Category: Learn History Through Fiction

At the start of WWI, the Selective Service originally required males 21-30 to register; this was amended in August 2018 to allow men 18-45 to enlist. Read more about WWI history in On the Shore (see NOVELS), about the turmoil in an immigrant Jewish family when their son lies about his name and age to fight in the Navy. Although the story takes place a century ago, it evokes the hopes and struggles of today’s immigrants from all backgrounds.

While writing the story “Undark” (see STORIES) in which a fictional sister of one of Radium Girls paints floral designs on dishes, I researched the symbolic names of flowers. Here are a few familiar flower names (and their intriguing meanings): White Stargazer Lily (innocence restored to the soul of the deceased); Daffodils (a single means misfortune; a bunch signifies renewal and a fresh start); Alstroemeria (wealth, prosperity, fortune); Anemone (fading hope or anticipation); Hydrangea (heartfelt emotions; positive is gratitude, negative is heartlessness); Peony (compassion & good health or indignation & shame). Flower names, like the best fiction, can mean both one thing and the opposite. Read more about the Radium Girls and flower symbolism in BEHIND THE STORY.

It is said that “an army marches on its stomach,” but what if the food is awful? In WWI (the era of my novel On the Shore), soldiers ate Iron Rations. They pounded the hard tack into chips with rifle butts and soaked bully beef in soup or hot water. To find out how soldiers supplemented this tasteless fare with snacks from the “gedunk stand,” see On the Shore in NOVELS. Learn the more colorful names for military food in BEHIND THE STORY.

My WWII-era novel-in-progress, tentatively titled One Person’s Loss, includes rituals that the protagonists, German Jewish immigrants, use to ward off the “evil eye” when their baby is born. I researched whether their Italian immigrant neighbors might have similar superstitions. Jews tie red ribbons on the carriage, and/or a red string called a roite bindele around the infant’s left wrist, to protect it from the envy of demons. Italians wear a cornicello, a charm resembling a red pepper, to ward off bad luck and tocca ferro (touch iron). Read more about these and other good luck rituals in BEHIND THE STORY.

On the Shore ends in 1925. What was happening on the U.S. cultural scene that year? People were listening and dancing to “Tea for Two”; watching Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush; eating ice cream in cones rolled by a machine; and complaining when Babe Ruth was fined and suspended after showing up late for batting practice following a night on the town. Read more about the era of On the Shore (1917-1925) by clicking on NOVELS.

Discovered while researching a story titled “A Fifth Way” – The Band-Aid was invented 1920 by Johnson & Johnson employee Earle Dickson for his wife Josephine, who frequently cut and burned herself while cooking. The original Band-Aids were handmade and not popular, using resources available at the time which were limited in an era of poverty. By 1924, J & J made a machine that produced sterilized Band-Aids. The first decorative Band-Aids, introduced in 1951, were a commercial success. Not until decades later were colored adhesive bandages and clear ones for all skin colors created. Read more about popular culture in history in BEHIND THE STORY.

My novel On the Shore ends in 1925, an eventful year in media. On March 4, Calvin Coolidge became the first President of the United States to have his inauguration broadcast on radio. The low key Coolidge (dubbed “Silent Cal” by the press) did not want an inaugural ball and the post-inaugural parade lasted under an hour. However, Coolidge’s speech, outlining his plan for a modest and restrained government, was one of the longest inaugural addresses in history. Read more about the public’s receptiveness to radio in On the Shore (NOVELS).

While researching the era of On the Shore. (1917-1925), I read about Annie Oakley, a TV western heroine of my childhood. Born Phoebe Ann Mosey in 1860, the sixth of nine children in a poor Quaker family, this five-foot tall sharpshooter set a record by breaking 100 clay targets in a row on April 16, 1922. Read more about On the Shore in NOVELS and about Oakley’s amazing life as a performer and gun educator in BEHIND THE STORY.

Researching a story about the first U.S. policewoman, who worked on the Los Angeles “purity squad,” I read up on nickelodeons, one of the places she patrolled. The nickelodeon was the first indoor exhibition space dedicated to showing projected motion pictures. The word “Nickelodeon” was concocted from the five-cent coin charged for admission and the ancient Greek word odeion, which was a roofed-over theater. A popular form of entertainment from 1905-1915, as many as 26 million people went every week to watch “the flicks” (so called because the images flickered). Read more about nickelodeons in BEHIND THE STORY.

Researching a novel and several stories with scenes during Prohibition, I wondered: What’s the difference between rum-running and bootlegging? The former is usually applied to illegal shipments of alcohol over water; the latter to transporting booze over land. The term “boot-legging” arose during the Civil War, when soldiers smuggled liquor into camp by concealing pint bottles inside their boots. The word became popular (and lost its hyphen) during Prohibition (1920-1933) when suppliers sold liquor from flasks tucked into their boots. The term “rum-running” most likely originated at the start of Prohibition, when ships from the Caribbean transported rum to Florida speakeasies. Rum’s cheapness made it a low-profit item so smugglers switched to shipping Canadian whisky, French champagne, and English gin to major cities like New York City, Boston, and Chicago, where they could charge more. Ships carried as much as $200,000 in contraband in a single run.