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Show SALT FLAT NEWS DECEMBER, 1972 8 Be it em so humble ... by Ken Donoghue This March a man died in Wendover. He was a drifter. He had come to Wendover in 1967, liked the weather and stayed. His name was Theodor Heist but he asked people to call him Bob. All who had anything to do with Theodor say that he' was a good worker. The one person who knew him best was Floyd Eaton, better known as Deputy Dump, the Wendover Goethe. : For three years Theodor Bob' Heist watched the world from a makeshift back porch and slept in the shade of a rusting Chevrolet Floyd told me that Theodor had been bom in Germany about sixty years ago. According to Eaton, Theodor had led a straight life at one time. Theodor had been a butcher and owner of a packing house. He had also been married, but he and his wife had split up and, ex- plained Eaton, the wife took everything. An overwhelming wish to consume vast quantities of cheap wine gripped Theodor. Wine turned his blood to sugar, achieved the dreapi of most Americans. He owned two cars. In fact, he lived in them. On the edge of the Wendover trash dump he had set up house in two abandoned cars. One he fixed up as his bedroom and winter parlor, the other he used as a storeroom. Outside the bed- room-parlcar he had set up a heating unit that he had fashioned out of a fifty-gallo-n oil drum. It warmed the cars interior in the winter. Dr. Edward Herschgold, a University of Utah Medical Center and that was hematologist what did him in. Richard Dixon, a Wendover car. It was on this couch this spring that he died. Before Theodors body could be taken to Elko, Nevada Wendover has no cemetery the police had to kill his dog Taco. The dog would not let anyone approach his masters body. ' What saved Theodor Heist from . an unmarked paupers grave was one of two documents he had always kept with him: his a111 security card (the can Meldezettel) and a discharge from the Army of the United " States. or Spring and summer he placed Deputy Eaton confided to a couch outside the bedroom-parlo- r me a theory that will astound enterpreneur, had once hired Theodore to help him put some rooms under his house. Mr. Dixon paid Theodor well for his work, after which the German began the final alcoholic fugue of his life. Chester Chet Howlett, the J.P. and coroher Wendover s Nevada side, said that when he saw the corpse Theodor Heist had been gone from the earth four or five days. (non-medica- l) Howlett, disregarding blood-into-sug- ': So the United States government buried Theodor Bob Heist with full military honors, Floyds diagnosis, said ar . that the cause of death was acute alcoholism. Theodor had, in his own way, in partial repayment for his ser- vice to them. Six straight days on the salt flats can do strange things to a person. But just a spoonful of STP in your soft drink, and things go better for young speed week orphan. FOR SALE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH YEARBOOKS OLD INQUIRE LAURA SHAND 226 So. 12 East, Salt Lake City 84102, Utah ymuxs CoS-NORDIC SKI SPECIALISTS HEXEEL ft SILlTKEIfi (2W) Osmium (BfiBn Hrartferitrcs FREE CLINICS FOR BEGINNING AND ADVANCED CROSS COUNTRY TECHNIQUE swot DAILY & WEEKEND RENTALS Efil GBSffiBlI GRfflUSBB UtoBBsfe toOflEMBP SD6 88MBBB 779 east 3rd south corner of 8th E.& 3rd S. j 359-936- 1 PETE PETERSON Interior Design and Consulting 3830 Birch Drive Salt Lake City R. L. Phone 277-375- 4 5 .Haye you eenvthis man? 1 J 'If , . , v . |