| Ezra Meeker, who first traveled the Oregon Trail in 1852.  The city is overrun with loose dogs, The Times says. Dec. 4, 1928: Ezra Meeker dies at the age of 97. |
| Nov. 21, 1909: The Times profiles Ezra Meeker, who traveled the country in an ox cart to promote his campaign to preserve the Oregon Trail as a national highway. Meeker is the fellow with the ox cart in the photos of the 1910 Aviation Meet. |
 The 1907 Shriners convention in Los Angeles inspired all sorts of commemorative trinkets. Most of the items were pins, badges, glassware and ceramics, which frequently turn up on EBay. Here’s something I’ve never seen before, a spoon that was evidently issued by the lodge in Wheeling, W.Va. Bidding starts at $9.95. |
 "Buster Brown" visits Athens. |
| Nov. 7, 1909: A 25-year-old man describes his downfall, including stealing horses and betting money on baseball games. "Tell the young men that sin always brings suffering," Robert Perry says. |
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| Nov. 1, 1919: A judge decides that getting drunk three times a year isn’t grounds for a divorce … And Long Beach police have nowhere to put a runaway horse since the city’s last stable was converted to a garage. |
| Glendale limits residents to three cats! |
| Oct. 24, 1959: “You women who have good husbands should stay home and take care of them. If you leave him alone again, the next girl might not be as charitable as...” |
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| Oct. 9, 1909: Love letters spice up a hearing on a marriage annulment. She signed them “Your Own Wild Rose.” |
Sept. 23, 1909: Cartoonist Edmund Waller "Ted" Gale draws W.D. Deeble. |
| Now wait a minute. We had a story yesterday about two women hobos who were arrested because they dressed like men. Here we have Albert Hodgini, who dresses up like a woman to perform stunts on horseback for Ringling Bros. circus. According to Times' clips, the Hodgini family was known for its trick riding. |
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| Dec. 23, 1934: John Corsen reflects on his 34 years as a streetcar motorman. This is a wonderful first-person account of the early days of the streetcars in Los Angeles. "You ought to see what it was when I started. That was way back in 1900 with horse cars still plodding the streets. They used to lift the horse cars off the rails to let the 'electrics' go past. I was No. 177 on the company's rolls and they gave me a 'bald-faced' trolley to trundle along a single track on an old dirt road that led from Temple and Main streets out to Lincoln, then Eastlake Park. "By a bald-faced car, I mean a tram that was open all the way round. If dry weather, passengers coughed in the dust; when it rained they almost drowned." |
Photograph by the Los Angeles Times Beverly Chandler shows her skill in roping in a 1969 photo. |
| Gwen Sharp, who blogs at Sociological Images, picked up the Daily Mirror post on Beverly Chandler, who worked on Rancho Mission Viejo. Gwen writes: Now, if this was just an historical curiosity, I wouldn’t have posted it. But the thing is, we still see this type of emphasis on the femininity of women who succeed at things we consider “men’s work.” For instance, see this post on WNBA player Candace Parker, or Lisa’s post about Caster Semenya. Or even just compare the uniforms of male and female athletes. We’re more comfortable with women who break some gender rules as long as they maintain their femininity by following other rules. |
Sept. 8, 1919: "Bull" Durham with calf-maker intact and a white spot in the shape of the United States. That's one patriotic head of livestock! March 23, 1924: Bull Durham -- redesigned. The U.S. map is gone and the calf-maker has been turned into mountain oysters. |
| And then there was the dark day when "Bull" Durham became "Steer" Durham because some ad director was worried about offending delicate sensibilities. I suppose this says something about America gradually losing touch with its rural roots as the 20th century unfolded, but frankly I just find this damn funny. |
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