A Bad Year For Gangsters

A Bad Year For Gangsters

In the 1920s and 30s crime was keeping all law officers,  including the FBI, busy During Prohibition, bootlegging (illegally supplying alcohol) ran wild. When  the law was repealed, those  most dedicated to a life of crime turned to bank robbing.

lBy 1945  some had become notorious.Two especially bad ones were   BonnieParker and Clyde Barrow. They and their gang operated  mostly in Texas and killed nine  law officers and  a few civilians.  They were killed in Lousianna in 1934. Years after their death, they were romanticized in a ballad sung by British singer George Flake.

Charles (((Pretty Boy) Floyd was another to meet his fate in 1934, He was a back robber and  somewhat  popular with  the public because he often destroyed mortgage papers while committing the robbery.  This relieved many borrowers from further payments. He was killed in  a shootout with the FBI.

John Dillinger was also a bank robber.. His two escapes from jail made him a popular subject  for the media, In 1934 he was killed in Chicago by the FBI  after being identified by his escort who who a red  dress.

Babyface Nelson (((Lester Joseph Gillis also known as George  Nelson) got  the nickname “Babyface” because of  boyish features and small size. He was hunted as both a bank robber and murderer. His main claim to fame was his association with John Dillinger. He died in1934 in a shootout with the FBI. 

With the death of  these five  criminals, the nation felt relief, but the reign of gangsters was not over.  Ma Barker reportedly ruled her sons’ gang ruthlessly and was killed  inn 19935.  Machine Gun Kelly was still alive, but in jail  He and his gang were kidnqpers, among other crimes, and were successful in collecting ransoms from two different kidnappings.  He was captured and jailed .After 21years there, he died of a heart attack.

Congress took action in 1934 and passed the National Firearms  Act   banning machine guns  and  other firearms adapted to automatic fire.

Thanks to the Lloyd Sealy Library for furnishing this information from its records of the Great Depression.

    

Old Friends Are Like Gold....both are worth hunting for

.https://rockingwithdannie.blogspot.com/2024/06/friends-are-like-gold.html 

This sweet lady was the baby sitter for our first child...eighty years ago .She was one of six children who lived next door during  www11 and had plenty of experienced from caring for her youngest sibling,  a little  boy a few years older than our child.

When the war ended,  our families  parted, promising to stay in touch,   but failed to  do so,   as is often the case. So the years went  by and the Internet  and  Google entered my life. so did nostalgia, so I played with my new tools and began a search for anyone with their last name. And I found someone, ‘way up north, the oldest daughter of the family, now listed as the spouse of a fellow with the winning horse in a notable horse show  She had married the ensign she was dating while we were neighbored–a nice ending to a wartime romance.

Further googling took me to my long ago baby sitter,  all grown up with five daughters and living  in  California.     Several phone conversations  folowed as we shared the years gone by.

Another high point was getting to visit with Alice and Louis, her parents and our good neighbor of long ago, at their 50th wedding celebration. 

I love Google.

                

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Bees,  Kids and a Tub 

 

This old tub survived years of washdays on the farm and finally retired to the barn. Years later it  moved to the city where it ended up in my back yard. It lay there for years, upside down so it wouldn’t catch rainwater and become a haven for mosquitos.

Then one year the back yard  was chosen for the annual Easter egg hunt. When the youngsters  were turned loose to hunt the hidden eggs they rushed to all the most likely places before spying the old tub lying nearby, slightly tilted with one edge a few inches off the ground.

The little egg hunters rushed in a  herd to the tub. When someone lifted it there were no eggs– instead a hive of angry honey bees.  The kids learned their little legs couldn't outrun an angry bee and got a few stings. All were soon forgotten as the hunt for more eggs  continued. The bees quickly regrouped into a tight swarm  and left to form another hive in a safer place. 

Bees are important pollinators and today they are in trouble because of something called hive collapse.The cause is unknown, but a widely used insecticide is suspected. Can we help? Maybe. Buying organic fruits and  vegatables could help, but the price is often prohibitive. Another way is to contact your congressperson. We  can also encourage the growth of wild flowers such as blue bonnets, cone flowers, sunflowers and goldenrod.. Also lantana, butterfly weed and redbud,  to name a few.  The bee requires a balanced  diet just as we humans do.

