Time capsule

Recently we had a little plumbing work done in our first floor powder room (the outflow pipe from the sink had a small leak). To reach the pipes the plumber knocked out a couple of square foot section of the plaster and lathe wall under the sink. Packed around the pipes were shredded and wadded up old newspapers. They were the Minneapolis Journal from April 20, 1936.

We’ve long believed that our house was built around 1939. Its style and fixtures are consistent with that date or possibly a little earlier. Earlier work we’ve done in the walls have brought out 1939 newspapers. These 1936 newspapers suggest that the house may be slightly older.

The condition of the newspaper made them difficult to read but what could be read painted a fascinating picture. Dick Tracy was battling Ice Bullet. One of the thugs henchmen was addressed as “Nig”. I wonder what that stood for?

A Will Rogers movie, Life Begins At 40, was playing at the local theater. We’ve forgotten that in 1935 and 1936 the two top box office performers (at least for Fox) were Will Rogers and Shirley Temple.

There was a handy cartoon of the world labelled “Where News of the Week Happened”. In Tokyo “AP Wirephoto brought first picture of Tokyo Army Revolt” cf. here. In Germany “AP Wirephoto brought first Rhineland pictures by radio via London.” cf. the Rhineland Crisis. In New Hampshire state voters had just picked Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Republican Frank Knox, a Chicago publisher, as their respective party’s nominee for president in the 1936 campaign. Note that all of these news items had taken place several months before the date of the paper. It was a different news cycle, indeed.

This was just about the time that oil was first discovered in Saudi Arabia by the way. There’s no mention of it in the paper, however.

There are a few interesting political observations. Allen Whitfield, national president of the junior chamber of commerce, is quoted as saying

“War must be debunked of its alleged glory…Young men have the right to demand leadership of nations that some other method of settlement of international disputes be maintained.”

Events would soon prove that this hope was in vain. Still, it’s interesting to read the president of the JC’s (as conservative an organization the and now as you could hope to find) expressing these ideas. A quick googling of Allen Whitfield finds that he was a Des Moines lawyer active in Republican politics throughout his life. He was nominated by Dwight Eisenhower to the Atomic Energy Commission in 1955. He died March 10, 1984 at age 83. The Jaycees have a memorial award named after him.

Here’s a little more:

Argument for a national third party is afforded by the difficulty many of our statesmen have over the little matter of party affiliation. They are Republicans in name, but more or less are going with the New Deal.

[…]

Mayor La Guardia of New York owns that he leans toward President Rooservelt for re-election, but is held back by fear that the President’s party will keep him from going farther leftward. The “progressives” of the party will wait until after the convention to decide, but evidently he foresees support of Roosevelt. The Mayor, too, is nominally a Republican, and was elected by a fusion of independent Democrats and Republicans against Tammany.

What a difference a half century can make.

The ads are a tantalizing mixture of the familiar and the forgotten. The standard Hershey Milk Chocolate Bar was 1/2 lb. (the price is missing). A box of Yardley’s English Lavender soap and a bottle of toilet water could be bought for $1.00. Knox apparently had flavored gelatine (they only sell unflavored gelatin now). There are legions of forgotten products and brands.

You could buy a used ’35 Ford Coupe for $485 or a used ’35 LaFayette Coupe for $575. Sounds steep to me. Here’s a 1934 LaFayette Coupe. A studio couch for $23.95.

And, in my sister’s neighborhood in Minneapolis, there’s a house for sale for $3,350. Ten percent down, 1% a month.

All in all it’s mere glimpses through a keyhole at a time I’ll never know. And what was a Minneapolis newspaper doing stuffed into the wall of a Chicago house? Another mystery I’ll never know the answer to.