 |
Total_Hits
· New Today: 231
· New Yesterday: 2,466
· Total: 4,582,410
Average_Hits:
· Hourly: 67
· Daily: 1,254
· Monthly: 38,187
· Yearly: 458,241
|
|
The pleasant feeling of eating chocolate is caused by a chemical called anadamide, a neurotransmitter which also is produced naturally in the brain.
And Now You Do
|
|
2:22, But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it.
|
| |
First let’s talk about the Chicago world fairs. There were two of them. The first, in 1893, was the Columbian Exhibition along the shores of Lake Michigan on the eastern edge of the burgeoning city of Chicago. The Columbian Exhibition, following in the wake of the much noted and highly successful World Fair in Paris, France, was a magnificent retrospective on the origins, history, government, people, and culture of the United States. Its architecture was stately and classical, and its focus was upon the first hundred years of this nation—it sought to explain this nation’s greatness in terms of its past.
Dad was born in 1917, so obviously he did not attend the Columbian Exhibition. There was instead a second great world fair in Chicago which opened exactly forty years after the first Chicago world fair. It was called A Century of Progress, and celebrated the centennial of the city of Chicago. Its theme was quite different than that of the first trade fair. The 1933 fair sought to display the very latest engineering and scientific accomplishments of the nation, and to project these accomplishments into the future. Where the Columbian Exhibition looked backward, A Century of Progress looked forward. This theme was carried out in the modernism of its architecture as well as the themes of its exhibits. Attendees would see many examples of streamlining, the curving of vehicles to reduce wind resistance, as well as streamline-designed products of quite a wide variety.
In another way as well, the Century of Progress trade fair was notable. It was held in the depths of the great depression which followed the crash of Wall Street, and yet it avoided the pessimism of spirit which might be suggested by the economic conditions of the day. This trade fair amounted to a testimony, perhaps a faith, that the future of the United States would be onward and upward, and that the current harsh economic state of affairs was only a temporary phenomenon.
The world fair was a spectacular. It covered in excess of 47 acres and attracted more than 48 million visitors (39 million paid admissions) over its two-year run. The nation’s population in 1933 was around 125 million, and total attendance equaled almost 40 percent of that number! The fair featured a sky ride along with a whole host of exhibitions and pavilions. Here is a sampling: the Train of Tomorrow, the World’s Largest Fountain, Hall of Science, the Goodyear Blimp, the Avenue of Flags, Fort Dearborn, and the Streets of Paris. There was also the show of the famed stripper Sally Rand and the animal exhibits of acclaimed hunter Frank Buck. Notably also, the fair was a private enterprise and did not cost taxpayers a cent. As such, it was a commercial success, turning a profit for its owner-sponsors and paying off every vendor and debtor.
Newspapers nationwide gave the Chicago world fair heavy publicity, attracting attendees from every state and every major city of the country. My father, a 16-year-old high school boy at the time, must surely have been exposed to this publicity, and must have had many conversations with friends about the fair—about specific attractions of the fair, about how it might be possible to attend, how much it would cost, how to travel there, and much more.
Dad attended the fair in the summer of 1934, and he shared with me and my brothers and sisters many of the details of this trip and of his experiences in traveling there and back. I cannot remember many of the specifics, but I do recall a few of his stories.
Dad had been elected to the position of secretary to the state governing body of the Future Farmers of America, and the trip to Chicago was in the company of all the other
FFA boys who were statewide officers. Perhaps their first decision was how to travel to the fair. Fair attendees from around the nation could drive or take a train to Chicago. Commercial aviation was quite limited as well as expensive, so few people had the choice of flight. Many people took the train, and the innovative and history-making stainless steel Zephyr trains were the most prestigious way to travel. The aptly named Pioneer Zephyr set a new record on its run from Denver, Colorado, into Chicago—1,015 miles in 13 hours and 5 minutes, with an average speed of 77 mph and a top speed of almost 115 mph on one segment of the run!
Dad and his friends made considerably more modest travel arrangements. They drove a converted school bus all the way from Texas to Chicago. They retained the front seats, but removed the seats from the back half of the bus to make room for sleeping space and storage. All of them worked at odd jobs to earn the money for the trip, and Dad said that he took along the grand sum of $35.00 cash.
