Stoneage Ramblings

By John R. Stone

When my mother moved into Glenwood Retirement Village my brother and sisters and I went through all her stuff and split it up. There were tons of pictures and other memorabilia. She was there for a couple of years suffering from dementia and died eight years ago.

I had skimmed through much of the stuff but hadn’t looked at all of it closely. It got stuck in the closet in my office where it has sat largely untouched for years. I have started going through that stuff.

I unbundled four Minneapolis newspapers from the mid 1930s, all of which told some major stories of the time, including one I had never heard of.

The Monday, June 20, 1938 edition of the Minneapolis Star had the blaring headline, three decks, “40 Killed, 65 Injured When Olympian Dives into Creek in Montana; 23 Still Missing.”

The Olympian was a westbound train of the Milwaukee Road which had left Chicago, picked up passengers in the Twin Cities and was headed to Tacoma, Washington.

At about 1:15 in the morning the train got to Custer Creek where it was going to use a trestle to cross the narrow body of water. However, a storm had sent a heavy flow of water and the trestle was compromised. The train fell from the trestle into the swollen creek.

Eleven people from the Twin Cities were hurt and one died. One other man was ruled missing.

That was back in the days when trains were a big part of cross country travel. Many of those on the train were going to California after changing trains in Washington.

A Minneapolis Star issue from April 4, 1936, had the front page story of Bruno Hauptmann who was killed via the electric chair in Trenton, New Jersey. Hauptmann was the man convicted of killing the infant child of Charles Lindbergh and his wife four years earlier.

At the time of Hauptmann’s death the Lindbergh’s baby’s body had not been found and it was speculated that the location would never be found with Hauptmann’s death. Some also claimed he was innocent.

The Minneapolis Tribune of May 24, 1937 featured an eight column headline announcing that “John D. Rockefeller Dies At 97.” A subhead read “Death Comes Unexpectedly to Capitalist.”

I was kind of surprised at the size of the headline. And there were two more stories, also on the front page, one related to his donating over $500 million to charity and another that was a biography of Rockefeller that was going to run in segments.

Rockefeller was a big deal, at one point he controlled nearly three fourths of the oil in the United States. But I was surprised at the space given him in the Minneapolis paper. And the headline about death coming “unexpectedly” to a 97-year-old seemed strange.

And last but not least is an auto section of the Tribune from March 10, 1935 was a big ad with a headline “America Needed This High-Speed Safety Car” which promoted a Plymouth sedan for $510.

There were other car names from the past like Pierce Arrow, Studebaker, Pontiac, Reo, Terraplane, Hudson, Graham, La Salle, Nash, Oldsmobile, Hupmobile, La Fayette, Desoto, Dodge, and Auburn advertised in the section.

Of course Chevrolet, Ford, Lincoln, Buick and Cadillac, brands that are still with us, have their ads and write-ups, too. All the vehicles were sedans or coupes. Pickups and sport utility vehicles wouldn’t be big sellers for many decades.

It seemed kind of strange to see that much attention to automobiles during what we think of as the middle of the depression.