full complement" of childhood Valentines, unlike the author.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Prospectors Were a Visionary Lot Who Built the West"; listed among Creede's own everyday prospectors, working as an accountant by trade.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Dog a Big Help on Prospecting Expedition"; in 1964, passed along a 40-year-old prospect near a volcanic neck where the author later found a sample running 118 ounces of silver.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Introduction; lowered the awning of Tomkins Hardware Company, "a large building also housing the bank," in the morning ritual of Creede's upper businessmen.
Wallace Wright
Wally Johnson
Walt Randolph
- Named, paired with Howard Midkiff, in the roll of "The Top Team Miners" of John's era, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 51.
- Possibly the same Walt Randolph named in the roll of top team miners in this Part, though not confirmed directly; in an untitled barroom vignette, Part V of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 46, ran a raise near a stope broken into by tommyknockers' "forty feet for free."
Walt Wilson
- Named in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as one of the regulars at Soapy Birdsey's nightly poker game, teased by Soapy over his courtship of a widow named Mae.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "The Magic of Barbershops" — the same poker-game joke, differently detailed, as Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; teased over his courtship of a widow, here left unnamed rather than called Mae.
Walter Dilley
Walter Waldo
Walter Workman
- Named in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" among the boys spellbound by Tanana Cimarron's campfire stories, and, with David Manning, one of the few mesa boys who owned boots.
- Named as "Walter" and, later, by his full name, in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; Dollie Workman's son, teamed with Scooter and the author to hunt ducks, had his black cap shot off in a prank at "The Kansas Club," and is remembered as having "lost his life on the beaches of Iwo Jima."
- The duck-hunting story and his death on Iwo Jima are told again, nearly word for word, in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "A White Cross on Iwo Jima" — see the cross-reference note on both pages.
Warren Browning Woodruff
Wayne
Wendel Wilson
Whitey Miller
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; one of the old friends and "pards" John imagines rejoining on a bus ride down Memory Lane.
- Named as "Vernon 'Whitey' Miller" in "'Better Knock the Next Time You Drop In,'" Part IV of "Third Stool from the Rear"; driving a parallel drift on the Robinson claim, was nearly holed into by John when a foreman misjudged how close their two veins had converged. Not confirmed as the same unnamed miner called "Whitey" whose fatal fall is described in Part III.
Wick
Will Dietzel
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Hard Water"; the author and Inez's Creede neighbor, whose pet groundhog Henrietta hibernated in their cellar and opened a water valve.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Bless the Ladies"; newly the assistant Forest Service ranger in Creede, rolled his Chevy Suburban down an embankment and straddled the kitchen of Bill Leggitt's home trying to avoid a dog, then greeted Mrs. Leggitt from the wreckage with, "My name is Will Dietzel. I'm new in town."
Will Kroll
William "Bill" Swinehart Sr.
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; a rancher and moonshiner on Snowshoe Mountain whose long-inactive still John and his brother Scooter stumbled onto while elk hunting. No relation to Kenny Swinehart, also named in the manuscript, is stated or confirmed.
- Named as "Bill Swinehart, county sheriff following William Orthen" in "Curiodditie s" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; tentatively this same William "Bill" Swinehart Sr. given the generational fit, though the book does not confirm which Swinehart entry on this site (Sr. or Jr.) held the office -- unconfirmed.
William "Bill" Tingley
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; a French Canadian sawmiller and moonshiner, a favorite guest at the Jackson table, who died penniless as a vagrant on Larimer Street in Denver.
- Named in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; his moonshine still was jokingly blamed, along with late-night fires, for the unplanned babies of Depression-era Creede.
- Named in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" in "Bill Tingley — Sawmiller and Moonshiner," a French-Canadian sawmiller who lived in a one-room Creede cabin over winter, kept the author and Scooter supplied with western magazines, once nearly burned his cabin down while drunk, and suffered from a chronic hernia that periodically required a trip to a Del Norte doctor.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Costs, Salary Statistics Given"; his Sawmill Gulch still is credited as H. Heinie Leonard's real 1924 schooling.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Powder Smoke and Sawdust from a Colorful Creede Character" — different stories than his own dedicated section in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; a sawmiller and moonshiner who supplied the author and Scooter with western magazines, survived repeated brushes with his own steam-powered saw blade, and was wounded by dynamite-driven cast-iron pellets while scrapping machinery at the old Humphreys Mill.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Let's Hear That One Again"; supplied the author's cowboy magazines.