Assuming that you’ve forgotten your nigh school biology just as I have,  the  hive consist of three classes of bees: the queen, whose only duty is to lay eggs, the male bees called drones and the worker bees, all female. Besides foraging for pollen which they carry home in little  baskets on their legs, and nectar  which is carried in special glans, sometimes making ten  trips daily, these little females also serve as guards at the hive’s entrance and have hive  cleaning duties. It’s no surprise the  they seldom live longer  than six months.

The more I learn about a hive’s society the more  I  admire  the little  bee–.even its grim custom of  forcing the drones out of the hive when cold weather arrives.

 SUN-RIPENED TOMATOES

https://rockingwithdannie.blogspot.com/ 

      After tasting a slice of yesterday’s purchase of a clump of beautiful red tomatoes, and finding it to be half ripe and tasteless, I took a  trip across the internet to discover what has happened to the tomato of the past.

      First, the seed have been modified. Second machines are generally used in harvesting.  These cut the plants; shakes off the tomatoes, both large and small–green, barely pink and rotten. All are rolled onto a conveyor belt and carried down to human hands for sorting. It takes a tough tomato to survive all that. A ripe  one can’t.

    My memories went back to my childhood in the years of the Great Depression when my dad had to switch from being a cotton farmer to a truck farmer. In fact, he had to leave his cotton crop, unpicked, \in the field, because the selling price wouldn't pay for the cost of having it picked.

     Today's generation may find the term "truck farming" a bit puzzling, but it's an old term from the 1800s referring to carrying fresh vegetables to market in carts and wagons. This continued through the 30s,"and 4os. with many Model T cars adapted for hauling a load of produce–a forerunner of pickup trucks.

     The earliest tomatoes to go on the market brought the highest prices, so my dad planted his seed early in a special bed he built.  It had a roll-up canvas cover to protect the young plants from a spring freeze.

      Rains don’t always come at a convenient time, so those plants had to be watered by hand with a syrup bucket with holes punched in the bottom for a sprinkler.  And the water was pumped by hand, one bucket-full at a time. 

      Finally, the plants were ready to be planted in the field. A big field. Dad dug the holes; I dropped the plants, hundreds of them, and Mother covered the roots of each one. Some years this system was disrupted by a drouthy spring. Then, water was hauled to the field on a horse-drawn sled, and water poured in each hole.

      There was a risk attached to trying for an early crop—Texas weather! Hail or a late spring freeze. There was little a farmer could do to protect a field of young plants from hail, but there were many times we covered the plants with paper tents from old magazine pages. Row after row of plants spaced four feet apart, all needing to be protected from freezing temperatures with paper tents.

      After all this troublesome process, the plants begin to bloom and set fruit, and, finally ripen, and be picked by bucketfuls to be carried to a shady spot for sorting and packing.

     Our house had a long south front porch, and that was where we sorted and packed the tomatoes for hauling to market. Ripe tomatoes were set aside to be packed in baskets for local sales—one day of shipping and they would have turned nto a juicy mush. Scared tomatoes were not packed for sale. Those were commonly called "cat-faced." I never saw one that resembled a cat in any way, but I suppose someone did at some time. A little rain shower would cause a split in the skin and those were also set aside.
    Tomatoes were not tumbled helter-skelter into baskets. They were carefully packed in paper lined bushel or half-bushel baskets, starting with the ones with just a blush of pink, and packed in rings, gradually getting riper as the basket was filled. All perfect. Something to dream of, nowadays, as we visit the produce section of our supermarkets, and pick over ethylene-gassed choices.

     That’s the way it was done on our farm ninety years ago.
      If you've never picked tomatoes, you may not know that contact with the vines turns your hands a dirty-looking green. And I'll bet you don't know that the best way to remove it is by tubbing a ripe tomato over your hands like soap. Why not wear gloves?. Welll folks, gloves cost money, and a damaged tomato didn’t.  In those depression  days every penny was saved. So, no gloves.

         Ah, the good ole days with plenty of sun ripened tomatoes.

 

 

the Rocking Chair : Hollywood

the Rocking Chair : Hollywood: �� You may find this hard to believe, but in 1922 the morals of the movie industry were considered highly questionable after several risqu...

