The long marbled bar of the Soda Fountain still stands sturdy beneath the elbows of the cool kids even if there aren’t quite as many around now as there used to be. It may still even be possible to order an egg cream, but I’m betting that none of my friends have ever tried one. In 1920s and 30s New York they were all the rage. People still debate over who invented the egg cream, but back in the day the real news was who controlled it.
Aerial view of interior of People’s Drug Store, 7th and E Streets, Washington, D.C., with soda fountain. 1909-1932. National Photo Company Collection. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2001701732/
An egg cream was a cheap alternative to the ice cream most folks couldn’t afford during the the Great Depression. It has three main ingredients: milk, chocolate syrup, and seltzer or effervescent soda. No eggs and no cream, in case you didn’t know. A man who could control one of those ingredients, like the syrup for instance, could make a fortune off the backs of the soda fountain owners. Harry Solomon Dolowich decided he was going to be that man.
Dolowich had grown up as the son of Russian Jewish immigrants in the Lower East Side. His family’s initial poverty and hard times eventually turned around as both Harry and his brother obtained their law degrees and established their careers. Harry Dolowich was known for his silver tongue; he was mentioned in his year book as someone who could talk anyone into anything. He was also evidently good at making and keeping connections. One of the most important was obtained by marrying the niece of a large chocolate syrup manufacturer. Dolowich managed to talk his uncle into getting in on the ground level of an association that would divide up customers to control and improve profits while simultaneously cutting out competition. With connections in the Health Department and other big syrup companies signing on, Dolowich was setting himself up as the most powerful man in chocolate syrup.
At the time more than fifty industries in New York had been taken over by racketeers, including artichokes, fish, laundry, funeral parlors, movie theaters, grapes, and tailors. The idea was to organize control over an industry by creating an alliance of enough business owners to pressure other smaller outfits into falling in line. A business could either be a member or not have a business. Hard time befell the the businessman who tried to find a third option. Members would agree to inflated and fixed costs for their product, creating a no competition environment.
Dolowich followed this model, charging membership fees and truck fees, making sure non-compliant businesses received hefty fines and closure notices from the Department of Health, and sending out ‘dead wagons.’ Dolowich’s dead wagons were the final method of persuasion for errant chocolate syrup makers and distributors. Trucks loaded up with the same syrup at a fraction of the cost would flood the territory of the struggling business and steal all the custom.
Of course, Dolowich’s empire eventually crumbled under a lengthy and dramatic investigation. Dolowich served a short prison sentence and then moved states. So, the next time you grab that chocolate syrup for your milk or to drizzle over your ice cream, you can enjoy it knowing that it is no longer being used to crush small business owners.
Wills, Matthew (2016) The Egg Cream Mob: What’s in an egg cream? No eggs. No cream. And a dose of mafia history. JSTOR Daily. https://daily.jstor.org/egg-cream-mob/
We may be reeling from our Christmas watching and happy to finally be free to watch anything we want, but there are movies and specials that make the New Year at our house. Just like Thanksgiving, the pickings may be slimmer for this holiday, but it is more than enough to put us in the mood.
New Year
Terror Train (1980): I was never part of the fraternity and sorority scene in college so the idea of renting a train for a New Year’s party is both plausible and completely unbelievable to me. Hi David Copperfield!
New Year’s Evil (1980): A punk rock Pinky Tuscadero (wiki) terrorized during her TV special by a killer-stalker. The New Year’s countdown happens three times in this movie! What can be more celebratory?
Bloody New Year (1987): This is all kinds of holiday – kids running from thugs get caught in a time travel loop where a whole New Year’s eve party vanished decades ago? Still dressed up for Christmas because it is British.
Get Crazy (1983): Planning for a new year’s party by way of a massive concert overshadows the threat that a much loved theater will be bought out by sleep, punk developers. Hilarious hi-jinks included.
The Fifth Cord (1971): One of the finest examples of the giallo genre with an excellent cast, a great director, and a super cool soundtrack by the great Ennio Morricone. The entire opening sequence and a pivotal part of the plot both take place at a New Year’s Eve Party.