William Charles "Scoot" Jackson
- Full profile
- Named in John Jackson's 1988 tribute to Joel; serving on Guam alongside Pete Walker during the Saipan/Tinian fighting
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; the "crapper" incident in front of Mrs. Eva Snow, and repeated attempts to accidentally injure John with his own guns
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; recalled with LeRoy Brown among the old friends and "pards" on John's imagined Memory Lane bus ride.
- Called "Scooter" in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; helped sabotage Ed Snow's Model T with rocks under a jacked-up wheel, and was deputized by Steve Pollock to help flush a rattlesnake from the lumber shed.
- Named "Scooter" in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; teamed with Walter Workman and the author to hunt ducks around Mineral County with a $7.00 Montgomery Ward shotgun.
- Named as "Scooter" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Extra Curricular Activities"; with Joel, deputized by Mom Jo to walk the author to his first day of school.
- Named as "Scooter Jackson" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Creede Ragamuffins Battled Valley Teams"; one of the 1941 Bulldogs' guards.
- Named as "Scooter" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Smooth as a Biscuit"; sank a winze with the author in the Holy Moses mine, and was responsible for cleaning out the tainted First Gulch water tank.
- Named again as "Scooter Jackson" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; one of "The Dragon Slayers of Moonshine Mesa," photographed in 1929 with Lee Davis, Joel Jackson, Frank Davis and Raymond Lane.
- Named as "Scooter" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "It's There — All You Need Is Shovel, Willing Back"; with Gust Jackson, dug by hand a water-supply hole for the Wright-Williams reduction mill behind Creede's cemetery, passing through a manganese-rich stratum that assayed .23 ounces of gold per ton.
- Named again as "Scooter Jackson" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Rough Troop Rides Range to Jackson's Quiet Retreat"; twenty-three years earlier, joined the author and Gene Wardell on a camping-prospecting trip along a route later ridden by a horseback troop.
- Named as "William Charles 'Scoot' Jackson" in "Getting Even"'s background note; per family knowledge, used to call his brother John the "Do Gooder" for the saintly reputation John cultivated for himself in his early newspaper-column years.
- Named as "William C. (Scooter)" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Here and There"; listed, with Joel T., among the two brothers who predeceased the author in his own mock obituary.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter III, "Wedding Bells and Chesapeake Retrievers"; as "Scooter," helping "Mom Jo" raise strawberries in Missouri while John was back in Creede with their father.
- Named in the class-photo roster in "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," front matter, as "Scooter Jackson"; third row. Named again in "Bearly Heroes," Chapter III, as John's brother and fellow hunter, and again in "Smooth as Silk A'Goin' or A'Comin'," Chapter I, hauling ore and drinking from the same tainted First Gulch water tank.
- Named as "Scooter" in "Bearly Heroes," Chapter III of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," John's brother and fellow hunter in the 1941 camp.
- Named as "Scooter" in "'Chalk One Up for Blackberry,'" Part II of "Third Stool from the Rear"; sank the winze on the Phoenix claim with John.
- Named as "Scooter" in an untitled barroom vignette, Part III of "Third Stool from the Rear," page 29, hanging a troublesome contractor up by his overalls in the Kanawha drift.
- Pictured as "Scooter" in the 1929 "Trio" and 1945 "Reunion" photographs in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts."
- Central to "Looking The Devil Right In The Eye" in Part Two of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts" as "Scooter"; trapped with John in the Phoenix claim shaft during the 1949–1951 dynamite accident, and credited with the nerve to keep signaling rather than climb to safety.