Hollywood

😉

You may find this hard to believe, but in 1922 the morals of the movie industry were considered highly questionable after several risqué films and a number of widespread scandals including murder and rape. At that time the public and many religious, civic, and political organizations were exerting so much pressure for decency laws, that 37 states were complying by introducing almost one hundred censoring bills. 

In hope of rehabilitating Hollywood’s image, and rather than face a mishmash of censoring, the Motion Picture Production Code, popularly known as the Hays code, was created and spelled out what was acceptable and what was unacceptable content for movies meant for U.S. audiences. 

For more than thirty years Hollywood adhered to these rules, and the producers had to cut many scenes before getting a stamp of approval to release their film, but by the '40s, the Production Code was already weakening.

      As American culture began to change and television arrived on the scene with no restrictions, the Production Code gradually lost its strength until finally in 1968 it was abandoned, and was replaced by the MPAA rating system. 

Pre-code: "Don'ts" and "Be Carefuls", as proposed in 1927.*

The Code enumerated a number of key points known as the "Don'ts" and "Be Carefuls":

Resolved, That those things which are included in the following list shall not appear in pictures produced by the members of this Association, irrespective of the manner in which they are treated:

         1.   Pointed profanity – by either title or lip – this includes the words "God", "Lord", "Jesus", "Christ"    (unless they be used reverently in connection with proper religious ceremonies), "hell", "damn", "Gawd", and every other profane and vulgar expression however it may be spelled;
          2.    Any licentious or suggestive nudity – in fact, or in silhouette; and any lecherous or licentious notice thereof by other characters in the picture;
         3.    The illegal traffic in drugs;
         4.    Any inference of sex perversion;
         5.    White slavery;
         6.    Miscegenation (sex relationships between the white and black races;
        7.     Sex hygiene and venereal diseases;
        8.     Scenes of actual childbirth – in fact, or in silhouette;
        9.     Children's sex organs;
       10.    Ridicule of the clergy;
       11.    Willful offense to any nation, race or creed;

And be it further resolved, That special care be exercised in the manner in which the following subjects are    
 treated to the end that vulgarity and suggestiveness may be eliminated and that good taste may be emphasized;

       1.     The use of the flag;
       2.     International relations (avoiding picturizing in an unfavorable light another country's religion, history,  
               institutions, prominent people, and citizenry);
      3.     Arson;
      4.     The use of firearms;
      5.     Theft, robbery, safe-cracking, and dynamiting of trains, mines, buildings, etc. (having in mind the effect   
              which a too-detailed description of these may have upon the moron);
      6.     Brutality and possible gruesomeness;
      7.     Technique of committing murder by whatever method;
      8.     Methods of smuggling;
      9.     Third-degree methods;
     10.    Actual hangings or electrocutions as legal punishment for crime;
     11.    Sympathy for criminals;
     12.    Attitude toward public characters and institutions;
     13.    Sedition; 
     14     Apparent cruelty to children and animals;
     15    Branding of people or animals;
     16    The sale of women, or of a woman selling her virtue;
     17.   Rape or attempted rape;
     18.    First-night scenes;
    19.   Man and woman in bed together;
    20    Deliberate seduction of girls;
    21    The institution of marriage;
    22.    Surgical operations;
    23.   The use of drugs;
    24.   Titles or scenes having to do with law enforcement or law-enforcing officers;
    25.   Excessive or lustful kissing, particularly when one character or the other is a "heavy".



*from Wikipedia
     
That's quite an impressive list.  Would present-day viewers choose even one or two out of this list for the entertainment world to follow today? 

I would, but then, I'm old.


