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.
Things I Like
The Hite Report! A few weeks ago I read a review of this new biography of 1970s feminist researcher Shere Hite, which prompted me to grab a copy of her most famous book, The Hite Report, from the Drexel Library. Ostensibly this was for research for the sequel to To Kill a Cook, but I’d recommend it even if you’re not writing a 1970s queer mystery novel set in the dangerous world of vegetarian cooking. (And if you are writing such a book, knock it off!) Most of the book is dedicated to quotes from the surveys Hite sent to women around the country to ask about their sex lives. Highlights include the woman who describes her genitals as, “Plain, but with charisma,” and the respondent who declared, “If the only reason a man spends two hours making love to a woman is that he wants a hole around to fuck regularly, let him carve one out of a meatloaf and keep it in bed with him.”
Magic Balm! I’ve been using this Doc Bronner’s arnica-menthol balm for years. Not only is it good for sore muscles, it smells like a health food store in the best possible way.
Baseball! As I write this, it’s opening day for Major League Baseball. The Mets are currently winning 5-3 and there’s nothing in the world better than that. Gonna go ahead and wrap this up before they blow it.
Today we’ve got an ultimatum for Mingo, a boy bandit in the Bronx, ersatz bandits on Long Island, and stern words from Mrs. Gompers. Terrorize the country on…
August 31, 1921
President Harding threatens to send troops to Mingo County unless the army of miners disperses immediately. A clash on the border between Boone and Logan counties is considered imminent.
West Virginia clan leader Tolbert Hatfield declares that all of the miners’ trouble is due to bootlegged corn liquor, not conflict with management.
Snipers in Belfast kill five, including 5-year-old Annie Kennedy, and wound 40.
The Weather: Partly cloudy and not so warm today; Thursday fair; fresh northwest winds.
Let me tell you, if I had $5 I’d spend it on candy, girls and movies, too.
In the Bronx yesterday afternoon, a sixteen-year-old boy hired a horse at a riding academy and started out to terrorize the country. He was chased out of the apartment house by half a dozen women, ingloriously unhorsed when he tried to escape on his noble steed, and compelled to take to his heels to escape arrest. The police were looking for him last night and expected him to come home repentant as soon as the $5 which disappeared from the apartment house is expended on candy, girls and movies.
The youthful Jesse James is said to belong to a respectable family. He paid $2 at the riding academy for the horse, which he mounted and rode to the apartment house at 1710 Hoe Avenue. Entering the house, he tried the doors till he reached the sixth floor, where he found the apartment of Harold L. Birney, an insurance agent, open, Mrs. Birney having gone next door to visit. He had thrust the contents of mrs. Birney’s handbag into his pocket when Mrs. Charles Naumann, her sister-in-law, entered Mrs. Birney’s apartment and caught him red-handed.
Running down six flights of stairs, the lad was pursued by Mrs. Birney, Mrs. Naumann and a constantly growing number of women, not to speak of their screams. By the time he reached the street and leaped to the back of his faithful mount he was surrounded by a crowd of excited women and children. Desperately he tried to force his steed through the crowd, but Mrs. Naumann clutched the reins and tugged at them so that he finally jumped off the horse, ran around the corner and disappeared into a vacant lot.
The woman described the lad as a good-looking young fellow, about 16, wearing an outfit resembling a Boy Scout’s uniform, with a wide-brimmed hat, red bandanna, khaki shirt and breeches and spiral leggings. The police of the Simpson Street Station quickly traced him to the riding academy and to his home, where his parents, whose name the police decline to divulge, waited anxiously last night for his return.
I don’t know why the people of New York were obsessed with the threat of banditry, but this article and the one before both suggest that maybe it wasn’t worth worrying about.
“Send all the detectives and policemen you can to the Winfield Station,” an excited man at a telephone yesterday told Detective Sergeant Bahrenberg of the Hunters Point Station. “I just passed the station on a Long Island Railroad express train, and I saw a gang of hold-up men, masked and with long rifles in their hands, descending on the station.”
Several cars were loaded with detectives and policemen, but when they reached the station they found only a gang of Italian laborers industriously wielding long scythes on the tall grass which had accumulated on the embankment beside the station. The laborers had placed red bandanna handkerchiefs over their faces to shield them from clouds of mosquitos.
Some people are no fun.
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J., Aug. 30.—“A married woman who works, not out of necessity but from choice, is taking bread and butter away from some one who needs it,” declared Mrs. Samuel Gompers, recent bride of the President of the American Federation of Labor, at the Hotel Ambassador today.
“Women whose husbands earn a good living should not seek positions in the business world, and thereby furnish an overplus of labor, which will allow employers to use competitive demand for jobs for the purpose of lowering wages of women who are compelled to work.
“Then, too, the married woman who works without necessity is dividing her interests. A home, no matter how small, is large enough to occupy her mind and time. The home suffers if the wife and mother is in business, and her husband loses something to which a husband is entitled—the whole-hearted interest of his wife. If there are children, it is criminal to leave them to the mercy of the streets. The evil influence of older, wiser and mischievous children leaves its indelible stamp on young minds and increases the number of unfortunates who occupy cells in our penitentiaries. Remember, I speak of the woman who does not have to work. Some mothers are are compelled to add to the family coffers. They must be praised, not censured.”
“Do you believe unmarried women should occupy political positions?” Mrs. Gompers was asked.
“No, unless schools and hospitals are considered political. I think these and similar institutions should be governed by women. I do not approve of women Mayors.”
“Do you think there will be a woman President some day?”
“Never. I would not like to think of it,” she immediately replied.