William E. F. Bates
William J. "Bill" Russell
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," "Short Stuff"; cross-eyed Mineral County commissioner and stepfather of Sam and Al Birdsey, sold John his first vehicle's Certificate of Title and told a hitchhiker story on himself.
- Named on the reproduced 1943 Colorado Certificate of Title in "T-Bone" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; sold John his 1916 Ford Model T pickup on December 20, 1942.
William Thomas Jackson
- Full profile
- Referred to as "Dad" in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; worked part-time as a butcher for the A. H. Major Grocery Store and taught young John arithmetic using peanuts on Saturday nights.
- Named in the Acknowledgments of John's book "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; also named in the Introduction as Undersheriff to Bill Orthen, intervening in a moonshiners' shooting feud over a plugged irrigation ditch.
- Called "Dad Bill" in Chapter I of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; hoped for another son, cared for the dying Charlie Matson in his last days, and pulled a mule-dropping prank on Lee Skinner at the CF&I bunkhouse in Wagon Wheel Gap.
- Called "Dad Bill" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Gentlemen Smoke Pipes"; cared for Charlie Matson in his final days and threatened "the bullet belt" once he learned of the author's tobacco theft.
- Named again as "Bill Jackson"/"my dad" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Minnie Pearl Was a Smart Mining Mule"; foreman of the Reynolds Tunnel renovation project.
- Named again as "Dad Bill" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Hard Water"; cursed the new water system daily even as it saved his sons an hour of hauling water each Monday.
- Named as "Bill Jackson" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Jackson Recalls Building of Ore Bins"; foreman under Superintendent Erick "Swede" Nelson on the Commodore 5 tunnel restoration and ore-bin construction.
- Named as "Dad Bill" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Family Feud Follows Forgetfulness"; doctored Inez's hand alongside Mom Jo after the author injured it in a door in 1951.
- Named as "my dad, Bill" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Moves Keep 'Em Hopping"; cobbed high-grade ore from wall rock with a moil and cobbing plate at the Champion Mine in 1910, when Charlie Gratton leased the property.
- Named again as "Old Bill Jackson" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Three," "Faithful Mate Never Forgot Him"; quoted for the adage, "If you can't think of anything to say you better keep your lips buttoned," recalled while the author comforted a grieving widower.
- Named again as "Dad Bill" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Marriages Weather Storms With Love"; the author's uncertain childhood read of his parents' marriage is set against the discovery of Mom Jo's poem "The Empty Room," written after his death from cancer in 1957.
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter III, "Wedding Bells and Chesapeake Retrievers"; as "Dad Bill," whose Model T wood hauler ran backwards down Quinlevan grade and overturned with his dog Scrappy; also pictured in a photograph captioned "William (Billy) Jackson, Square Set Timberman."
- Named as "Dad Bill" in the Dedication of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts," which closes by thanking him and Mom Jo, who "never gave up hope that I would make them proud."
- Central to "The Bullet Belt" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; administered John's exaggerated childhood punishments with a razor strop or an emptied revolver holster from a bullet belt.
- Central to "The Lawbreakers" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts" as "William T. 'Billy' Jackson"; undersheriff to William Orthen through the late 1920s and 1930s, breaking up a 1932 moonshiners' feud and flattening Creede's town marshal with a left cross.
- Quoted as "Bill Jackson, economy-wise treasurer of Creede and Mineral County" in the reprinted UP article "Mining Town Won't Quit" in Part Two of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts."
William Thomas Jackson (1856–1917)
- Father of William Thomas Jackson (1895–1957); died 1917 at Woodcroft Hospital, Pueblo, per his own death certificate (located 2026).
- Referred to as "old Bullprick" in his grandson John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; per the manuscript, committed to "Roselawn Sanitarium" and remembered by fellow miners as "crazier than hell." His own death certificate has since confirmed this was a conflation with Roselawn Cemetery, Pueblo, where he was in fact buried — the actual facility was Woodcroft Hospital, Pueblo. See his son's page for full research detail.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "In Respectful Memory Of," the memorial his grandson John dedicated to him and his wife Selma; born March 1856, Siler City, N.C., per the book's own text, matching his death certificate exactly.