Dannie 

Back on the Farm and sun-ripened tomatoes

    I read a remark last week about farmers being unable to find tomato pickers even at $150 a day. Of course, that brought memories of my childhood, when a farmhand was fortunate if he got $1.00 a day.
   That also brought memories of having a dish of ripe tomatoes twice a day, and at that time, didn't realize how fortunate I was to be raised on a farm.
     Those were the years of the Great Depression, and my dad had to switch from being a cotton farmer to a truck farmer. In fact, he had to leave his cotton crop, unpicked, in the field, because the selling price wouldn't pay for the cost of having it picked.
     Today's generation may find the term "truck farming" a bit puzzling, but it's an old term from the 1800s referring to carrying fresh vegetables to market. In those early years through the 30s,"trucking" was done with wagons  although lots of Model T Fords were adapted to hauling.
      You young folks gotta remember that life existed before pickup trucks and cell phones—.or Walmart or Home Depot. Dad raised his own tomato plants...hundreds of them. I know because I was the one who dropped them in the hole that one of my parents  dug for each plant. And since rain often does not come at the most convenient time, those same plants had to be watered by hand.
     The earliest crop of tomatoes brought the highest prices, so my dad built a framed bed that he could cover with a roll back canvas cover to protect the young plants from a freeze. There was no running water...the only power on most farms was human energy and four-legged horse power...so we pumped water, and used a syrup bucket with holes punched in the bottom to water the plants.
     There was a risk attached to trying for an early crop—Texas weather! Hail or a late spring freeze. There was little a farmer could do to protect a field of young plants from hail, but there were many times we covered the plants with paper tents from old Saturday Post magazines. Row after row of plants spaced four feet apart, all needing to be covered with paper tents.
     That trusty magazine came into use again when the tomatoes were ready for market. The pages were separated and used to line the bushel baskets so the tomatoes would be protected from damage from the rough basket and its tiny staples.
     Our house had a long south front porch, and that was where we sorted and packed the tomatoes  for hauling to market. Ripe tomatoes were set aside to be packed in baskets for local sales—one day of shipping and they would haveturned  to a juicy mush. Scared tomatoes were not packed for sale. Those were commonly called "cat-faced." I never saw one that resembled a cat in any way, but I suppose someone did at some time.
    Tomatoes were not tumbled into baskets and carried to market. They were packed in rings, starting with the ones with just a blush of pink, and gradually getting riper as the basket was filled. Beautiful things! Something to dream of, nowadays, as we visit the produce section of our supermarkets.

      If you've never picked tomatoes, you may not know that contact with the vines turns your hands a dirty-looking green. And I'll bet you don't know thar the best way to remove it is by sqeezing a tomato into a pulp and rubbing it all over your hands like soap.

The good ole days.

Dannie

   
   

Treasures and Trash

Remember this? It was first produced in 1934 as a three-pc. set of a pitcher, bowl and a mug. With a small amount of money—10¢ or 15¢ and the required number of box tops, hundreds of little girls  ate a lot of cereal trying to save enough boxtops or coupons to get this Shirley Temple pitcher. Today, they appear in antique stores priced at $25 to $75. But beware of reproductions.


Another boxtops offer was this little microscope. It was well made and did a fair job of magnifying. In my adult years a local nurse gave me a couple of slides to go with it. Today it sits on one of my nurse daughter's shelves.

A small telescope was another boxtops offer, but after forty years and several moves, it went away, somewhere, somehow. I wish I remembered. 


In the Depression Years, nothing was wasted or thrown away, because it might be useful at another time. That has formed the habits of a lifetime—saving things like this tiny oil can. Never used for seventy years, it has found its niche in a display of old things.

Unexpected things appear when cleaning a garage—like this bottle of bluing. 


 A bottle of 'bluing' was part of each washday in most households back in good old days of lye soap and wash pots. Enough of the concentrated blue liquid was added to the last tub of rinse water to tint it light blue. This light blue water was supposed to counteract the gradual yellowing of white cottons. At least that was what I was told. As a child, I was in charge of rinsing the laundry through the two tubs of rinse water. For those not familiar with the system, each piece was swished around in the water and all the water wrung out before repeating the process in the next tub. Tiresome and boring—but enlivened by swarms of biting flies that were attracted to wet skin.

Mrs. Stewart's bluing has been around since 1883  and can still be purchased either online or in several other locations, including Ace hardware stores. Besides brightening white fabrics, it was used in various other ways such as brightening a pet's hair( and the ladies, also), and dyeing Easter eggs. I remember adding bluing to the salt crystal 'gardens' we made as school projects.

Another oldie found in our garage clutter was this reminder of days gone by.


Remember ink bottles and learning to write with a fountain pen and ink? Remember those ink-stained fingers?  Fountain pens were filled with ink by opening a little lever which compressed a rubber bladder inside the pen. Releasing the lever caused ink to be drawn into the bladder. I vaguely remember the first words written after filling, always had an excess of ink. Pressing down too hard on the writing point also caused an ink blot and also often bent the fine writing point (which was replaceable).

