Month: August 2017

Penny arcades became popular in the early 1900s. The first were tests of athletic strength, challenging patrons to “prove their manliness,” and marked the beginning of coin-operated vending machines (unless you count the Heron of Alexandria, a coin-operated holy water dispenser made in 215 BCE). For example, lifting machines required pulling on handles. Grip testers involved squeezing handles. Lung testers required blowing into a tube as long as possible. The Mills Submarine model featured four tiny deep sea divers on strings. As you blew, they were raised one-by-one. The Rubberneck model had a mannequin with a neck that stretched. The Hat Blower was just what it sounds like. Electricity testers dispensed electric shocks. To learn about Doctor Vibrator, a machine appealing to women, see BEHIND THE STORY.

 

The Anglesey, Wales village of Llanfairpwllgwyngyll (Llanfairpwll for short) is world famous for having Britain’s longest place name. Less well know is that it’s where the first Women’s Institute (WI) in Britain was founded. The movement started in Canada in 1897. In 1913, Mrs. Alfred Watt, who had worked at the WI headquarters in Canada came to London and tried, without success, to start WI’s in the south of England. Two years later, when Britain was looking to boost food preservation during WW I, she received the enthusiastic support of Colonel Stapleton Cotton from Llanfairpwll and the first official British WI was founded there in September 1915. Read a fictionalized account of the origins of WI’s in the story “Jamming” (see STORIES) and discover more interesting history in BEHIND THE STORY.

The traditional watch rotation in the Navy is called “five and dime.” Sailors serve five hours on watch, followed by ten hours off. However, during those ten hours, they often have other duties, so it’s not uncommon to work a 20-hour day. The result is sleep deprivation, which in turn leads to accidents, such as the recent ones that claimed many sailors’ lives. Some ships are now changing to a “three and nine” watch schedule. Read more about the traditional Navy in WWI in On the Shore (NOVELS) and the dangers of “five and dime” in BEHIND THE STORY.

Part Two of On the Shore (see NOVELS) opens with Dev Levinson, age 12, getting her period for the first time. Researching the book’s era (1917-1925), I discovered that Lister’s Towels were the first feminine sanitary pads, manufactured in 1896 by Johnson & Johnson. Kotex was launched in 1920 by Kimberly-Clark to make use of leftover cellucotton (wood pulp fiber) from World War One bandages. Before commercial sanitary pads were available, women wore and washed rags, which is where the expression “on the rag” comes from. Read more in BEHIND THE STORY.

August 26 is Women’s Equality Day, celebrating passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 granting women the right to vote. Suffrage is an ongoing theme for the two generations of women in On the Shore, which ends in 1925. On January 5, 1925 Nellie Taylor Ross of Wyoming became the first female governor in the U.S. Read more about the role of women during this era in On the Shore (see NOVELS).

The novel I’m writing now begins with an uncanny display described in my short story “Shoot the Chute” (Saranac Review, Fall 2017). From 1903 to the 1940s, premature babies in incubators were part of the carnival show at Coney Island, next to Violetta the Armless Legless Wonder, Princess WeeWee, and Ajax the Sword-Swallower. Entry cost a quarter and people flocked to see them. Read more about “Shoot the Shoot” in SHORT STORIES and about incubator babies (including the smallest one who lived) in BEHIND THE STORY.

While writing my novel A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (Alternative Book Press, 2018 in press), I discovered that Henry Ford employed midgets to work in the Willow Run (Michigan) B-24 Bomber Plant during the Second World War because they were small enough to crawl inside the wings and buck rivets from the inside. Midgets were paid less than full-size men but more than Rosie the Riveter. Read more about the book in NOVELS and about a “special doorknob” in BEHIND THE STORY.

Prohibition features in my story “Blood and Sand” (see STORIES) as well as in a coming-of-age scene in my novel On the Shore (see NOVELS). The Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition), banning the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor, became law in 1920, but many large cities and states were already dry by 1918. Bootlegging grew into a vast illegal empire. Corruption among enforcement agents (with bribes as high as $300,000 a month) was so prevalent that President Warren G. Harding complained about it in his 1922 State of the Union address. Yet Harding kept the White House well stocked with bootleg liquor. Read more about the days of Prohibition in BEHIND THE STORY.