
Their Mothers Must Be Proud

In an effort to redeem a luscious dairy treat’s good name after being caught in a bootlegging scandal last week--or perhaps because it was a slow news day--Dr. Frank McCoy today announced that “ICE CREAM IS A REAL FOOD.â€
This is the good news we’ve been waiting for, folks. According to Dr. McCoy (author of the Los Angeles Times’s “Health and Diet Advice†column), ice cream “should at all times be considered a real food and not a delicacy.†Besides being rich in vitamin A and calcium, a half-pint of ice cream has as much lime as a half-pound of butter, four pounds of meat, or three-and-a-half pounds of potatoes. Never heard about the importance of lime in your diet? Me either--but if we eat enough ice cream, we’ll never have to worry about it again.
Dr. McCoy also has a word or two for those who criticize manufacturers for adding gelatin to their ice creams. “- I would suggest that the laws be changed to admit the use of even more gelatin, as this is an excellent food product which makes the ice cream still more palatable and delicious.â€
Packed with all that lime and gelatin, ice cream is a veritable superfood. Dr. McCoy “suggest[s] that you try some summer lunches with ice cream as the principal part of the meal, using with it any one kind of the acid fruits – or – cooked and raw nonstarchy vegetables.†Ice cream salad, anyone?
Should you find your pants getting a little tight after all that healthfulness, you might want to take a look at Dr. McCoy’s book, The Fast Way to Health.
July 16, 1927
Los Angeles
“If I had a hammer
I’d hammer in the morning
I’d hammer in the evening…”
— “If I Had a Hammer”, written by Lee Hayes and Pete Seeger
Jacob Goldstein, President of Rothschild Mortgage and Finance, permanently ended his business partnership with the firm’s Vice President, Joseph Stern, by bashing him four times over the head with a hammer and firing three bullets from a revolver into his body. It would have been less messy if only Goldstein had let an attorney handle the dissolution.
Goldstein denied premeditating the attack, which occurred in the company’s elaborately furnished offices at 505 Hellman Bank Building, and swore to police that he had acted in self-defense. According to Goldstein, Stern had behaved like a lunatic and had menaced him with a hammer during a quarrel over business matters. Goldstein further stated that he was in fear of his life when he wrenched the hammer away from his future former partner, and then used the tool to crush the man’s skull. The coup de grace was delivered with the revolver he had purchased the day before.
Police found Goldstein’s explanation unbelievable and charged him with first degree murder. Goldstein entered a not guilty plea at his arraignment but was later allowed to plead guilty to manslaughter, for which he received a sentence of from one to ten years in the state pen.
It’s not easy to get kicked out of California forever, but Jacob Goldstein managed it. On the condition that he would move to Forest Hills, New York to live with friends, 63-year-old Goldstein was paroled from San Quentin on February 24, 1933.
July 16, 1927
Hollywood
Bad news ladies – your feet have grown larger over the past twenty years. The reason? Dancing! Your older female relatives may have danced the night away, but they were tripping the light fantastic to the sedate melodies of the waltz and the two-step. The kinder, gentler dances of bygone days made it possible for women to keep their petite size three tootsies from spreading out like flapjacks. Modern gals stomp around the dance floor gyrating to the tango, Charleston, and black bottom. As a result of all this vigorous activity, today the average girl wears anywhere from four and a half to a size six shoe!
“As athletics become more popular for women and modern dances become more violent feet will grow in accordance. Some day women will have feet as large as men’s are now”, said Mr. Julian Alfred, a director of musical choruses at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Women of the future – beware! You are fated to have feet as big as Olive Oyl’s.
“Walkin’ with my baby she’s got great big feet
She’s long, lean, and lanky and ain’t had nothing to eat
She’s my baby and I love her just the same
Crazy ‘bout that woman cause Caldonia is her name…”
– Caldonia, written by Fleecie Moore
July 15, 1927
The Southland
Of our common cohort Latrodectus—the black widow—there is in the Times no mention whatsoever until this day in 1927. For it was on this day that Bureau of Housing and Sanitation officials were alerted to the presence of one lone lady in a pile of trash lumber at 147 North Hoover Street—a specimen believed to have come in a crate of fruit from Hawaii.
But worry not! general public, says M. S. Siegel, Chief Supervisor of the Department, for we have destroyed the specimen, burned the lumber, and saturated the ground with gasoline! No other reports of the spiders have been made in Los Angeles, and so far as Siegel knows, there are no more of the type in our geographic region.
But he spoke too soon: it was the beginning of the end. July 19, 1927:
From here, the paper goes spider-nutty. 147 North Hoover was apparently our arachnid Alamogordo, for few days passed in the late 20s without mention of some terrible arachattack:
(Personally, I’m of the opinion that the area always had the spiders hanging about in our privies and junk cars and whatnot, and the Times just felt it needed something new to harp on. And what better? After all, they’re colored…[they’ve got “black” right in the name!] And they’re women.)
