nathan marsak – Page 13

A Many Splendored Thing

November 6, 1907
Los Angeles

When Mrs. Jenevieve Van Lakum, a well-to-do and refined 35 year-old widow from Manitou, Colorado checked into an apartment at 803 East Fifth Street with her four children and a black gentleman, it was assumed by the proprietor that the gentleman was her porter.

But a certain Patrolman C. H. Jones espied Jenevieve and the black gentleman about town, and made an investigation. It came to light that the man, William Seay, was occupying the same apartment.

Humane Officer Reynolds took the children into custody and the two adults face arrest.

After Mrs. Van Lakum was taken to Central Station and interrogated, she broke down and admitted that she loved the man, and “could not explain her affection for the negro.” They came from the east to Los Angeles with the express purpose of becoming husband and wife, but the LA Powers That Be put the kibosh on that. Police suspected that Seay held some “uncanny” influence over her, but Jeneivieve denied that she had been hypnotized. Seay further stated that he maintained his relations with her only for the money she gave him, which to this point had amounted to about $500 ($10,261 USD 2005).

Postscript – on November 10, “Humane Officer” Reynolds confessed that the sextet had given him the slip. After having secured Seay’s promise to stay away from the woman, Reynolds allowed Van Lakum to take the children in search of a cottage to rent—and disappeared.

Says Reynolds: “I believe that she has found a cottage somewhere in the suburbs and is living quietly. Whether the negro visits her or not, I have no positive knowledge, but I am inclined to believe that he does.

“Information from the East states that Mrs. Van Lakum is the member of a prominent family in Chicago. I think that she is irresponsible. I believe she is mentally deranged.”

Let’s hope they found happiness somewhere, though where in 1907 Los Angeles that would be, I do not know. Certainly not in Edendale.

Signs of the Times

November 5, 1907 boozesign
Los Angeles

Just as an innocent toke of reefer leads to a lifetime of laudanum addiction, everybody knows that electric signs lead to…neon!

Neon wouldn’t be introduced to the United States until 1923 (specifically, at the Earl C. Anthony Packard dealership, 10th & Hope Street). That first reefer toke, though…that was the electric sign…

Property owners of 1907 argue that electric signs, particularly those of the swinging variety which jut from the façades of buildings, make the streets look tawdry. Moreover, they nullify the illumination systems on principal business streets, and will become eyesores and nuisances.

The Mayor, however, is outspoken in favor of electric signs. They illuminate business thoroughfares, and are an ornament to the city. A man of vision, our Mayor Harper.

But what to do, then, with the Jim “de champ” Jeffries’ new saloon sign on South Spring? He has had one built and installed, swung over the sidewalk, “bearing in letters as big as one of his mitts the magic pugilistic name.”

While this type of signage violates numerous and sundry City ordinances, the Board of Public Works has ignored similar signs in the downtown area that advertise cafés and theaters, who are crying foul in that municipal authorities have allowed such signs to hang for the last year. Because of Jeffries’ transgression, he and all other sign owners received letters from the City Attorney demanding the removal of any and all projecting signage, the worry being that should these signs become commonplace, “the sidewalks would be converted into tunnels darkened and obstructed by a covering of advertising signs.”

Moreover, a proposed ordinance shall prohibit signage advertising liquor. Can this be?

Mayor Harper stands firm. What will become of our city?

electricyouth Here’s a vision of the future: electric signage along Broadway, ca. 1920, as pictured in, uh, this book.

Hallowe’en Hi-Jinx

October 31, 1907 vandals
Los Angeles

Everyone loves Hallowe’en high jinks—the artfully tossed toilet tissue, the odd splattered egg. In 1907, of course, kids were simpler. They just caused railroad collisions and overturned buildings.

That the honest pleasures of simple thievery and gunplay would suffice: Mrs. W. Baker of 1211 Westlake Blvd. lost her potted plants, and her front gate, in fact numerous complaints came from the Westlake district of purloined porch furniture, and again, mysteriously, missing gates. Horse and buggies were stolen, and young men fired their guns at random, and we assume that a jack-o-lantern may have been smashed. But can a good time go too far?

Rail-greasings were the order of the evening’s festivities, as twenty-five yards of rail were greased at Santa Barbara and Vermont Avenue, causing the collision of two street cars; passengers were jolted, but none were injured. Similarly, a Grand and Downey Avenue car collided with a Vermont car, and a Vermont car crashed into a Redondo car, and a West Eleventh Street car slammed into a Grand Avenue car—Los Angeles Railway called out 100 men, fitted with sand and rags, to identify and correct grease traps and prevent further hooliganism. Pacific Electric men found oiled rails at two spots in Pasadena, and corrected the traps before more mayhem ensued. A tie was also placed across the Downey Avenue line, and a straw dummy was set up between the rails of the Pasadena short line.

Most remarkably, some students of Archimedes used a lever to overturn an entire real estate office. The 12×20 foot structure, at Avenue 46 and Pasadena Avenue, was filled with $500 ($10,261.79USD 2005) in new furniture that realtor W. H. Gilbert had recently purchased for his home; after overturning the building the vandals set about smashing all the furniture.

