The Drunken Theft at the Cadwell Building
A laborer finds his sobriety and his money have both vanished in a late-night scuffle.
Charles Keene, who is engaged in working on the sewer, is usually a temperate young man, but on Monday night some influence contributed to his forgetting his prohibition principles and he got as full as a boiled owl. His friends tried to care for him and take him home, but they got no farther than the rear of the Cadwell building, where drowsy slumber overtook Keene, and despite his companions’ efforts and protests he laid down and tried to wear off the effects of the intoxicants he had imbibed by pounding his ear against mother earth. He remembers that later on a couple of men rolled him over, and one said, ‘Let’s take his watch,’ while the other objected; but Keene was too nearly dead to the world to have more than a hazy recollection of what took place. When he awoke and pulled himself together he found his finger ring, watch, chain and other jewelry had been safely stored in one of his pockets, but that $80, of which he had been the possessor, had taken wings and flown away. Mr. Keene is now of the impression that surnames are not always fittingly bestowed.
“He got as full as a boiled owl.”
Public intoxication and theft remain persistent issues for laboring populations in growing cities. While the Cadwell building has long since been lost to the wrecking ball, the narrative of a vulnerable worker being preyed upon in an alleyway remains a sad, recurring feature of Yakima's urban life.
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