Martha’s New Year’s Celebration (2005): from the Martha’s Holidays collection again. We usually just curl up on the sofa and watch movies for New Year, but we can dream of throwing a fancy party.
While making my yearly Rock ‘n Rye infusion, I got the idea that a similar process would work to make J&B more enjoyable in my house (we find it very difficult). I cut out the horehound, but kept most everything else the same as I would for Rock ‘n Rye. The effect is much more cinnamon forward, and definitely improves the J&B flavor. I gave rough measurements, but you can put in as many or as few infusing agents as you like.
Ingredients:
J&B (one 750 ml bottle)
1 string Rock candy or about a 1/4 cup loose rock candy
1/2 to 1 full orange peel (dried)
2-3 dried apricots, sliced
3-4 dried cherries
3-4 dried mandarin slices
1 whole clove
1 cinnamon stick
Instructions:
In an empty wide mouth glass container (could be anything, jar, pitcher, etc with a lid) add J&B, dried fruit, dried peel, and cinnamon stick
Allow mixture to infuse in a cool dry place for 3 or 4 days
Add rock candy and clove
Allow mixture to infuse one or two more days based on taste
You can find amazing and terrible things in old newspapers. You can find old newspapers on Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. at the Library of Congress. Join me there. Whole days will pass before you know it.
Celebrating holidays in my house means media saturation. That is, leading up to Halloween we watch all the Halloween movies, and leading up to Christmas, we watch all the Christmas movies, specials, and television shows. But Halloween and Christmas aren’t the only holidays around which you can structure your movie viewing.
Garfield’s Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving
Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982): immensely enjoyable take on the legend of the Chicken Ranch. If Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds aren’t enough to sell it to you, then the in depth study in eighties lingerie should do it.
Madman (1982): horror film taking place in a strange alternate reality where kids are sent off to a woodland camp for Thanksgiving break.
Turkey Hollow (2015): broken family forcing themselves on a grudgingly hospitable distant relative? check. Sibling discord healed by adventure and danger? check. Monsters in the woods? check. Turkeys? check check check check check.
Charlie Brown Mayflower Voyagers (1988): part of the ‘This is America, Charlie Brown” series, but tacked on to the ‘Peanuts Holiday Collection’ without any other episodes.
Martha Stewart’s Classic Thanksgiving (2005): from the Martha’s Holidays collection, because it is necessary to have a couple of hours worth of instruction on making that turkey.
I may have told a fair few people already, but I have a growing obsession with fruit cake. It all started when I went looking for my mother’s recipe for fruit cake and did not find anything that sounded right in all of the papers she left me. So, I started trying out different recipes to see if I could get close to what I remember. I made two different types of fruitcake last year. I have made two different types already this year, and plan to make one more because, of course, I have found/altered a recipe I now call ‘my’ fruitcake. Then I got an inspired idea to make a zine all about fruitcake: its history, its variations, etc. It is a rabbit hole I may never dig myself out of.
While I continue work on this zine that may end up becoming a full fledged book by volume of material alone, I thought I’d share this choice variation from the Brer Rabbit’s Modern Recipes for the Modern Cook (1940 Brer Rabbit Molasses).
This is far from the only recipe I found relying on salt pork. I also found a few mince meat recipes with salt pork. One with ground beef. I know the salt pork fat is standing in for shortening and is why the fruit cake can be made with so few eggs. But….I really don’t know what else to say.
The people we know as the Pilgrims were far from the first Europeans to set foot on or colonize the land later incorporated into the United States. Explorers, fishermen, fur traders, missionaries, and treasure seekers had all been here. European and Native American interactions prior to and contemporary with that of the Pilgrims ranged between aggressive and friendly. However generously the native people sometimes viewed European invaders, Europeans arrived to exploit natural resources, claim land that belonged to native peoples, and bring disease against which the native population had no immunity.
