Elton (Sam) Langford Des Moines Demons Baseball

 

Des Moines Tribune. August 29, 1925

Elton (Sam) Langford, a center fielder for the Des Moines Demons, was scheduled to move up the ranks in the Western League at the start of the 1925 baseball season.

Langford, age 22, had a batting average of .350 and was the leading scorer in the league. The Des Moines Tribune said he was a long-distance hitter and averaged a home run in every games as well as several doubles and triples.

Herman A. Breithaupt Des Moines Expert Zither Soloist and Chef

 

(colorized photo from the Des Moines Register. April 15, 1928)

Herman A. Breithaupt, an expert Zither Soloist, was featured in the Des Moines Register in April 1928. Born in Germany in 1896, he began playing the zither when he was ten. 

Breithaupt's other passion was cooking. He worked in the kitchen at the Hotel Savery III in Des Moines, where he cooked and trained new chefs in the culinary arts. He told his students, "A meal correctly combined, scientifically prepared, and properly masticated is necessary for a healthy body."

In his spare time, he lectured at schools and clubs on food preperation, recipes, and health.

He was fifty years ahead of his time in his belief that one day, high schools would train young men to be chefs and food scientists.

Klemme Auto Company Advertisement Davenport 1911

 

The Davenport Democrat and Leader. February 5, 1911.

Here's another great advertisement featuring early automobiles from 1911. Do you think every car they built was a convertible? or did they just look good in the ad?

Klemme Auto Company was located on Brady Street in Davenport, Iowa, and carried Buick and Oldsmobile vehicles. 

Velie Motors Corporation Advertisement 1917

 

The Daily Times. May 31, 1917.

This advertisement for the Velie Motors Corporation really caught my eye. It has a great picture of the manufacturing plant, across the river from Davenport in Moline, Illinois, and look at the lines on that car.. It's a classic. At $1185, it would cost just over $30,000 in today's money.

And you can be sure the cars were hand-crafted. They produced just fifteen cars a day. That's 450 cars a month if they worked seven days a week, or roughly 5,000 cars per year.

Black Hawk's Watch Tower Outing Resort Moline

(The Daily Times. June 24, 1905)

This advertisement for Black Hawk's Watch Tower amusement park in Moline, Illinois, was published in The Daily Times on June 24, 1905.

Free admission. Free movies. Free concerts. And a roller coaster to compete with the new one at Suburban Park in Davenport. I didn't see a price listed here, but from what I've seen elsewhere, rides were 25 cents and the lines were out of this world.

Roller Coaster at Suburban Island Davenport

(Davenport Democrat and Leader. April 9, 1905)

The Davenport Democrat and Leader printed this picture of the roller coaster that was to be erected at Suburban Park in April 1905. The roller coaster was purchased from the Ingersol Park Company in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania at a cost of $16,500.

The coaster was seventy feet high and ninety feet wide, and had a total length of nearly 300 feet. The paper said readers could view three cities from the top of the roller coaster. 

It was to be erected north and west of the pavillion and was expected to be in operation by June 1.

Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show Visits Muscatine 1896

 

Buffalo Bill Cody brought his Wild West show to Muscatine in October 1896. Twenty thousand people crowded the streets on the morning of October 1, watching the parade of characters; 16,000 attended the afternoon performance.

The show was big and fast, with over 500 horses and riders from different countries. Native American performers, Mexican riders, and Russian Cossacks all took part. Most people in the crowd had seen nothing like it.

The shooting act led the show.

Annie Oakley stepped out and hit target after target. Small targets. Moving targets. She worked quick and clean. The crowd stayed quiet while she shot, then broke into applause.

Johnny Baker followed. He fired from the back of a horse running at full speed. Shots came in rhythm with the horse’s stride. It was one of the show’s most talked-about acts.