Desert Messenger

12 www.DesertMessenger.com September 3, 2014 On March 31, 1946, Ira M. "Slim" Salladay received an ap- pointment to become the new postmaster for the Quartzsite Post Offi ce, replacing Pickens "P. E." Woodson who had sold his post offi ce, grocery store, and home to Salladay and his wife Beulah. P. E. and his wife Amelia Hagley Wood- son would be moving to Blythe, California. World War II was over and the young men of Quartzsite who had served in the military were com- ing home, as were many residents who had worked in the war effort at aircraft plants in the Los An- geles area. Quartzsite's popula- tion was growing, yet "Slim" and Beulah found that their grocery store did not share many of the local customers with the long-es- tablished Scott's Store. Being an entrepreneur, Salladay decided to promote the fact that his property was the location of the post offi ce so he had a postal mural painted on the east side of the building. The mural was of a large Air Mail envelope with a replica of a com- memorative stamp depicting a desert scene with Quartzsite as the return address. Salladay decided to remodel the grocery store into a tavern and on the west end of his property built a Standard Oil service station with a repair shop which, as it turned out, would be in direct competition with Scott's Shell service station and bar. Under any circumstance, being a newcomer to a town can be a challenge so Salladay let it be known that his intended cus- tomers would be the many new travelers on the recently paved U. S. Highway 60-70 that ran directly in front of his service station, garage, tavern, and post offi ce. Salladay made every effort to attract new customers with items such as free Standard Oil prints of Western travel des- tinations and other memora- bilia. His tavern offered cold beer in chilled mugs, while Beulah, his friendly wife effi ciently ran the post offi ce. As can happen in a tavern, pa- trons may have too much to drink, causing them to become rowdy. One evening in June of 1952, a young man from a long-time Quartzsite family who had served during the war was such a patron. When Salladay asked him to leave the premises a fi ght ensued and the local "war hero" was forc- ibly removed. According to the Yuma Daily Sun, on June 19, 1952, the young man's mother made a complaint to the sheriff's offi ce. Constable Fred Kuehn had taken the victim to the Blythe Commu- nity Hospital. Sheriff Jim Washum and Deputy Yuma County Attorney William Nabours were called in on the case. Salladay was taken before Justice of the Peace George Hagley who put him under a $1,000 bond. The bond was not immediately made, so Judge Hagley remanded Salladay to the custody of the sher- iff, who took him to Yuma for trial. The "beating" of the young man did nothing to improve community goodwill towards Salladay. Town folks took sides and when some came to get their mail, un- friendly remarks were often made to the innocent Beulah to which Sal- laday took offense. Another alterca- tion ensued, further alienating Sal- laday from more of the town folks. Salladay was very outspoken about politics and was particularly blunt about President Harry S. Truman and Truman's daughter, Margaret. In March of 1947 Miss Truman performed an operatic recital on radio and received some rather unkind reviews, especially from Washington Post music critic, Paul Hume, to which the President wrote a fi ercely protective and threatening letter. Salladay agreed with Hume and shot off his own letter to President Truman. One of Salladay's various mis- takes in this misadventure was that, because he was the appointed Quartzsite Postmaster, he did not want to reveal his true identity in the letter. He mailed the letter from Las Vegas and used a Reno return address. According to the Arizona Republic, at Salladay's arraignment on August 20, 1952, he admitted to writing and send- ing the registered letter but did not explain why he used "vulgar and obscene" words when he criticized Miss Truman's singing voice. He waived a hearing and was jailed pending arrangements for United States Postal Inspector Joe John- son to review the circumstances of the letter. Inspector Johnson later testifi ed that, "Salladay may have been motivated because of the fi ling of charges by a Quartzsite postal customer about an alterca- tion the customer had had with Salladay when he confronted him about treatment he had received from Mrs. Salladay when the customer called for his Gen- eral Delivery Mail." According to the Arizona Republic, on August 21, 1952, Salladay plead guilty to writ- ing a threatening letter to the President of the United States or to a member of his imme- diate family. On October 9, 1952, the Tucson Daily Citizen reported that Salladay had been granted a two year suspended sentence for mailing a letter to President Tru- man criticizing Margaret Truman's voice in "vulgar and obscene terms." Salladay was asked by the judge if he would know better than to write that kind of letter in the future to which Salladay replied, "I certainly will, your honor." Ira M. Salladay was born on May 26, 1900 in Cook County, Illinois and passed away on December 2, 1964 in Central Heights, Gila County, Arizona. Beulah Salladay stayed on in her lovely home behind the post offi ce, closed the tavern, and hired an attendant for the service station. She took down the sign "Salladay Garage" and changed it to "Heisler Garage", her maiden name. She trained Ethel Wright, who became the new postmaster on September 10, 1952 and the post offi ce was Ira M. Salladay - Quartzsite's Postmaster 1946-1952 Excerpts from "In the Shadow of Saguaros" by Rosalee Oldham Wheeler "In the Shadow of Saguaros" Vol. I & II are now available exclusively at the Tyson's Well Museum and Reader's Oasis Book Store Voices from The Past in Quartzsite, AZ SEE POSTMASTER PAGE 16 What happens in Q UARTZSITE goes around THE WORLD! www.VisitQuartzsite.com Woodson's Store & Post Offi ce

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