- Pictured in a front-matter photograph in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug" captioned "William T. Jackson Sr. & son Rasty, Famed Johnson Bar Miner," with the verse "You mess with me and I'll stop your clock, I once drove steel through solid rock." The same photograph is captioned "Claude & William T. Jackson Sr." in "Please Go to Hell."
William Walter Helms
William Webster Bates
William Wilson Woodruff
Willie
Willie Lea Bates
Willis (Rocky Mountain Fever)
Win Rowe
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Two," "Bloody Palm Gulch"; a senior geologist whose black lab, Kimberlite, features in the same story.
- Named as "Geologist Win Rowe" in "Grounds for Manslaughter," Chapter V of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug," a fellow snorer whose black labrador Kimberlite tired of his solo performances; named again, as "Winthrop Rowe" of Reno, sending a scorching letter about John's mock 1984 campaign in "Thundermug for President," below.
Winston (barber)
Witt Thomas
- Named (once) in Chapter II of "Once Around the Thunder Mug" as the owner of a corral Bill Tingley passed on his way to intercept Gram Lane's leftover pancakes.
- Named again in Chapter III of "Once Around the Thunder Mug"; the author and Lee Davis were perched on his corral rail when his white mare went into a difficult foaling, saved by Grandma Lane.
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "A Short Tail About Ginger"; subbed as veterinarian for Ginger, Soapy Birdsey's dog, after the accident, without success.
- Named again in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Toils and Foibles of the Depression Kid"; an oldster who joined the county road crew as a laborer.
Woodrow Weaver
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed"; Lee Skinner’s brother-in-law, remembered for a lunch-bucket prank with Lee’s false teeth.
- Named again as "Councilman Woodrow Weaver" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Memories"; holding down the 5th Street bridge with Les Turnipseed, Gavin Skinner (printed "Bavin") and Gordon Hosselkus during the 1948 flood.
- Named as the lender of the burro "Jack" in "Bearly Heroes," Chapter III of "Get Grandpa Off The Thunder Mug"; not the same "Woody" whose pickup leaks deer blood in "Aspen Short Cuts," Chapter I, above.
- Named as "Woodrow" among Arthur and Minnie Weaver's children in "Curiodditie s" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts."
Woody Wintz
- Named in John Jackson's memoir "Please Go to Hell"; revealed, in the closing lines of John's "Memory Lane" bus-ride poem, as the driver himself, with Charlie Slaght riding beside him. Family history research identifies him as Woodrow Wintz, son of Alvin Wintz and Annie Jemmison, brother of Alma Wintz Dooley and Edith Wintz (who married Paul Davis).
- Presumed the same as "Woodrow Wintz," one of Creede's heavyweight boxers, billed as the "Silver Haired Kid from the Silver City," in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Boxers Highlighted Old Traveling Circuses" — not confirmed the same Wintz who drove the bus in "Please Go to Hell."
- Named in "Who Upset the Thunder Mug," Chapter II, "Two Photograph Pages"; as "Woodrow Wintz," in the same four-man photograph; "Woodrow" matches the full name the site's family research gives for Woody.
- Named in "'A Rude Awakening,'" Part I of "Third Stool from the Rear"; flipped a rock at the drowsing tunnel horse Teddy's exposed penis once too often and was seized by the collar and shaken for it.
- Named in the opening lines of "Ode To Lynn 'Key' LeZotte" in "Hell Cats And She Ghosts," among the Creede miners LeZotte "knew."
- Named in "Hell Cats" in Part One of "Hell Cats And She Ghosts"; stood back-to-back with John near the bar during the 1949 Rainbow Bar and Grill brawl.
Woody Woods
- Named in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Wet Bags and Dry Flies"; proprietor of "The Silver Dollar Bar and Grill."
- Named as "Woody" in "Echoes from the Thundermug," "Miners After World War II: A Unique Breed"; stepped between the author and an armed, threatening ex-sailor, and helped pull patrons clear of a gun-wielding barmaid at Tucker’s Bar and Grill.