By uncredited – Baharris.org, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38941602
By The German Kali Works, New York – Bricker, Garland Armor. The Teaching of Agriculture in the High School. New York: Macmillan, 1911. Page 112., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6767475
By Sculptor Cyrus E. Dallin (1861-1944). – Self-photographed, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4143607
At times, Europeans came to enslave. Tisquantum, often called Squanto, was kidnapped by an English explorer who took him to Spain to be sold into slavery. He was ‘bought’ by Spanish monks whose work included educating and evangelizing those they perceived as lesser. When Tisquantum finally escaped and returned to his home lands, by way of England, he found that his whole tribe had been killed by an epidemic infection likely brought to the land by the rats of European ships. Tisquantum was the last of the Patuxets.
Tisquantum was living among the Pokanoket tribe, part of a confederation of tribes called the Wampanoag, when the Pilgrims first emerged from wintering on the Mayflower. Samoset, an Abenaki Sagamore was also staying with the Pokanoket tribe at the time. Samoset had learned the English language from fishermen who frequented the waters of Maine, near the lands of the Abenaki people. He approached the Pilgrims to initiate trade relations, and would later arrange the meetings of the Pilgrim colonists with Tisquantum and Ousamequin, also known as Massasoit.
I did a two page comic for the Gyrojets contributions to Tales of Terror II. I’m especially proud of this one ’cause Richard can’t get over how weird it is.
My house has been doing a lot of non-cable watching. We have a few subscription streaming channels through a Roku stick: PBS, BritBox, and Shudder, and we have been spending quite a bit of time finding interesting programming on YouTube. One of our recent obsessions is Aerial America. Aerial America takes you on a history tour of each US state, showing the landscape, monuments, and urban scenes from the air with over-narration that tells the story of the state. There are several full episodes available on Smithsonian’s YouTube channel.
What I find most refreshing and a little depressing is the frankness with which the history is delivered. If, like me, you thought you were pretty well informed about how horribly the United States treated Native Americans, Aerial America will tell you all the horrible massacres and broken treaties you didn’t know about. If you enjoy seeing the natural beauty and vast vistas that we are lucky to have in the US, Aerial America will show you fracking, strip mining, and logging operations. I wouldn’t say this to discourage anyone from enjoying the show. I love it, it has beauty, moments of pride and triumph, and it balances this with the dirty little secrets that underpin a lot of our history. I highly recommend it.
The mention of “Voudoo Queen” will immediately bring to mind the formidable character of Marie Laveau, if it brings to mind anyone. Yet, Marie Laveau was not the only Voudoo Queen to preside over Voudoo practitioners in New Orleans. In 1869, news stories syndicated all over the country told about the naming of a new Voudoo Queen, a successor to Laveau. This woman was Malvina Latour.
Before going on much further, I feel compelled to say that the newspaper pieces that reported often on Voudoo culture between the 1860s and the 1910s were sensational and exaggerated. The aim of these news items appeared, to me, to be twofold: arouse excitement and curiosity in the public while at the same time demean black Americans by casting them as savages and animals. Some journalists were more respectful than others, but all the stories seem to share the perspective that Voudoo, and those that practice it, are some kind of mysterious other; something to be gawped at instead of understood. Knowing this, it is hard enough picking through the historical documentation to find truth. Historians of New Orleans have commented on how difficult it is to separate the truth from legend when studying the lives of people like Marie Laveau. With sensationalist news articles standing in as primary sources, we may simply have to accept that no story will be wholly substantiated.
Note: the spelling Voudoo was chosen for this post based on the spelling of the historical articles referenced for information.
Life of Malvina Latour
The first newspaper stories I could find that mention Malvina Latour show up around 1869 when she was said to succeed Marie Laveau as Queen of the Voudoos in New Orleans. An 1884 article by a reporter for the New Orleans Times-Democrat describes Malvina Latour as a handsome woman of mixed race around 48 years of age. This would mean Malvina Latour was born about 1836 and succeeded Marie Laveau when she was in her early 30s. Though the newspaper articles do not usually mention Marie Laveau’s daughter, Marie Laveau II, historians have pointed out that Laveau II was around and held quite a bit of power herself at this time, though she did not succeed her mother as Queen.
