Category: 1930s

Depression-Era Santa Starved From Lack Of Milk & Cookies

1937 Cactus

Actually, Santa wasn’t the one lacking that year. The UT Zeta house hosted a Christmas party for needy children, and a makeshift Santa proved too svelte for the outfit. It does make you wonder if folks left out perfectly good milk and cookies for Santa during the lean years.

https://northpole.city

The irony is that the tradition didn’t even START until the lean years. In an era of such economic hardship, many parents used the gesture as an example of generosity and gratitude for the gifts they  would receive on Christmas Day. The Greatest Generation indeed.

Only Interesting People

1935

Ooh-la-la! Très exclusive. Only for the interesting people! Why, you’ll find novelists, actresses, professors, and big-game hunters on French Line! Only the best and brightest are allowed aboard, where they serve table wine complimentary. Much fancy! The servers even speak the English because that’s civilized.

One wonders how the French ever got pegged with a rep for snobbery.

Hurtling O’er The Hill

The Minneapolis Journal, Glenwood Park

Back before climate change, we had winter, and folks use to ski in water that would freeze and make snow. People used gravity to ski from the top of the snow to the bottom of it. Sometimes they snapped their shins or skied right into a tree and died, but other times, they caught the wind under their skis and soared, ever briefly, high above the crowds, catching the cold crisp air beneath their feet, alighting upon the soft snowy incline and gliding to the stretch.

S Is For Bridge

May 1932 by Jacob Gayer for Nat Geo

Ever seen the likes of this before? Not me. Not around these parts. Maybe it’s a Northern thing. This S bridge in Hendrysburg, Ohio was built with “manholes,” or safety niches where a pedestrian could get out of the way of a runaway team of horses. While many S bridges were generally used for crossing curving streams with uneven banks, this one served a more unique purpose. Motorcars eventually made the bridges obsolete.

New Englanders Live Four Years Longer

Back in the summer of 1932, everyone who was anyone was planning to travel up to New England on account of the boss eclipse that would “never again” happen until the year 2000.

And my favorite part of the ad?

This. They live four years longer. Longer than whom? All the other states?

Well, some New England states still make the top 10 in terms of longevity, but the latest 2018 rankings show folks in Minnesota live the longest: 78.7 years old on average. Mississippi ranked 51st (the study includes Washington, D.C.), where it’s 71.8 years. For results on your state, click here.

In the meantime, if you live in Mississippi, make sure to watch these crucial factors: tobacco use, alcohol abuse, and bad diets. Or get yourself up to New England pronto!

Winner Of Atlantic City’s First Bathing Beauty Contest

“I Remember Distinctly”

Miss Washington, above, won the title in September of 1921 with knees “daringly bare.”

By 1923, hemlines had shifted to show yet more thigh. Can you even imagine wearing stockings to go swimming?

By 1935, the winner received a crown, robe, scepter, and a moment on the throne.

No wonder Atlantic City has been immortalized in art.

https://society6.com

Bills Are Rising, And So Is My Mailbox

Clifton Adams 1935

This Little Fork, Minnesota farmer was tired of state road plows burying his mailbox beneath 10 foot drifts. So he used his noggin and attached the mailbox to a log boom, resembling an old-fashioned well sweep.

“Kerbey, what’s a well sweep?” you may be asking.

Per http://galleryatwellsweep.com,

A well sweep is a device used to bring water up from a well. The term “sweep” refers to the long pole which is lowered until the bucket on the end goes down into the well and fills with water. Because the pole is anchored in the middle on another pole, creating a fulcrum, it can be counter balanced, thus making it easy to raise the pole, and lift the bucket from the well.

And never confuse a fulcrum with a philtrum–that groove above your lip that Millennials pierce.

Because Coke Said That’s What Santa Looks Like

Coke 1939

Not until artist Haddon Sundblom illustrated Santa Claus for Coca-Cola advertisements in 1931, did Americans associate a large snowbearded man in a red suit with the image of Kris Kringle. Below is Sundblom, enjoying a frosty bottle of his labors.

https://www.illustrationhistory.org

Most of us grew up with the image he created and cannot fathom a slender Santa, much less one with dark hair or no facial hair at all. In 2015, this model tried to offer a trimmer version at Yorkdale Shopping Center in Toronto.

https://www.onecountry.com

What do you think? Should Santa be svelte and hipster, rocking a Beat It jacket? Possibly even vegan?? I don’t think so. I like my Santa jolly and obese, and borderline diabetic from all that Coke and plates of cookies we leave out. I’d tell skinny Santa to beat it.