Alex @SFBayTahoe - Twitter Profile

Alex

@SFBayTahoe

4 days ago

Guess we know why Bivens was in AAA all year.. #SFGiants

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SFBayTahoe retweeted

Echoes of War

@EchoesofWarYT

6 days ago

In 1895, the United States Post Office handed a mail route across northern Montana to a 62 year old woman who had been born into slavery. She kept it for eight years. The story that followed her the rest of her life was that she never missed a day. Her name was Mary Fields. She was born in Tennessee around 1832 and was enslaved until the end of the Civil War. Afterward she worked as a chambermaid on a Mississippi steamboat, and somewhere in those years she became close with a woman named Mother Amadeus, an Ursuline nun. In the 1880s, Mother Amadeus went to Montana to run a mission school and nearly died of pneumonia. Mary got on a train and went out there to nurse her, and then simply stayed. She spent about ten years at St. Peter's Mission near Cascade doing the work nobody else could do. She hauled freight in from town, handled the horse teams, did the repairs, ran the henhouse, grew the vegetables. She stood around six feet tall, weighed close to 200 pounds, smoked homemade cigars, drank, swore, and carried a pistol. The nuns liked her. Church leadership did not. Complaints kept going up the chain about the language and the smoking and her habit of getting into it with the male hired hands. Around 1894 the bishop had her removed. The story that everyone in Montana told afterward is that the final straw was a shootout in the yard with a hired man who had complained about her making more money than he did, though how much of that is true and how much got added later is not clear. Mother Amadeus did not abandon her. She helped Mary get a federal star route contract to carry mail between Cascade and the mission. That made Mary Fields the first African American woman and only the second woman in the country ever to hold one. She was in her sixties. The story goes that she won it by hitching a team of six horses faster than any of the men who showed up to compete for it. Then she just did the job. Blizzards, wolves, temperatures well below zero, roads that were not roads. When the snow got too deep for the horses to get through, she is said to have shouldered the mail sacks and walked the route on foot. She did that until she was about 70. She retired in Cascade, opened a laundry, and lived on there for another decade. When her house burned down in 1912 the town rebuilt it for her. A hotel owner wrote a clause into his lease guaranteeing Mary free meals for the rest of her life. And the local school closed on her birthday. She died in 1914 at around 82. The funeral was one of the largest the town had ever held. A boy who grew up near Cascade named Gary Cooper became a movie star and, in 1959, sat down and wrote an article about her because he could not stop thinking about her. Here is the part that usually gets cut. Every retelling of Mary Fields leans hard on the cigars and the pistol and the fistfights, because that is the version that travels. Montana historians have pointed out what gets dropped to make room for it. She wore skirts. She grew flowers and was known around town for her garden. She babysat what seems like half the children in Cascade. The people who actually knew her closed the school on her birthday. Not because she could knock a man down. Because they liked her.

EchoesofWarYT's tweet photo. In 1895, the United States Post Office handed a mail route across northern Montana to a 62 year old woman who had been born into slavery. She kept it for eight years. The story that followed her the rest of her life was that she never missed a day.

Her name was Mary Fields.

She was born in Tennessee around 1832 and was enslaved until the end of the Civil War. Afterward she worked as a chambermaid on a Mississippi steamboat, and somewhere in those years she became close with a woman named Mother Amadeus, an Ursuline nun.

In the 1880s, Mother Amadeus went to Montana to run a mission school and nearly died of pneumonia. Mary got on a train and went out there to nurse her, and then simply stayed.

She spent about ten years at St. Peter's Mission near Cascade doing the work nobody else could do. She hauled freight in from town, handled the horse teams, did the repairs, ran the henhouse, grew the vegetables. She stood around six feet tall, weighed close to 200 pounds, smoked homemade cigars, drank, swore, and carried a pistol.

The nuns liked her. Church leadership did not. Complaints kept going up the chain about the language and the smoking and her habit of getting into it with the male hired hands. Around 1894 the bishop had her removed. The story that everyone in Montana told afterward is that the final straw was a shootout in the yard with a hired man who had complained about her making more money than he did, though how much of that is true and how much got added later is not clear.

Mother Amadeus did not abandon her. She helped Mary get a federal star route contract to carry mail between Cascade and the mission.

That made Mary Fields the first African American woman and only the second woman in the country ever to hold one. She was in her sixties. The story goes that she won it by hitching a team of six horses faster than any of the men who showed up to compete for it.

Then she just did the job. Blizzards, wolves, temperatures well below zero, roads that were not roads. When the snow got too deep for the horses to get through, she is said to have shouldered the mail sacks and walked the route on foot.

She did that until she was about 70.

She retired in Cascade, opened a laundry, and lived on there for another decade. When her house burned down in 1912 the town rebuilt it for her. A hotel owner wrote a clause into his lease guaranteeing Mary free meals for the rest of her life. And the local school closed on her birthday.

She died in 1914 at around 82. The funeral was one of the largest the town had ever held. A boy who grew up near Cascade named Gary Cooper became a movie star and, in 1959, sat down and wrote an article about her because he could not stop thinking about her.

Here is the part that usually gets cut.

Every retelling of Mary Fields leans hard on the cigars and the pistol and the fistfights, because that is the version that travels. Montana historians have pointed out what gets dropped to make room for it. She wore skirts. She grew flowers and was known around town for her garden. She babysat what seems like half the children in Cascade.

The people who actually knew her closed the school on her birthday. Not because she could knock a man down.

Because they liked her.

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Alex

@SFBayTahoe

8 days ago

@BayAreaBrennan Jesus H Christ I’m still watching but I’m done (season-long sentiment)

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Alex

@SFBayTahoe

8 days ago

@TKorn_1 @CardPurchaser Why “QTY” in the title?

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SFBayTahoe retweeted

Umpire Auditor

@UmpireAuditor

16 days ago

Umpire Hunter Wendelstedt (ranked 81st of 91 umpires this season) called the worst game of the day and the 16th worst this season. He missed 20 calls in the Yankees Blue Jays game and had 9 calls overturned. Only 4 games this season had 9+ calls overturned and Wendelstedt was responsible for two of them.