In 1886 Malvina Latour was again named as Laveau’s successor by another reporter, George Washington Cable, who had visited with Laveau before her death in 1881. Cable gave the conflicting information that the title of Voudoo Queen was held until death, and that only in 1881 did Malvina Latour take on the responsibilities. Other historians and legend makers have postulated that Malvina Latour herself was one of Marie Laveau’s daughters. Latour was sometimes referred to as Laveau or Laveau II. Confusing the three women fed Marie Laveau’s legend by lengthening her time in power to an unbelievable spans.
Yet, Malvina Latour peeks through history. Often described, young and old, as sporting a blue calico dress with white polka-dots, Latour would be Queen of the Voudoos, leading St. John’s Eve celebrations on the banks of Lake Ponchartrain, for around two decades. She was regarded as powerful as Laveau, and had performed feats that equaled those of her predecessor, though reportedly she did not add anything new to the practice while Voudoo Queen. According to many, Latour’s primary goal was to remove Catholicism and Catholic practices from Voudoo. She was unsuccessful at this and also at holding the Voudoo community together in the face of many different bids for power. Under Latour, Voudoo in New Orleans split into several factions, never to be reunited. Latour’s eventual abdication and later life are a mystery.
The St. John’s Eve celebrations of 1884 were located between Milneburg and the old Spanish Fort on the banks of Lake Ponchartrain. N Milneburg in front of Bird Cage Cottage. unknown. 1923
Truth, Legend, & Mystery
Carolyn Morrow Long, author of A New Orleans Voudou Priestess: The Legend and Reality of Marie Laveau, postulates that the New Orleans Times-Democrat reporter in 1884 may have invented Malvina Latour. Long bases her hypothesis on not being able to find Latour in any church, city or census records, and indicates that the invention of Latour was “indicative of how such sensational accounts came to be regarded as historical and factual.” Yet, the 1886 piece by George Washington Cable that also reported Latour as the successor to Laveau, was apparently unconnected with the previous journalist, revolving around an interview and visit with the aging Laveau. This, to me, serves more as corroboration of Latour’s existence since Cable’s article did not rehash the same stories and visuals of previous articles the way that most newspaper articles of the time seemed to do. I also have spent several hours searching for links in my family tree during the middle and late 1800s that were not recorded by census, church, or city records, so it does not seem strange to me that Latour is not mentioned in these documents.
Though I cannot immediately accept that Latour was a fiction, Long was making an excellent point that the legend of the Voudoo Queen has grown beyond the truth. This becomes evident when faced with obviously conflicting information like the interview with Dr. J. B. Bass of New York, in the Chicago Daily Tribune of 1881. Dr. Bass was a known Voudoo practitioner and had met Laveau when he was a teenager. He asserted that there was no such office as Queen within the order; that Laveau was a mother in the order and had respect, but held no official office. Could this be chalked up to the unique and independent way New Orleans Voudoo has evolved over time, where in the city Laveau and Latour were Queens, but in the worldwide Voudoo community, they held no such office? A later article recounting St. John’s Eve celebrations in 1890 includes recounted testimony from Marie Laveau’s daughter, perhaps Laveau II, refuting that Laveau was ever connected with Voudoo at all. Who then did Latour succeed?
As an illustration of how legend can take over our popular history Malvina Latour has since been linked to the ghost story of a violet eyed zombie girl whose prison was broken by hurricane Katrina and now roams about New Orleans. Though the best guesses at Latour’s possible birth and death dates are so far away from overlapping with her supposed role in the story, the story serves as an interesting example of how our own sensationalism can replace our history.
Gordon, Michelle Y. (2012) “Midnight Scenes and Orgies”: Public Narratives of Voodoo in New Orleans and Nineteenth-Century Discourses of White Supremacy, American Quarterly; College Park Vol. 64, Iss. 4, (Dec 2012): 767-786,914.
?Hearns? (1884). Voudou dance; revival on the lake shore of the voudou mysteries: Description of the celebration of the Eve of St. John by creole voodoo queen Malvina Latour and her attendants in New Orleans Louisiana. . Times Democrat (New Orleans. LA. Louisiana Digital Library (Louisana Works Progress Administration. Louisiana Digital Library. https://louisianadigitallibrary.org/islandora/object/state-lwp%3A8520
