All I’m Saying, Myrtle, Is I Wouldn’t Go Out In My 4 Million Dollar Ring After Posting It On Instagram
Category: 1930s
Talking Shop On Rug Beatin’ Day
You may have seen some of Russell Lee‘s fantastic images before. This is one of my favorites. Lee passed away in 1986 here in Austin, Texas, and this year, the former Lee Elementary was renamed Russell Lee Elementary in honor of the photographer, replacing the original namesake, Robert E Lee. I don’t have to ask why they are phasing out anything named in honor of Confederate generals; I imagine it is all part of the collective disappearance of anything related to the politically-incorrect South. I understand that folks don’t like what the Confederacy stood for (including the flag); but that doesn’t mean all of its soldiers should be erased from history. I guess the offensive ideology of The Antebellum South (which can’t be boiled down to just one issue) trumps honoring any of their leaders’ military strengths. In any event, I’m not in charge, and Texas isn’t even part of The South. I got no dog in this hunt; I just love chunky-faced kiddos, and the mutual expression those two boys are sharing.
Politics Is Hilarious
Why is FDR howling with laughter? He and son James, along with William McAdoo and advisor James Farley, are responding to the quips of Will Rogers as he introduces the new president in 1933.
“Mr. Roosevelt is a plain-spoken man. Remember that speech last night about the banks? Long adjectives and nouns–he didn’t mess with ’em at all. He knows what the country wants is relief and not rhetoric. He is the first Harvard man to know enough to drop three syllables when he has something to say. Why, compared to me, he is almost illiterate.” — May 7, 1933
50 Shades Of Creepy
This Diamond Ring Doesn’t Shine For Me Anymore
Forget pawn shops. These two freshly-divorced women threw caution (and jewelry) to the wind in observance of the Reno, Nevada custom of tossing their rings into the Truckee River. What I don’t get is why they wouldn’t want to sell them since it was 1932, amidst the Great Depression. At least get enough to buy a celebratory whiskey! And why were they wearing Hawaiian leis in the middle of the dessert? And what did their husbands do to warrant such a dismissal of vows?
In 2013, The Huffington Post shared this image, with Nevada still #5 in a list of Top Ten Divorce Capitals.
Any of these hotspots look familiar?
When It Rains
WPA (Works Progress Administration) workers load a truck with flood debris in Louisville, KY in 1937. It sure looks a muddy mess, but since we haven’t seen a drop of rain since May, I’d take a muddy mess right now.
Threesomes of 1937
Literal Downlow Conversation
Today I got my hands on a 1937 yearbook. I’ve been collecting yearbooks for many years, and have found that yearbooks from the 1930s decade are virtually non-existent. Annuals from the 1920s, however, are much easier to find. I chalk it up to the fact that during The Great Depression, which encompasses all of the 1930s, people were more concerned with getting food on the table and finding shelter than ponying up the cash for a yearbook, if they even could afford a university education. I imagine demand was not great, so fewer were printed than in the prior decade. But that is only my wager.
In any case, celebration and decadence still existed for some, as evidenced by the Delta Theta Phi banquet dinner in these images. Holidays were still holidays, and life went on.
Shantytown Tarpaper Shack
When you zoom in, you can read the ad paper: “Carburetor Yello-Bole,” a brand of pipe.
This is one of those pipes.
Central Park “Hooverville”
“During the Great Depression, which began in 1929 and lasted approximately a decade, shantytowns appeared across the U.S. as unemployed people were evicted from their homes. As the Depression worsened in the 1930s, causing severe hardships for millions of Americans, many looked to the federal government for assistance. When the government failed to provide relief, President Herbert Hoover was blamed for the intolerable economic and social conditions, and the shantytowns that cropped up across the nation, primarily on the outskirts of major cities, became known as Hoovervilles.”–www.history.com
Dave’s Black Spasm Incomparable One-Man Band
The small-hatted, accordion-squeezing Dave traveled all the way from Tulsa, Oklahoma to perform at Houston’s Weber’s Pleasure & Beer Garden in October 1933.
I Don't Get It 