(And that whole sexual cannibalism thing is a little suspect.)
July 14, 1927
Los Angeles
Clifford J. Morgan needed some dough—hey, don’t we all—and what surer way to procure some than to stick up a gas station? So he hailed a dimbox and told the hack to take him off to the filling station at Jefferson and Figueroa. There the would-be highwayman told the taxi to sit tight, strolled into the oilpit, stuck a gun in the ribs of one C. F. Williams, relieved him of $45 ($537 USD2005), sauntered back to his waiting hansom, and motored away. Unfortunately for Williams, do-gooders Ralph Paine and W. Burke were in the station at the time, and, grabbing Officer Best along the way, found Williams’ taxicab quite conspicuous in its lines and coloring and was thus followed easily. At 51st and Central the trio caught up to and apprehended our hapless and callow highwayman.
Vehicles-for-hire made the news again today in the strange case of five year-old Kenneth Stubbs, who had been placed by his mother Della in the home of Mrs. Bertha Whitiker at 3040 South Hoover. Mrs. Whitiker reported that a man called at the house, purporting to represent a local orphanage in which the boy’s mother wished to place him. After a brief conversation, the man departed. Two hours later, another man arrived in a taxicab. Mrs. Whitiker saw the little Stubbs boy invite the man into the apartment before witnessing said man scurry away with the boy in his arms, and the taxi speed away. (Estranged husband John Stubbs, up in Vancouver, is said not to know of Della’s whereabouts and therefore could not be part of this misuse of our public transport.) No further mention of the Stubbs kidnapping, or of little Kenneth Stubbs, is ever made in the Times.
July 12, 1927
El Monte
Quick, fellas, hop in the car! We gotta get out to El Monte pronto, or there won’t be any of the main course left. What, you mean you call yourself a Lion and you don’t want to sample a hunk of barbecued adolescent lion meat, personally prepared by the King of Beasts’ best pal Charles Gay out at his Lion Farm, as part of the celebration of the charters of the El Monte and Alhambra clubs? Getouttahere! Of course you do!
Ah, don’t be a stick in the mud! We’ll sit at the big table in the middle of the lion cages, drink up some hooch and gnaw on a cat bone while telling dirty jokes and practicing our roars. And then, when we’re all good and lit up, Gay’ll bring Numa, his biggest and friendliest lion out to walk the length of the table, and we’ll toast that kitty as he’s never been toasted before.
That’s the spirit, fellas, out we go. This is a big day for the Lions of Southern California, one we’ll tell our grandkids about!
(For more about Gay’s Lion Farm, please visit the Wikipedia page or join us on a future edition of the Blood and Dumplings Crime Bus Tour.)
Honorable Calvin Coolidge, President of the United States
Summer White House
Rapid City, SD
Dear Mr. President,
Have observed the pleasure you are taking in fishing during your vacation this summer. We think you may be interested in a special lure, used with much success in California to tempt the speckled beauties which abound in the streams near your summer home. We are sending under separate cover a few of our best "California squirrel tail bait." These were specially made for you and we trust they will bring you much luck. Squirrels are an agricultural pest in California, but we do find some use for a part of their anatomy. Trusting you will accept this contribution to your pleasure in the same spirit here manifested, we are:
Yours very truly,
L.J. Tobias, Chief Deputy Sheriff
George Bottel, Horticultural Inspector
July 10, 1927
Los Angeles
First peanuts and now the All-American ice cream cone. Is there no treat safe from the bootlegger’s evil maw? Assistant Federal prohibition administrator Frank E. Benedict today announced the discovery of what was called "one of the most completely equipped distilleries" ever found in Los Angeles, hidden in the innocent guise of an ice cream cone factory.
A curious fact brought the plant (located at 354-1/2 West Manchester Avenue) to the attention of eagle-eyed prohibition agents: business appeared to be flourishing, yet no deliveries were seen leaving the building. Further investigation ensued. When proprietor James Kanich was informed that the interior measurements of the shop matched those he previously provided to agents, his response was "a flippant remark" that led Benedict to measure the building’s exterior as well. A twenty-three foot discrepancy was thus discovered. Benedict returned inside, sounded the wall with a hammer, found a weak spot, and chopped into the wallboard. Behind it stood a 500-gallon still in full operation. Four thousand gallons of mash were ready for use at the top of a nearby stairway, and forty five-gallon cans of grain alcohol were packed in heavy paper cartons ostensibly used for freshly baked ice cream cones. The distilling room was accessible only through a narrow closet door which, when closed, appeared to be a solid wall. Meanwhile, a thorough check of the main building yielded stale ice cream cones and cone-making machinery filled with cobwebs.
Both Kanich and his wife, Mary, denied knowledge of the still. Mrs. Kanich told agents that she and her husband were the innocent victims of a group who financed the cone factory, led by a man she could identify only as "Harry."
The Kaniches were arrested for violation of the Volstead Act. Benedict promised further arrests would be made.