Letters

11-9-99

Dear Professor Lyman and Editors, Re:Arrowhead Trail and Charles E Bigelow [Summer 1999, 24264]

Great article Mr Bigelow lived in Dad's office in the Pickett Building, St George, Utah, for scores of years Always ate dinner at our home. I knew him from the 1930s on. He sold me a 1929 Studebaker as long as a train, also gave us two dogs.

And although he was crippled, he never lost a leg—was always a proud and self-sufficient man Mr Pulsipher [Howard Pulsipher, who remembered Bigelow as a "poor old man with only one leg"] had a tendency to "pull a long bow," as Dad used to say. He [Mr Bigelow] was never a"poor old man." He never borrowed or begged—had ample resources to pay his own way and support a wife

He left all his records to Dad—Ellis J. Pickett—and we gave them to Dixie College for safekeeping.

Just the other day I saw some pictures of him at my brother's house. Early on, he purchased burial lots for himself and wife in St George Cemetery

I remember him looking out the windows of my office in the Pickett Building and saying,"Charlie, some day up to eighty cars a day will pass by this road, Highway 91."

Attorney Ralph Hafen, Salt Lake City, has spent years collecting Charles Bigelow info.

Thanks again for a special article,

Charles M Pickett Hurst, Texas

Editors' note: In a phone conversation about the letter, Mr. Pickett called Charles Bigelow a "fine, fine man." He said that you could always tell when Mr. Bigelow was in town because there was a big brown streak on the left side of any automobile he drove; while driving, he would chew on a cigar and spit the tobacco juice out the window.