Local Intelligence, November 15, 1886

1886     Here's some stuff, "Local Intelligence," as it were, from the Sacramento Daily Record-Union 125 years ago today. Good Lord, the paper does nothing to dispel Sacramento's cow-town rep. Most of the local news that appears in the paper concerns petty crime, crop prices, gossip, and entertainment.

"A Lively Saturday Night": On the very night that professional person puncher John L. Sullivan took part in a highly anticipated bout in San Francisco, the streets of Sacramento played host to no less than three informal matches. In the first, two unnamed men, a parson and a tailor, according to the Record-Union's crack investigation, entertained the patrons of an "uptown saloon" with old-timey fisticuffs. When all was said and done, "[t]he tailor's eye was beautifully draped," and the parson "sent [him] to grass." Evidently, the parson came out of the scrape unscraped. In an unrelated "second event," Dictionary Johnny and Positive Sam "went at it regardless of Marquis of Queensbury rules," after Johnny hurled the most vile of insults at his opponent; he called him Irish. Well, he didn't say it so many words, but rather observed that Sam had "the blood of Erin flowing in his veins." The men's friends broke up the melee before it got too serious. Finally, in an instant-classic main event, James "The Shame" Corcoran (whose nickname I may have invented) was publicly brutalized by his ex-wife and former sister-in-law. The two women confronted Corcoran on J Street (cross-street not specified) and lashed him with cowhides "across his shoulders and face with all the force they could muster." According to the article, the two women accused Corcoran of  speaking ill of them before they laid into him.

*  *  *

Tons of Ones

1911     "Eleven-Eleven-Eleven Day Is Here, So Beware," Sacramento Union, November 11: "If anything happens to-day that you think should not have happened, or if any unusual event occurs to cause you to wonder, there is a reason, dear reader. For to-day is the eleventh day of the eleventh year of the twentieth century.


"It may be a jinks for some and good luck for others, according to their superstitions, but in any event it is well to be careful. A few admonitions might not go amiss, for instance: don't sneeze while walking of the sunny side of the street; count every white mule you see; don't walk under ladders; and a hundred 'do's' [sic] and 'don'ts.'


"But enjoy the day all you can, because it won't happen again until November 11, 2011."


Hey, that's to-day! Be careful.


That sneezing on the sunny side of the street superstition outdid my googling abilities. I really can't tell you what it's all about. Your best bet: avoid sneezing and direct sunlight until to-morrow. The counting white mules thing was a little easier to track down. There are a few variations, but the gist is that, after you count a certain number of white mules  (usually 60 or 100), you will marry the next man you meet. One variation stipulates that the man you'll marry is actually the next one whose hand you shake. I guess ladies should be doubly careful to-day. And, of course, we all know not to walk under ladders.

Goose-Step in Comfort and Style

Advertisement for Yip-si Moccasins, Sacramento Union, 1911

I know, I know. The swastika predated the Nazi Party by eons. Apparently, there was quite an "Indian fad" circa 1911. 

The Rural Jurist

1936     Kids today are wusses. To them, the "trick" part of "trick-or-treat" is an empty threat, mere rhetoric, an unconscious nod to a long-abandoned ritual. Not so for Bonnie Holland, a North Sacramento girl who, on Halloween, 1936, pranked Old Man Sprogis. You know the one: the mean old man who ran that grocery over on Rio Linda Boulevard. The specifics of Bonnie's "trick" are lost to history, but thankfully, we know the details of the grocer's taking the law into his own hands. If they say don't make kids as tough they used to, it's at least twice as true of adults. 

According to an article in the November 10 Sacramento Union, Mr. and Mrs. C. Sprogis found themselves in the American Township courthouse, explaining a minor act of vigilantism to Judge Silas Orr. Apparently, in retribution for Bonnie's prank, the Sprogises "ducked" the six-year-old in a puddle of mud of unspecified depth and dirtiness. Jess Holland, Bonnie's aggrieved mother, testified with a number of unidentified witnesses. In addition, Ms. Holland submitted Exhibit A, her daughter's muddied dress. Judge Orr, the hanging judge* of Del Paso Heights, found the Sprogises guilty of battery and issued a sentence of five days or ten dollars. The couple planned to appeal the decision.

* I wrote this as a joke, before attempting to research anyone involved in this story. But then I found this! Apparently Orr had a bit of a reputation, though I couldn't find anything out of the ordinary on the guy, except that he was tough on speeders.

The Return of Constable Buzzkill

1911    Sacramento's opium dens have always seemed a little more like an urban legend than a historical fact to me. It's not that I don't believe opium dens existed, but, like legal brothels, they seem a little too exotic to be real. I don't mean culturally exotic, or anything like that, of course. It's more that they seem to be so far removed from the world we live in that they shouldn't have existed as recently as they did. And if they really did exist so recently, then certainly not in my Sacramento, right?

Trash from the Past

The city incinerator, circa 1925. Authorities decided it would be better that our garbage 
burn above ground. 

I tried desperately to work a reference to the old city trash incinerator into yesterday's post on the 1911 Southside Park garbage fires. The North B Street landmark, one of my favorite buildings in the whole, wide world, was apparently built in 1924, around the time this drawing was issued. My sketchy Internet research (you'll have pay if you want the high-grade archival stuff, dog) uncovered a reference to plans for an earlier incinerator, which was supposed to open in 1911. Our city fathers wanted a sanitary method of disposing of Sacramento's garbage and--get this!--dead animals left on the streets. God bless the Progressive Movement, right? I have no idea whether that the city ever made good on its plans for 1911. Not that it would have meant a lick to Southside residents. The trash burning beneath their neighborhood probably had been there a long, long time. Whatever the case, by 1925, Sacramentans sent their trash up a long, narrow ramp, to the second floor of this weird building, from which their horse-drawn garbage was tossed into the municipal inferno. By the way, did you notice the traffic jam at the top of the ramp? Did you also notice the dudes just hanging out on the balcony? Government workers.

The building is still there, of course, but my favorite part, the ramp, disappeared*** a few years ago. California State Library's History Section has a few great photos of the building available online. Center for Sacramento History has a 1943 photo, which includes a description indicating that the facility was already abandoned when the picture was taken.


Update, November 20, 2011
The good news: Though I swore to God that the ramp was gone, it isn't. On my sweetheart's request, we checked the building out. The trees and weeds that used to completely obscure the view of the ramp are no longer in the way. The ramp--that glorious effing ramp!--is still there.


The bad news: I'm a bad reporter.

Funky, Funky Southside

1911     Something was amiss in "South Side." The air south of R Street was was thick, hazy, and malodorous, and you couldn't just blame La Garnacha, like we do now. According to a November 2 article in the Sacramento Bee, a dozen underground fires were burning at a vacant lot between 14th, 15th, V, and W streets, "sending up a volume of smoke of sickening odor." As did the famed peat bogs of Ireland, the reporter notes, the subterranean smoldering undermined the ground above, causing the cover to give way. From the cracks in the collapsed dirt billowed the foul smoke, which blanketed much of the southern section of the Old City.