Thanks to Bill Hosmer for the information on the aircraft. I KNEW he
would know the details! My aunt Shirley Olson Warcup (’49) told of some
boys she remembered being in the jail while she and a friend were
skating. The picture I’m attaching appears to be taken in the old police
station / skating rink warming house. The jail cells are in the
background and the floor appears to be planks. That is the way the floor
was in the 50s-60s when I skated, although there was then a wall between
the cells and the warming room. This was before the little concrete
block jail was built near the alley. I remember an incident involving a
prisoner in the concrete block jail. I was at the Standard station
getting gas in my car when a Canadian pulled in and asked what that
little building in the alley was. I told him that was the jail. He said,
” Well then, your jail is on fire!” Russell ‘Sadie’ Pigeon was working
at the station for his brother Bruce, who was the owner at that time. He
grabbed a large fire extinguisher and jumped in my car. Bruce called
Frank Flynn to come up and open the jail. It took Frank quite a while to
get there, slipping his clutch and all. The smoke was getting worse and
worse out of the vents and around the door and we started to worry about
whoever might be in the jail. Frank finally got there and opened the
door and I could see a mattress burning in the back cell and a guy
laying on his back on the floor. Russell crawled in under the smoke to
put the flames out and I grabbed the guy by his shirt and dragged him
out onto the sidewalk. He appeared to be unconscious as he lay there in
front of Frank and me. Russell came out and just as he did, the guy
opened his eyes and was going to make a run for it! Frank yelled and
Russell blasted the guy in the face with the extinguisher! It pretty
well ended his escape attempt and had him hoping he wouldn’t get more of
it. After the smoke cleared, Russell asked, “What do we do with him
now?” Frank said, Throw him back in there, he lit the fire.” We left the
smoldering mattress outside and threw him back in and Frank locked the
door on him–after a few words with the guy, that I won’t repeat here!
There were a couple cells in the building but the prisoners generally
weren’t locked in the cells, just in the building. They had a small hole
carved through the plank door, through which their wives and girlfriends
could pass them cigarettes and candy bars etc. Do you suppose this jail
would pass the code for lockups today? It probably cured a few criminals
from ever wanting to come back!

This is a picture of Mona Dionne Johnson and her friend, in the mid
40s–I think in the PD. Right Mona?

Dick