Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Cursing, and Other Unpleasantness

Some nice local news … a new silo on the Gruel farm, innocent social activities South of Deepriver, blah, blah, blah …

2016-10-4. Gruel et al.
(Click on image to enlarge)
Hobart News 5 Oct. 1922.


… but also some juicy stuff, like "Mr. Traeger" cussing out Dr. Friedrich, a city health officer.

I do not want to guess at the identity of Mr. Traeger, whose first name is not given; but the location, I suppose, was the building at 235 Main Street. In 1922 it was only a former "saloon," as we use the word, since liquor could not legally be sold there.

And in the next column, we have a report of a big Ku Klux Klan recruitment rally in Hammond which gives us a look at how the Klan presented itself at that time and place. The open avowal of white supremacism is jarring, but otherwise the speaker was saying things that you can still commonly hear in both public and private discussions, and his concern that "a foreigner can come in here with a bomb in his hand" could have been voiced five minutes ago.

3 comments:

Rachel said...

Don't stand for any form of violence huh?

Anonymous said...

Violence is pretty avoidable.
As I write this I hear Ill State Police at their target practice range.

I'm still shocked at the Sapper' car colliding at 3rd n East.
If that Charles Sapper ran the Market
then that was my friend's grandfather.

Anonymous said...

Oh, and a big thanks for you doing this blog. I am dying to return to Duck creek, and I appreciate every single detail about Ainsworth and Hobart you present, and look forward to new posts.