October 5, 1999

1912

Compiled by Kaitlin Trowbridge

The Pliska airplane exhibition: On July 4, John Pliska came to Odessa to exhibit his homemade airplane at the Independence Day celebration. Pliska immigrated to the United States from Austria in 1897, working odd jobs in Central Texas and New Mexico before seeking his fortune in West Texas. When he settled down in Midland in 1905, he became the county’s first naturalized citizen of the United States. He established his own blacksmith business there several years later. On Nov. 19, 1911, Robert G. Fowler landed his Wright Flyer II in Midland and inspired Pliska to build his own aircraft. After studying Fowler’s plane, Pliska and his friend Gray Coggin, a chauffeur and auto mechanic, constructed their own plane from spare parts in Pliska’s blacksmith shop. It became the first airplane built and flown in the state of Texas. Unfortunately, the historical significance of Pliska’s plane hardly impressed some of the tough customers in Odessa. When the roughness of the makeshift runway prevented the aircraft from taking off, cowboys who had paid admission to witness the spectacle demanded their money back, and an ugly scene developed. Pliska and Coggin had to carry their plane back to Midland in a wagon. That night, the discouraged pair disassembled the plane and stored it in the rafters of the blacksmith shop, where it remained until the building was torn down in 1962. At that time, the Pliska family donated the plane to the City of Midland. The restored airplane is now on display at Midland International Airport.

Arson at train depot: Oldtimers recalled the time in 1912 when a group of cowboys exercised an early version of urban renewal. The cowboys frequently gathered at the Texas & Pacific Railway depot on the east side of Grant Street after hours to play poker in the depot’s waiting room. One night, the cardplayers decided the railroad needed a new depot. They reasoned that torching the building would provide the railroad the proper incentive, so the men cut high cards to determine which of them would do the honors. The arsonist (whose name has not survived for posterity) got two barrels of gasoline which were conveniently sitting outside the waiting room on a loading platform. The unknown cowboy then went to Charlie Beardsley’s livery stable, "borrowed" a bale of hay and positioned it under the gasoline barrels. As he set fire to the hay, it ignited the gasoline, causing an explosion that destroyed the depot. The gleeful group of cowboys then fired their pistols into the air so they could alert the town to their handiwork.

Headlines

-- Odessa is briefly quarantined in January after an outbreak of meningitis.

-- Rankin supplants Upland as the principal town of Upton County after the railroad opts to build its tracks along Spring Creek Draw, toward F.E. Rankin’s water well.

-- New Mexico is admitted as the 47th state on Jan. 6 and Arizona follows as the 48th on Feb. 14.

-- Capt. Robert Scott and four others reach South Pole on Jan. 17, but all perish on return leg of trip.

-- Passenger liner Titanic strikes iceberg in North Atlantic on its first commercial trip on April 14. It sinks with the loss of 1,517 lives.

-- Would-be assassin shoots former president Theodore Roosevelt from a distance of six feet on Oct. 14. Roosevelt, now a candidate of the Progressive Party, survives because bullet strikes a thick copy of a speech in his coat pocket.

-- Woodrow Wilson elected president, defeating Roosevelt and incumbent William Howard Taft.

-- Western novelist Zane Grey publishes "Riders of the Purple Sage" which would become his most popular book.

-- Jim Thorpe wins pentathlon and decathlon as United States wins 23 gold medals at the Olympic Games in Stockholm. Thorpe’s medals are taken away in 1913 after it was learned he played semi-professional baseball in 1909.

Information is drawn from news accounts, archives and other historical records.

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