And so went another Los Angeles Hallowe’en, filled with holiday release. One wonders if there wasn’t a budding Sylvestre Matuschka in the spirited mix.

Salvation in the Round

October 21, 1907

Highland Park

First there was Dr. Widney’s Bethel, built into the notch of a hill in the form of a letter “A,” and now the tony downtown suburb of Highland Park is up for another piece of religious architectural eccentricity.

The seceders from the First Presbyterian Church of Highland Park, under the leadership of Dr. F. P. Berry, have purchased an unusually triangular piece of ground, 134 by 135 feet at the corner of Avenue 56 and Ash. Architect George Howard was given the task of designing a new church, and his solution to this awkward parcel problem for the good people of the newly formed Olivet Presbyterian Church? Build in the form of a complete circle, fifty-eight feet in diameter, with a circular auditorium that seats 650.

Don’t know as to whether this unique structure was ever built, but do know that it isn’t there now.
odd

Rail Bums, Japanese-Style

looking

October 9, 1907 hobos
Los Angeles

Where now we fret over every Mexican and Saudi, uh, Iraqi who crosses our border, time was, we fretted over the Japanese. And rightfully so—they are studious and upright, and therefore cunning. Oh, wait, that was the stereotype concocted after 1941. In 1907, they were all hungry railroad tramps.

You will I trust forgive me while I quote liberally from the original text: first

“Sound the alarm…the Japs have scaled the last wall of our complicated civilization. Having learned how to work, they are now starting in on the science of learning how not to work—invading Vagobondia. In fact the first crop of oriental Happy Hooligans was reaped yesterday morning.” hobopix

M. Mitsuz and R. Moresons traveled from Japan to Mexico in search of work. They worked Down South for a spell, “but for some queer reason got an inspiration to go with a trainload of Jap emigrants to Vancouver, where Japs get clumped around by the natives.”

The two aforementioned gentlemen were piled into a cheap day coach, and were “transported over more miles than they thought were on the globe.” Having made the journey from Japan, this writer feels that to be, likely, highly inaccurate. In any event, there was apparently no food on the train, as Mitsuz, “who is about the size of a pickled onion, murmured in his dreams the names of luscious Jap dishes that made his pal, Moresons, groan aloud. When the train passed any place where there were restaurants, their two little noses twitched and sniffed like rabbits.” Again, without there having been a reporter on the train with them, we can only marvel at the describatory liberties taken herein. But such was the deft and trenchant reporting of the time.

With dame hunger having taken hold, though while under bond and legally not allowed to leave the train, Mitsuz and Moresons beat it out of the railroad yards and into the nearest eatery: “They had their first introduction to their ‘ham an,’’ and somebody scooped out for them a restaurant pie resembling two clam shells, with a piece of felt hat for filling. They devourered it and suffered grievous things in their tummies during the night. Japanese nightmares, having all those crawly things you see shinning up the sides of rose vases for literary material, must be something fierce.”

That may be so. (I invite those readers of Japanese ancestry to confirm and clarify.)

While at the beanery, where our duo “ate until their skins were spread thin,” the train up and left without them, taking all of their belongings with. They ran around for a while, making “rag-time” gestures at officials, who dutifully ignored them. They climbed into a boxcar hoping to hop a freight north, but were pinched by railyard bulls, who “rounded them into the station with the regular grist of Weary Willies and tomato can bums.”

Messrs. Mitsuz and Moresons face deportation.

Mr. Wrong, Edendale-Style

October 3, 1907
Edendale edendale1

It’s 2006, and Edendale is the quaintest durn area of Silver Lake, where you may dine at the Edendale Grill and think back on when Edendale was full of Keystone Kops and horses from Tom Mix’s Mixville Studios. You can mull over Edendale’s history as the birthing-place of identity politics, where gay rights began and Communists cruised the hills and bohemianism was actually daring. And now, next time you’re in Edendale, I hope you think of Mr. A. B. Wright.

Mrs. Jennie Gamble bought a lot in Edendale when it was laid out in 1903, and built a nice little four-room cottage. She decided to sell in 1907, and did so, to the aforementioned Mr. Wright, the $1200 deal was closed, and Mrs. Gamble deposited her deed with a trust company. All fine and good, except for one thing: A. B. Wright is black.

The neighborhood went nuts, threatening “dire things” and making uncomplimentary remarks to Mrs. Gamble. A great banner was raised, announcing a mass meeting set for tonight to protest against the incursion.

But the protest was averted, as R. R. Carew, original promoter of Edendale and a resident therein, “proved to be the Moses in the present difficulty, and led his people out of trouble.” And he would have been in trouble indeed, in that he had personally assured prospective homemakers that no black family would be allowed to settle in the community. What Carew said to Wright is unknown, but Wright did ultimately decide not to move his family into Edendale.

edendale2

There still aren’t a lot of black people in Edendale.

