Collections outlets for amusement, ardor

One would think someone with Sandy Jones’ passion for collecting gangster memorabilia would remember where his fascination started. But he doesn’t.

Perhaps it started when Jones was a kid, and history class consisted of learning about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. He thought that was boring. No, Jones was more interested in the colorful characters of America’s past, like Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson “the bad guys,” of the 1920s and ‘30s, as Jones calls them.

Jones said he has one of the largest collections of Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger memorabilia in the world. He has Dillinger’s 1933 Essex Terraplane, a car involved in one of the bank robber’s infamous shootouts. He even has one of Dillinger’s eyebrow hairs.

Jones’ hobby has also spilled into his business.

A few weeks ago, the brewmaster at The Fort Collins Brewery made the recipe for “Al Capone’s Beer,” a beer the gangster supposedly manufactured when he owned the Sieben Brewery in north Chicago.

Historians debate whether Capone ever owned the brewery — and whether the beer recipe now available on the Internet was actually Capone’s. Jones brewed four barrels of the Prohibition Pilsner, a light beer and predecessor to American-style beers. The Fort Collins Brewery made it available for customers to taste.

“People will come in here to try the Al Capone beer, and I’ll bend their ear and tell them about John Dillinger instead,” Jones said. “Some people made him out to be Robin Hood back then, but he was a bad guy.”

Jones isn’t the only member of the Northern Colorado business community with an unusual collection.

An oak cabinet full of golf balls sits in the office of Duane Wallin, owner of Bi-State Machinery, a John Deere dealership in Greeley and Fort Collins.

Wallins has 64 golf balls in his office and another 64 at home.

“I used to be into belt buckles and toy trucks, but I couldn’t keep up with those and the business,” Wallin said.

Wallin loves golf, and he considers himself an average golfer — he usually scores in the high 90s. The golf balls in his office all bear company logos, from banks to tire companies to agriculture equipment manufacturers.

The balls at home, collected from courses Wallin has played, fit right in with his home’s decor — a golfing motif that his wife actually suggested. After all, their home sits right on a golf course.

Bob Whitfield’s collection of telephones and phone equipment started when he went to work for Mountain Bell in 1953. He was 17 at the time and was eventually promoted as the company’s manager in Northern Colorado.

He has an old test box from a University of Northern Colorado basement, a switch from a UNC switch room, dial phones and princess phones from the 1950s and ‘60s, even some old AT&T annual reports.

Only when Whitfield left the phone company after 30 years and started his own business, Arvada-based Hi Country Wire and Telephone — that has customers across Northern Colorado — was he able to pursue the car collection he always wanted.

He has six restored cars, including an all-white 1956 Chevy convertible and several Fords and Chevrolets from the 1930s. He invests as much as $50,000 in restoring, painting and upholstering the cars and takes them on the road to car shows.

“It’s kind of like a disease,” Whitfield said. “You get bitten by a bug that tells you that you can’t live without these cars.”

Likewise, Jones calls his collection of gangster memorabilia “a hobby that got out of hand.”

He recently restored a clone of the 1934 Ford in which Bonnie and Clyde were killed. It’s estimated that Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, criminals during the public enemy era of the 1930s that led to the formation of the FBI, were responsible for as many as 13 murders, about a dozen bank robberies and holdups of stores and gas stations too numerous to count.

Jim Knight, author of biography about Bonnie and Clyde, bought the restored Ford from Jones. In June, the car will appear on a History Channel program about the criminal couple, Jones said.

The 58-year-old former marketing director won’t say how much money he has put into his collection. He won’t even say where keeps all the memorabilia. Through the years he has become friends with some of the gangsters’ family members, including Dillinger’s family and Marie Barrow, Clyde Barrow’s sister.

Some people wonder why Jones is so interested in the lives of criminals. But he insists there’s nothing romantic or glorious about what they did.

“These were all bad guys,” Jones said. “To me, it’s just a colorful piece of American history.”

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