The Daily Feather — The Legend of Bif and Bennie
Few young Americans dream of going to the “Big House” one day. The colloquialism describes a period of U.S. history when penitentiaries were outgrowing their original design. While there are many examples to choose from, Fort Leavenworth sits high in the annals of Big Houses. Built between 1895 and its opening in 1903, the prison was constructed by its first Army inmates. The original limestone walls were 40 feet deep and 40 feet tall which would defy most, but not all, attempts at escape. In 1910, train robber Frank Grigware busted out by smashing through the prison gates with a locomotive that had backed into the prison yard. And in 1931, abetted by infamous gangsters Frank “Jelly” Nash and George “Machine Gun” Kelly, seven inmates took Warden Thomas B. White hostage and escaped in stolen cars. One massive manhunt later, three were taken down in a gun battle, three were captured and returned to prison, and the seventh, who managed to elude the posse, was also the oldest and succumbed to the December elements, exhaustion, and pneumonia.
On Saturday, I checked a different Bucket List box -- attending a football game in the Big House, named in 1985 by Notre Dame running back Allen Pinkett, who expressed his excitement about playing in the then-101,701-seat stadium. Of all the Big House lore, however, the best was that of Bif and Bennie, two wolverines the Detroit Zoo acquired in 1927, which were paraded around the stadium that same year it opened…until with time, they grew to be too big and ferocious to safely be shown.
Luckily, unlike that of the Northern Illinois Huskies, Vegas was not upset by the outcome of my Horns’ game. Changing the game from football to jobs, On Friday morning, it looked as if the lines had held in the jobs data as payrolls came in close to expectations and the unemployment rate ticked down. Upon closer inspection, neither Cinderella nor Goldilocks showed up.