His Bags are Being Sent

sewerrat October 3, 1907
Los Angeles

During tonight’s dinnertime—the fashionable hour for society at the Hotel Van Nuys at Fourth and Main (Morgan & Walls, 1896) a furry friend decided to hobnob with the upper crust. Strolling in through the Fourth Street entrance like the most gracious of chaps, of which there were many in the lobby, came a great husky sewer rat. vannuys

Pandemonium ensued: “Dainty Parisian lingerie and open-work stockings appeared on view. Gallant gentlemen dropped their cigars and ladies jumped on chairs, but still the rat stood his ground.”

Porters and elevator boys descended, and Mr. Rattus fled the scene through a hole in some missing wainscoting (the Van Nuys undergoing some changes to the lobby). Immediately the house ferret, kept in the engine room for just this sort of affair, was thrust into the opening.

A loud, chilling three-round bout ensued inside the wall, and the ferret emerged bloody and beaten. The rat stuck his nose out his hiding place as if to challenge all comers, and another ferret, this one less soft and over-weight, was sent in to dispatch the venturesome intruder.

The story headline says the rat was killed, but the actual tale makes no such mention. Without a body, I’d say Mr. Ferret merely bragged about besting his opponent, and Mr. Rat went off to the Rosslyn, or perhaps the King Edward.

(The Van Nuys became the Hotel Barclay in the 1930s [adding a magnificent art deco neon blade sign]. The Barclay is now one of the many “28-day-shuffle” transient hotels in the area, where monthly rent is $360.)

Death at Sea

September 26, 1907

Avalon

Dan Bulkeley was a Pasadena man, well educated and of financial means, living with his cousins Lucy and Jennie Bulkeley at 58 North Pasadena Avenue. Every summer since ’95 they’ve passed the season in a tent house on Sumner Avenue in the city of Avalon, on the Banning Brother’s Isle of Santa Catalina, off the Los Angeles coast.

Lucy and Jennie departed for Pasadena today and Dan, despondent at being left alone, engaged the launch Adelade to take him on a fishing trip. Near the Seal Rocks, Dan stood up and told the boatman that there were letters to be found under the seat, and that his pockets were filled with rocks. With that, Dan Bulkeley stepped from the boat and into the Pacific, his final home.

There was one letter to Lucy, one to the boatman containing five dollars, and another to a J. L. Wegman containing fifteen dollars, and instructions regarding taking down his tent.

Speaking of the briny deep, what was the biggest story of September, 1907? Why, that honor would go to the maiden voyage of the mighty Lusitania, wherein supremacy over the sea was regained by Cunard over the Hamburg-American line.

The Day the Clown Cried

cca2 cc3

September 25, 1907
Los Angeles

The Ringling tents went “dry” today as Restaurant Inspector Schwegel turned whole tubfuls of pink lemonade into the sewer. He told the circusfolk that while the lemonade might do for an aquarium, it wasn’t fit for human consumption. The lemonade booth was too near the animals, Schwegel said, and that besides the fleas and putrescent gunk within, it appeared to be contaminated with clothing dye.

City Chemist Miller added that the average circus lemonade is about as healthful as wood alcohol.

Something to remember next time you journey to the big top, or out to the County Fair (‘til October 1st!).

Another Way to Grieve

sondead September 22, 1907
Los Angeles

A few days ago I posted about the Vance family who, having lost their young son, responded to their grief with solemnity and rectitude, though in a manner unusual to the dictates of the age. More appropriate to the workings of 1907, perhaps, is the mayhem that ensued after the Musitelles of 812 Howard Street lost their little John.

Mr. and Mrs. John Musitelle have five children; four daughters, and their favorite, youngest child John Jr. Musitelle, a fruit merchant, often took little John on the wagon ride between their ranch in Fernando and the fruit markets east of Chinatown. The mother had admonished John Sr. to never let the boy out of his sight, but today, Musitelle entrusted the task to an employee, one Pete Gotelli. Musitelli had to stay in Fernando on business, and the boy, who was exhausted from playing, pleaded with his father to allow Gottelli to take him home. Musitelle consented.

Mrs. Musitelli waited at the corner of Macy and Howard for the arrival of her husband; when the Gottelli-driven fruit wagon arrived, Gottelli left the horses unhitched and fled (questioned later, Gottelli stated that he didn’t want to face the mother). There, in the carriage, little John appeared to be sleeping. It would be a long sleep—at the west end of the East Main Street bridge over the Los Angeles River, John had fallen from the wagon as it crossed the railroad tracks, and was crushed under its wheels. Mrs. Musitelle carried John to the couch inside, where he passed away.

“They have killed my Johnnie!” screamed Mrs. Musitelle, who in her rage became violent at all who came near. Neighbors had called the undertaker’s wagon from Pierce Brother’s, and as the boy was being loaded in, Mrs. Musitelle broke free from those restraining her and grabbed the boy back.

At that point Mr. Musitelle arrived home, and despite a desperate struggle, managed to stab himself in the chest, though without doing serious damage. Mr. and Mrs. were taken to another house, where Mrs. Musitelle insisted she did not recognize Mr. Musitelle. When she finally realized who he was, she accused him of killing the boy. Mr. Musitelle has stated that he will end his life at the earliest given opportunity.

We can only assume that, unlike the Vance family, the Musitelles will imbue their son’s funeral with every possible trapping of black-clad mourning.