By Roy Vataja

There is a certain hubris that each generation carries — a self-confident yet misguided belief that “our” generation is wrestling with issues that no one has dealt with before. In some ways it is true, today we don’t have to worry much about smallpox epidemics wiping out entire families, and similarly, folks in the 1920s did not have concerns about global nuclear war. In that spirit, here are three Aberdeen stories from the past that (loosely) cover the same ground that we are treading today.

That Nigerian Prince was once a Russian banker…

LOCKED IN PRISON, RUSSIAN WANTS JEWELER’S HELP; OFFERS $160,000 AS SHARE — Somewhere, deep down in a deep, dreary dungeon, such as only the Spanish Inquisition could contrive, with nothing but his own thoughts and the scurrying rats for companions, sad, sad Sadowski, the disgraced Russian banker, sits vainly waiting for the message of succor that will never come, while his beautiful daughter, (undoubtedly her name is Senorita Sadie Sadowski) is faithful to her father, wearily paces the salt sands, and ever looking westward toward America for the ship that will bear the kind-hearted sucker who is to furnish the funds to release her father from the aforementioned dark, dreary dungeon.

Oh, it is a sad, sad story, which grows sadder each day, because most everyone in America, is wise, and because nowadays, the sucker never succors.

One of those delightfully mysterious letters addressed in a foreign hand on a quaint envelope, and written on that barred paper, which because Sadowski always uses it, must be the particular brand furnished Russian bankers, reached Emil PFund yesterday. It relates the same old story of the million rubles, or $480,000 in our money which the banker has stolen from a Russian banking house. He has been arrested in England — there is a clipping from an English newspaper to prove it — and for some reason has been incarcerated in a Spanish prison.

Now the money is hidden in the United States, Sadowski wants Mr. Pfund, whom “he knows only through good references as to his honesty” to put up the necessary simoleans to effect his release. Then Mr. Sadowski is going to divvy up with Mr. Pfund. Really it is a “touching” story. Mr. Pfund is asked to communicate by cable with Sadowski, a peculiarly worded message furnished. There is $160,000 in it for Mr. Pfund — should he bite.

The Russian banker game is old having been worked many times in this country. Those who have been so foolish as to answer the letter, have oftentimes been lured into advancing from $2,000 to $5,000 in the belief that they were to receive several hundred thousand dollars. None of them have ever received it — not yet. Of late years, realizing that the game is growing old, the bunco men working the scheme have been sending letters of this description broadcast. However, so much publicity has been given the fraud that few have been trapped for some time. Authorities have never been able to locate the confidence men. — Aberdeen Bulletin, January 12, 1911

Self-driving cars will someday be all the rage…

DRIVERLESS CAR HAS WILD RIDE — Swerving to one side to pass another car, missing it by an inch, and then swerving back again to dodge a large pile of gravel and sacks filled with concrete, a driverless car this morning ran away in an alley between Third and Fourth Streets on Broadway, crossed I Street and stopped against a wall on the high school lawn. The car was undamaged.

The car is owned by Frank Gardner, general manager of the New York Oil Company of Washington, and in charge of the test well on Fairview Heights. Mr. Gardner declared that when he left the residence of S.E. Adair, 112 East Third Street, to get to his car, which he had parked in the alley, he saw only the tracks. He followed the tracks, tracing its progress down the alley, past the other car and the concrete and gravel pile to the high school.

Workmen on I Street saw the car approaching and when it dodged the concrete and gravel pile hurried to “bawl out” the driver for running on fresh concrete. The workmen said the car could hardly have pursued its course more accurately if piloted by a driver. — Aberdeen Bulletin, August 4, 1925

Finally, the ability to take a non-event and blow it totally out of proportion is far from new…

‘COP’ RIDES ON AMBULANCE, AND CROWD FOLLOWS, SCENTING TRAGEDY — The ease with which a crowd can gather was demonstrated yesterday when an ambulance call was turned in from a house at the corner of First and Chicago streets. A policeman happened to be at the barn when the call came in and he was impressed into service to carry the stretcher.

Down the street went the ambulance with the alarm gong loudly clanging and the blue coat riding on the driver’s seat. The appearance of the ambulance, the presence of the policeman, the clanging gong and the rapid movement of the vehicle aroused the people who saw it, and with one accord they all turned and ran after the speeding ambulance. Others saw the rush and joined ‘in the procession.’

“What’s the matter?” gasped a fat man as he waddled in the wake of the throng,

“Dunno,” replied another, as he speeded and passed slower ones in the race.

”Look at the cop on the ambulance,” cried a watcher in a doorway attracted by the gong. “Somebody must be shot,” and bareheaded he hotfooted it from his home and joined the mad rush.

Somebody heard his last remark, and instantly the word passed that a man had been shot and before the rush finally ended it was three men who had been killed. As the rushing, panting throng drew up at the house where the ambulance stopped, inquiry was on every lip.

“How’d it happen?” said everybody in concert.

“Who’s the man?” squeaked a thin man with a high falsetto as he mopped the perspiration from his bare — very bare — brow and gasped for breath.

“Did da gat da faller?” inquired a light-haired individual with a red necktie and a little round derby.

And so on all down the line. It was estimated that fully 500 men, women, and children crowded around the ambulance and the house, everybody asking of everybody else about the trouble. Nobody knew. They only knew that they had joined the rush because other people were there. From every street in the neighborhood came the populace, even to bareheaded women wheeling baby carriages and in all conditions of morning toilette. All wanted to get in on the excitement.

Finally, the policeman emerged from the house and quietly informed some of the crowd that a man in the house had been taken sick and had called the ambulance to take him to the hospital.

That was all. Another sensation had been spoiled and sorrowfully the crowd dispersed, each claiming that he had ran because the other fellow did.

And all because a policeman rode with the driver on an ambulance. — Aberdeen Bulletin, June 21, 1909

Roy Vataja is the son of Finnish immigrants and very cynical that humans will ever achieve the wisdom they are capable of.