Founded in 2017, Strange Times is a twice-monthly newsletter that explores the weirdest news of 1921, one day at a time. To get free games and the original PDFs of every article that runs in Strange Times—plus stories that didn’t make the cut—back me on Patreon.
To Kill a Cook
It feels like it’s been a million years since our last issue, which happened to come out on the same day as TO KILL A COOK. Since then I’ve been on a cross-country book tour, published an essay about the paucity of fictional detectives in happy relationships, and learned to my shock and delight that the book has become a USA Today bestseller! God, no wonder I’m tired today.
Anyway, it’s been a roller coaster that I’ve enjoyed far more than I would an actual roller coaster. (I swore them off after breaking my wrist on one in Birmingham in 1999.) If you’re one of the apparent thousands of people who’ve bought the book, it would mean a ton if you’d take a minute to give it a review over on Amazon. And if you haven’t bought it yet, what are you waiting for?
Things I Like
Between Two Rivers! My kids and I have recently gotten into the history podcast “You’re Dead to Me”—consider that a bonus recommendation—and particularly enjoyed a recent episode featuring historian Moudhy Al-Rashid about the history of cuneiform. I grabbed the audio book of Al-Rashid reading her recent history of cuneiform, Between Two Rivers, and loved both the book and her narration. It covers everything from war to science to midwifery to fart jokes and included a lot of interesting little details that I’ll be thinking about for some time.
The Fires of Philadelphia! I also just finished reading this incredible account of the 1844 Philadelphia riots by Zachary M. Schrag. It’s got bloodshed on American streets, racist politicians terrorizing minority groups, citizen soldiers firing grapeshot on crowds…basically nothing that’s relevant in 2026. It’s also packed with incredibly 19th century details, such as the following extremely Strange Times passage: “Mallory himself fired the cannon with a lit cigar in lieu of the slow-match. To keep the weapon ready, he ordered Private John Crout to chain-smoke cigars over the course of the night. After his twenty-seventh, Crout moaned that he could take no more. ‘Smoke away, my brave fellow, for God’s sake smoke,’ Mallory told him, ‘and if you die smoking for your country, your death will have been as glorious as if you had been shot in its service.”
Random Video Games! I’m trying to dig through the backlog of video games I own but have rarely played, and I’ve been letting the folks at my Patreon decide what I should play next. There’s a poll up there right now that anyone can vote on—this is your big chance to tell me what to do.
Today we’ve got a Texan tarred and feathered, a birthday disputed, and a heap of vintage copaganda. Beware the scareheads on…
August 28, 1921
General H.H. Bandholtz, sent from Washington to assess the union uprising in West Virginia, announces that “the jig is up” and that the protest is already at an end.
New York farmers and fruit growers complain of motorists stealing from their orchards, saying that “depredations also extend to robbing country places of flowers.”
Ten-year-old immigrant Moische Shulman is deemed an “imbecile” by a Brooklyn judge, despite the protestations of both his parents and teachers, which means that barring intervention from President Harding, the child will be deported to Russia.
Governor Blaine of Wisconsin declines to ban the Ku Klux Klan from his state, saying “I cannot engage in the presumption that the Klan will indulge in violence or crime.”
The Weather: Partly cloudy today; Monday, probably showers; moderate temperature; southeast winds.
There’s nothing particularly funny about an electrician being abducted and tortured for no apparent reason…except for the phrase “The Silsbee Bee, at Silsbee,” which is very funny indeed.
BEAUMONT, Texas, Aug. 27.—J.W. Bordern, an electrician, was taken from the office of The Silsbee Bee, at Silsbee, late last night by several masked men and carried into the country in an automobile, where he was tarred, feathered and whipped, according to word received here today from the Sheriff of Hardin County.
Bordern was later brought back to Silsbee and dumped out on the main street, the Sheriff said. No reason has been assigned for the attack.
Glad to know that Senators have always been laser focused on the most important questions, including “How do birthdays work?”
WASHINGTON, Aug. 27.—The controversial question of how old was Ann faded into insignificance today when Senator Stanfield of Oregon submitted to the Civil Service Commission for solution an inquiry as to how many birthdays a person may have.
The Oregon Senator based his question upon an order of the commission providing that applicants for appointment as postmasters at first class of offices must have reached “thirtieth birthday” before taking the examination. With Senator Stanfield the solution is of considerable importance because it may exclude from examination one of the most important candidates, from his point of view, for the post office at Baker City, Ore.
Examinations of candidates for appointment are to be held Sept. 6, and Connie J. Grabb will not be 30 years old until Sept. 17. Senator Stanfield insists that if Grabb could have more than one birthday he had his thirtieth last September, when he was 29 years old. And this is how he figures it: Admittedly everyone’s first birthday is the day of birth, and consequently when one year old the day celebrated, if it may be designated a “birthday,” must have been the second.