The stories Dad told related more to the journey than to the fair itself. I recall tales about running out of gas, fixing flat tires, and running over chickens that wandered into the road. On occasion, I understand, these road-kill chickens found their way into the cook pot! At night the group found a place to park the bus, build a campfire, and make their dinner. They brought their cooking supplies along with them—salt and flour and baking powder and lard, cured bacon, eggs, and canned vegetables, coffee and jars of canned jellies, jams, and peaches. These were country boys, and they knew how to turn these basic ingredients into camp chow. Later in life, my dad served as a cook for the Kerens National Guard artillery unit, and also worked as a cook for a few years at the Highway Café in Kerens. Later on Dad, once he had a family, often did the honors cooking breakfast, and he made the best biscuits I have ever eaten—they literally melted in your mouth! I wonder if he got his start by cooking for the group on this trip.
I imagine they had a great time on the trek to Chicago—a dozen teenagers away from home for the first time. One can imagine scenes from the trip—cooking on a campfire, skinny-dipping with a bar of soap, washing laundry in streams along the way and letting it dry as the bus rolled on the next day, sleeping in bedrolls around the campfire, or maybe in the bus or perhaps beneath the bus during cloudbursts. There must have been lots of joking and horseplay and other high jinx over this 2,000-mile trip. I catch myself wondering about clandestine smoking . . . and do you suppose some of the boys at least a time or two may have enjoyed a few cold beers?
The fair itself was filled with exhibits, product demonstrations, and other features, certainly an exciting place for a group of teenage boys. Lots of companies displayed and demonstrated their products there. Examples include Aunt Jemima’s pancakes, Sanka Coffee, Coca Cola, Heinz catsup, and the new Boeing monoplane, with its two 500- horsepower engines, which was already in service for scheduled air travel and mail transport. General Motors set up an entire automobile assembly plant right on the fairgrounds, and interested buyers would select their own colors, options, and accessories and observe their automobile being assembled from start to finish—then at the finish they could drive the car right off the assembly line, after paying, of course! Chrysler was represented by the famous test driver Barney Oldfield, first man ever to drive an automobile at the daring speed of one mile per minute (60 mph). The Burlington Line showed off its new streamlined passenger train, the Pioneer Zephyr, and the record-setting trip from Colorado, mentioned earlier, terminated at a special station built just for that purpose right on the fairgrounds.
The fair also featured a special scientific agricultural exhibition costing an additional 15 cents. The FHA group must have attended this display to learn more about new hybrid seed, about crop rotation, terracing, fertilizer, and all the latest advancements in farming.
After the visit to the fair, the group continued their trip to the state of New York in order to see Niagara Falls before turning back toward home. Dad told me that on the way back home they ran out of money for gas, so the whole crew hired on at jobs in a little town along the way, pooled their wages, filled the bus with gas, and continued back toward Texas. I would speculate that Dad’s short-term job was as a short order cook!
I do not remember too much more about Dad’s trip . . . was never particularly interested to hear the tales he told anyway. I never thought, either as a child or as an adult, to ask questions, but now that he is gone there is a longing to talk with him again, to make inquiries about his visit to the fair, to get him telling about how he and his companions fared on their great adventure from Kerens to Chicago and back, what attractions of the fair they visited, what they liked most and least, whether they traversed the fair in the sky ride, whether they saw Frank Buck and his wild animal display, whether they were naughty enough to slip into the Sally Rand stripper show, what they thought of the new models of trains and automobiles being shown at the fair, what they thought was most notable about the fair and about the entire trip.
There must have been lots of other people from Kerens, Elm Flat, Oak Grove, Bazette, Prairie Point, Samaria, Goodlow Park, Lone Prairie, Rural Shade, Powell, and Ebeneezer who went to the Chicago World Fair. A friend tells me that the dynamic domino trio of Roland Shelton, Tillman Reed, and Pete Massey made it up to Chicago for the Fair, but no further details are available. Somewhere around Kerens, perhaps in an old steamer trunk or family album, are likely to be found a stash of memorabilia from the Chicago fair—newspaper clippings, postcards, official fair medallions, even photos of the attendees. There must also still be living around Kerens individuals who made the trip, or who know someone who made the trip, or who remember tales from their parents of trips to the fair. Perhaps this little tale may inspire you to ask a few questions!
Dr. Ivan R. Vernon
ivernon-ohio@att.net
|
| |
Average Score: 5
Votes: 4
|
|
|
|
