One Hundred Years Ago

[WOTR]

I was wondering the same.  It sounded as if the night watchman was coming around on a regular basis.  That probably kept the burglars from absconding with the entire inventory of hooch.  Still, what they got away with probably amounted to a pretty penny.  After all, the black market could probably name their own price for the stuff.  Only doctors could write prescriptions to get booze legally, for medicinal purposes only.  I don't know if everybody catches that in the Gasoline Ally strips.  The fellows try to get the Doc character to write prescriptions up for them.   

I did catch that. There was the problem getting booze- but your local druggist appeared to have been a good replacement. I have been reading a little book called "fix the pumps" that is about old time soda fountains.

I had always pictured them like the 1950's malt shoppe. But the author paints a very different picture of the early soda fountains (and particularly those operating during prohibition.) He states that many of the druggists would add all kinds of uppers and downers to their concoctions and that many were far more addictive than any vodka that was outlawed. It has been a very interesting read, so far...

Also, it has lots of recipes for different early drinks before a soda became a bland, carbonated sweet beverage...

[Rix Gins]

Nice.  A very interesting book there WOTR.

[Rix Gins]

May 14, 1920.  Public Domain.

[Rix Gins]

From the Library of Congress.  The Rock Island Argus and Daily Union., May 15, 1920.

[Rix Gins]

May 15, 1920.  Public Domain

[WOTR]

From the Library of Congress.  The Rock Island Argus and Daily Union., May 15, 1920.

"The bodies represent the first world war men to be buried there..." That was a very confusing statement until I finally remembered that they could not have known that there would be a second world war. it was not the "first world war", but rather they were the first from THE world war. Kind of threw me...

BTW, "fix the pumps" would have been slang for "check out her chest" among the soda jerks. 

[Rix Gins]

May 16, 1920.  Public Domain

[Rix Gins]

May 17, 1920.  Public Domain.

[Rix Gins]

From the Library of Congress.  The Rock Island Argus and Daily Union., May 18, 1920.

[Rix Gins]

May 18, 1920.  Public Domain

[Rix Gins]

From the Library of Congress.  The Rock Island Argus and Daily Union., May 19, 1920.

[Rix Gins]

May 19, 1920.  Public Domain

[Rix Gins]

From the Library of Congress.  The Rock Island Argus and Daily Union., May 20, 1920.

[Rix Gins]

May 20, 1920.  Public Domain

[Rix Gins]

May 21, 1920.  Public Domain

[Rix Gins]

From the Library of Congress.  The Rock Island Argus and Daily Union., May 22, 1920.

[Rix Gins]

May 22, 1920.  Public Domain

[Rix Gins]

From the Queensland State Archives.


Charles Geise (aka James Doyle)
DOB: 1892
From: Queensland
Trade: Station Hand
Portrait Taken: 23 May 1920
Offence: Obtaining £5 by false pretenses
Sentence: 12 months suspended
Public Domain  https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/

[Rix Gins]

May 23, 1920.  Public Domain

[WOTR]

May 23, 1920.  Public Domain

From memory, 12 cylinder engines were reserved for more of the "luxury" automobiles. Gasoline ally does not seem like a place that would see a lot of them.

Do you know if the comic was "syndicated"? Was it "coast to coast", or did it just run in one area of the country or a single city?

[Rix Gins]

From memory, 12 cylinder engines were reserved for more of the "luxury" automobiles. Gasoline ally does not seem like a place that would see a lot of them.

Do you know if the comic was "syndicated"? Was it "coast to coast", or did it just run in one area of the country or a single city?

It started off in a Chicago paper thirteen days after WWI ended.  In fact, Walt Wallet was a soldier in the war but I've yet to see him mention anything about it.  But yes, it was/is syndicated by an outfit called Tribune Content Agency.  They have offices nationwide plus in Great Britain, The Netherlands and Hong Kong.  So, Walt runs a garage, right?  Funny because there are never any customers picking up their cars or anything. And those other guys, Bill, Avery and Doc, seem to work for Walt and yet they spend lots of time working on their own cars.  I guess they are Walt's neighbors also.  In three more years, somebody will leave a baby boy on Walt's doorstep.  Walt is old in the current run of the strip.  In real time though, he would be over 120 years old.  Those three other guys actually die off as the years progress. 

[Rix Gins]

From the Library of Congress.  The Rock Island Argus and Daily Union., May 24, 1920.

   

[Rix Gins]

May 24, 1920.  Public Domain

[Dr. MD MD]

May 24, 1920.  Public Domain

Here is today’s:

https://www.gocomics.com/gasolinealley/2020/05/24

[WOTR]

It started off in a Chicago paper thirteen days after WWI ended.  In fact, Walt Wallet was a soldier in the war but I've yet to see him mention anything about it.  But yes, it was/is syndicated by an outfit called Tribune Content Agency.  They have offices nationwide plus in Great Britain, The Netherlands and Hong Kong.  So, Walt runs a garage, right?  ...Those three other guys actually die off as the years progress.

Cool. I had not idea it went through all of that. When they "killed off" the other characters, did they actually have them "die" in the comic, or did the just disappear?

Here is today’s:

https://www.gocomics.com/gasolinealley/2020/05/24

Kind of amazing to see it still going. I wonder if he sold the rights to continue illustrating it? I might have to actually google it.

[Dr. MD MD]

Cool. I had not idea it went through all of that. When they "killed off" the other characters, did they actually have them "die" in the comic, or did the just disappear?
Kind of amazing to see it still going. I wonder if he sold the rights to continue illustrating it? I might have to actually google it.

Yeah, you can get the history of here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_Alley

[pate]

Yeah, you can get the history of here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_Alley

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-bgiiTxhzM

[Rix Gins]

From the Library of Congress.  The Rock Island Argus and Daily Union., May 25, 1920.

[Rix Gins]

May 25, 1920.  Public Domain

[Rix Gins]

May 26, 1920.  Public Domain