Part of what makes this newsletter so fun to put together is that the 1921 New York Times had so much space to fill that they would literally print anything. This item is a rare example of an evergreen feature appearing in the ‘21 paper—it feels like something they had on hand for a rainy day, a few paragraphs of aimless copaganda dropped in simply to fill space. The fact that it cuts off in the middle of a thought really drives that point home. But if you’re a writer who needs background for a scene set in an old fashioned police station, this blather is gold!
Tucked away in a far corner of every police station there is a small room. It is plain, almost bare in its furnishings, containing little go gladden the heart or the eye. There are several strongly built chairs, a bench perhaps, a table or desk, a typewriter or two, and wicker baskets with cards and writing paper. This room is known as “the detectives’ room,” and it contains that is not absolutely necessary to the work of its occupants.
Its walls would be quite bare of decoration or ornament, were it not for the numerous police circulars that adorn them. These circulars challenge attention in big, bold “scareheads,” of which a large number read, “Wanted for Murder,” showing that such crimes are by no means uncommon throughout the length and breadth of the country. They carry with them rewards that are none too alluring, offered by this or that Chief of Police, and are illustrated by the best available photographs of the men that are being hunted; and gloomy as the circulars are, they are, for all that, the room’s brightest and most compelling decorations.
Near by the table are the makings for the taking of finger-prints, a sooty ink, a mixer and a small roller, an outfit that is known as “cops’ cosmetics,” the mere sight of which has caused culprits to quail and tremble. There was a time in the days of the police photograph, the “Rogues’ Gallery,” when a nervy criminal could sometimes bluff his way out of trouble by insisting that the “cops had him wrong,” that the “mugged” likeness was not his. But with the fingerprints it is a different matter. In the words of a thief, the cops have you licked the minute they have your prints—that is to say if you already have a record. Your prints are dispatched to headquarters; it requires but a short time there to look you up, when your complete criminal history is laid bare. The small room is seldom without visitors, for open house is kept both day and night. Some call voluntarily, others have to be coaxed or dragged there. The former class is composed of persons having complaints of one kind or another to make, and friends and confederates of the police, the latter chiefly of prisoners. It is a comparatively easy matter to distinguish the two types; complainants are self-possessed, confident and at their ease, whereas prisoners are sullen, silent and downcast. If they have been apprehended on a previous occasion they realize that they are in for a long, hard grilling that will last many hours and then land them in a cell.
There are times when pathetic scenes are enacted in the small room, notably when an anxious mother hastens to the station house only to learn that her son has been charged with a serious crime that is likely to send him on the long journey up the river, or when a hopeful young wife is for the first time brought face to face with the hard fact that the man she promised to love, honor and obey is a common thief. Such revelations often break the stoutest of hearts, and the old father, wife or mother is led from the room weeping and broken. Detectives get used to such scenes; they have to.
Certain hardened criminals have a saving sense of humor that enables them to take the situation in which they find themselves with a kind of philosophical cheerfulness. They chat good naturedly with their inquisitors, exchanging jokes and repartee with them. A bricklayer was caught red-handed robbing a flat.
“I cannot exactly recall,” he said, “just what it was that started me on the downward path, but it does not matter. I began to steal and found it easy. I finally gave up honest work altogether. I imagined I had a charmed life. I have been a thief for eight years doing little or no honest work in that time, and now they have nailed me after eight years for the first time. It all goes to prove that if you keep at it long enough you are bound to get tripped up. What will I get for it? It is my first offence, so the Judge should be lenient. Well, I realize, of course, that the present is a bad time to be caught because there is so much thieving going on, and the judges are handing out pretty stiff sentences to all comers. I can’t complain. I’ll do my bit, whatever it is.”
The occupants of the small room are continually talking shop. Some business and professional men reserve their shop talk for their working hours, but not detectives. They talk shop eternally, prattling ceaselessly about “collars,” which is another name for an arrest. A detective is elated because he is confident that he will break his case with a “collar” that he expects to make that very night. If he falls down and his quarry gets away he is silent and depressed. “Why,” exclaimed a detective, “I chased that little cuss all the way from New York to Frisco. I then lost his trail for a time, picked it up again, and chased him back here. He came within an ace of giving me the slip for good. I nabbed him just as he was boarding a steamer to Europe. I’ll say it was a lucky ‘collar.’”
A good part of a detective’s time is taken up in investigating alleged crimes. A man may report a robbery, and an investigation discloses that it is not a case that warrants criminal action, but a case for the civil courts—that two partners have had a falling out, and that they have brought charges against each other. Sometimes a man becomes suspicious of a neighbor. He becomes obsessed with an idea that this neighbor is engaged in some criminal pursuit. An investigation shows that the man is conducting a legitimate business.
Small “squeals” take up much of a detective’s time. Flat dwellers are proverbially careless about guarding their property. A woman will take her family to Coney Island and will not take the precaution to fasten windows leading to fire escapes. On her return she finds that a thief has paid a visit. There is a type of thief who makes a practice of visiting dwellings where the occupants are known to be careless. He is eternally looking for an unlocked door or window.