Oh, we kids of the '30s had it hard. Not only did we have to walk to school (uphill and in the snow), we had to learn to write cursive with a fountain pin that sometimes had a bent tip.

More garage clutter another time. There's things out there that I can't identify. Maybe you can.

Dannie

Poor Little Bucky

Poor little Bucky. He suffers terrible anxiety when a rainstorm…even a mild, non- threatening one with little or no thunder detectable to human ears…approaches. He whines pitifully, and runs through the house extremely agitated.  And he trembles constantly. 

From what I have reconstructed of his history, he was badly abused, causing the loss of one eye, and had either managed to run away, or had been dumped to die He was found by a roadside having apparently been hiding from predators along a nearby creek during a series of rainstorms that had flooded the area.  He was in a terrible condition…muddy, with hundreds of thorns and stickers embedded under his little belly…and with that damaged eye. And he was just a puppy. 

I hold him…pet him, and sometimes brush his hair…until he calms down and goes to sleep. Tonight, I could do nothing to stop his shaking. I held him in my lap. Didn’t work. I try reclining to give him more room to find a comfortable position. He wasn’t interested in comfort. He paced back and forth from one chair arm to the other…and there I was, pinned down, and being tromped on by eleven and a half pounds on four paws. 

So I put him back on the floor, and he finally settled down to sleep by my feet.

Does he have horrible memories, or is he supper sensitive to the approaching rainstorm.

I wish he could tell me.

Dannie

Searching for Deplorable's

Yesterday was the International Day of Peace, and in the United States it ended with scenes of rioting in North Carolina.  

 Peaceful thoughts do not come easily when our leaders, and would-be-leaders, speak in terms that incite anger and hate.

Consider Hillary Clinton’s recent remarks that half of Trump’s supporters belong in “a basket of deplorables" She has also said that his supporters were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic."

Unfortunately, she is not the only person that feels that way.

Earlier this week, I read a contemptuous remark about the “deplorables” who are supporting Donald Trump for president. Hillary’s adjective-loaded remark was mild compared to the contempt and hatred expressed in this conversation.

Apparently these “deplorables” are thought of as little more than garbage to be cast aside. A second person made the shocking statement that they should be deported.

Really?  Who are these “deplorables”—are they the people Hillary labeled racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, and Islamaphobic. If so, what makes them worse than the racist, domineering, and elitist followers of Clinton?

Or, are the “deplorables” the people who are uneducated, poor, on welfare, even homeless?

Face the facts, folks. With the exception of “Islsmaphobics” (which I assume is Hillary’s word for those who fear terrorists), each political party has a good supply of followers who fit the descriptions above—plus a great number of people filled with hate.

There are racist among the wealthy, the poor, and the unemployed. The same applies to those who hold sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, or Islsmaphobice views.

So trash this snobbish contempt for those who are in a different social position, and those who have different values and opinions. These are people who own businesses, stock the grocery shelves, and clear our streets of rubbish. They wait tables, enforce the laws, and bury our loved ones.

They should be honored for holding one, two, and occasionally, three jobs to provide for their families

They are not a “basket of deplorables.”

A Dog Named Buck

After a long search, a new dog has joined my household. He’s a Shih Tzu that came with the name Buck. His owner gave him to me because of a change in his life style. He was obviously loved and well cared for and had a happy home for a year.

Before that, his history is sad. He had been so abused that he lost one eye, and had so many stickers embedded in his little belly, that it took hours to pick them out. How I feel about that is best left unsaid.

I will not change his name. He was named after his previous owner’s father. I think that’s a sweet and thoughtful legacy.

I’ve had him five hours and see there are to be changes in this household. Closet doors are to be kept shut. Shoes are to be stored in the closet—always. If I don’t want sofa pillows tugged to the floor, do not leave them near the edge.  I don’t understand his obsession with this,  because he does not chew on them or nap on them.

This is going to be interesting. 

Although Buck has settled in nicely and had several naps in my lap, at present he is pacing the floor, ears alert. I expect he’s missing his other family. It’s sad that dogs don’t understand the changes in their life.

Maybe in a few days, he''l tell me what he thinks of hie new home.

Dannie