ReachfortheSky,Pilgrim!

By:KenBuehler

Cowboy actor John Wayne used that line in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance in 1962. You’ve heard that and similar directives in any number of silver screen scenarios.

The cops have a deserted cabin in the woods surrounded. A window breaks, there’s a volley of gunfire and over the bullhorn the chief calls out to the gangsters holed up inside, “We’ve got you surrounded, come out with your hands up.” It makes sense. “Hands Up!” is a common command on either side of the law. You would think that something as simple as that would have been around forever. Not so!

Meet Ezra Allen Miner. Ezra was often called Bill by his friends, and he didn’t have many of those outside of prison. He grew up in a small town in central Michigan south of Lansing. The year was 1846. After his father dies, young Ezra moves to California where he falls in with some bad men. Not notorious, or successful, just bad.

The gang starts out robbing stage coaches, rustling cattle and stealing horses. But all they really succeed at is getting caught. Ezra spends 33 of his first 55 years of life behind bars for one crime or another. When he’s finally let out he leaves California and heads north to Canada to join forces with several of his old cellmates. Soon they are up to no good and they’re still no good at it.

After several failed attempts to procure ill-gotten gains through smuggling, in the summer of 1903 the trio of bandits decide to rob a train, even though the season for train robberies had long since passed. Furthermore, none of the outlaws knew the first thing about holding up a train.

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On Saturday night, Sept. 19, 1903, the masked bandits set out to rob the Oregon Railroad & Navigation company passenger train bound for Chicago. They plan to jump the train in the small town of Clarnie, about 10 miles east of Port- land. But their plan goes awry when the train speeds through Clarnie without stopping. A week later they try again and again they fail. This time one of the trio gets caught and rats out the others, who then flee back into Canada.

Afterlayinglowforawhile,they are ready to try it again. At 9:30 p.m. on a foggy Sept. 10, 1904 the desperados stop and rob Canadian Pacific’s Transcontinental Express Train #1 in a small town 40 miles east of Vancouver where the locomotive stops to take on water. It is the first successful train robbery in Canadian history.

It’s quite a haul. They get away with $6,000 in gold dust, $1,000 in cash and $50,000 in US Government bonds and, strangely enough, another $250,000 in negotiable Australian Securities.

The train’s brakeman, William Abbott, escapes the robbery and runs back to the nearest town and reports that Miner, the “Gentleman Robber” told the passengers and crew to do something that they had never heard of before.

The command that was to become a standard in robberies, bank heists, hold-ups and arrests ever sense was first spoken by Ezra Miner, at gunpoint, on Sept. 10, 1904 in Canada when he originated the phrase, “Hands Up!”

…..And so you see, if you work it hard enough it all comes back to the railroad!