On the stranger side, the Great Eagle hearse from San Francisco made a stop in Des Moines in September 1913. The vehicle was carrying the body of Michael Moran whose last wish was to travel the continent one final time. The hearse was accompanied by undertaker R. H. Hambley; W. A. Peck, sales manager for the United carriage company; and R. A. MacBride, a Des Moines Undertaker.
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| Waveland Park Clubhouse in 1913 |
Waveland Park Golf Club had nearly 250 members
in 1913. Not bad for a club that started in 1907.
The present building went up in 1911 on ground
leased from the city. It was three stories and built to be used.
The main floor held dining rooms, reception rooms,
and a kitchen. Upstairs was a card room and a ladies’ locker room. The basement
had another locker room and bath equipment. You could play 18 holes, eat,
smoke, wash up, and sit down for cards without leaving the building.
The club met every week. There were smokers, card
parties, and dances. The smokers meant cigars, speeches, and stories that
improved with each telling. The card parties meant competition that lasted
longer than daylight. The dances brought in the rest of the membership and made
the place feel less like a sports club and more like a social one.
This 1913 cartoon from the Des Moines Register (September 7, 1913) shows that football was as big a part of Iowa life then as it is today.
The Davenport Democrat and Leader printed this picture of the newly built Columbia Theater and Hotel in 1913. The building at Third and Ripley Street in Davenport was built by T. J. Walsh at a cost of $150,000.
The H. C Kahl home on Marquette Street Hill in Davenport as it looked in 1913. Kahl, vice president of the Walsh-Kahl Construction Company, built the home at a cost of $200,000.
(Colorized photograph from the Davenport Democrat and Leader. December 29, 1913)
Before he was president, Herbert Hoover was a
mining engineer. A numbers man. A logistics wizard who’d made a fortune digging
minerals out of the ground on three continents. Then, in 1914, war exploded
across Europe.
Thousands of Americans were stranded with no cash
and no way home.
Hoover organized emergency loans. Chartered ships.
Set up offices. Within weeks, he’d helped get tens of thousands of Americans
out of Europe.
He became chairman of the Commission for Relief in
Belgium after it had been overrun by Germany. Millions of civilians faced
starvation. Britain’s navy blockaded food shipments. Germany occupied the land.
Hoover negotiated with both sides to move grain across oceans and through
battle lines.
Under his direction, ships crossed the Atlantic
loaded with wheat and flour. Warehouses rose. Distribution networks spread
across occupied territories. The commission fed millions of people every day.
When America entered the war in 1917, Woodrow
Wilson made Hoover the U.S. Food Administrator, a post he held from 1917 to
1919.
Hoover didn’t want heavy-handed rationing laws. He
believed in voluntary cooperation. So he made food patriotic.
In October 1916, every eye in Iowa was focused on the World
Series and Babe Ruth. Farmers leaned on fence posts. Barbers argued over box
scores.
Telegraph wires hummed like angry bees. Out there in Boston, a thick-armed kid with a mean fastball was turning October into his own private carnival.
Ruth wasn’t the Sultan of Swat yet. He was just a left-handed wrecking crew in wool flannel, chewing up the Brooklyn Robins. In Game 2, he worked fast, jaw set, eyes flat. Brooklyn hitters swung like men chopping at ghosts. Boston won. No fuss.
Game 5 was where things got strange. Fourteen innings. No lights. No mercy. The crowd sagged and swayed. Pitch after pitch, Ruth kept firing, as if he’d tapped into some private reservoir of stubborn American madness. When it ended—scoreless for Brooklyn—he’d stacked up nearly 30 straight World Series innings without allowing a run.
Iowans read the numbers in the morning papers and shook their heads. They didn’t know they were witnessing the early rumble of a coming storm that would blow the fences down and change the sport forever.
Babe Ruth would be an unstoppable force in the game.
