In 1922, the El Paso Herald published a semi-regular column, “Oddities In The El Paso News.” From spotting mosquitoes at City Hall to a banana peel tour in Alligator Park, here are “Rarities” in the Borderlands in one paragraph – excerpts from some of those columns:
Watching mosquitoes hatch
August 5, 1922
Watching mosquitoes hatch is the latest indoor sport at City Hall. At the mosquito headquarters in the building there is a glass jar filled with water in which a number of wiggletails have been placed. Every day a few mosquitoes hatch, fly to the top of the cylindrical screen above the glass and perish.
Ten pounds is the limit for importing pretzels into Juarez. Saloonmen who use that article to excite thirst, therefore carry small packets of it across the river every morning. The average sedan needs about five pounds daily.
An El Paso street motorist, who has a wife and five children and is on the extra list waiting at the carbarn for outing opportunities to arise, had to give up $1.50 of his earnings last week to pay for Mexican cents and other relative items. To make up. worthless foreign coins that fell into the boxes of the cars he drives.
Colonel N. Lapowski, city clerk and chairman of the American Legion’s grievance committee, is a man who had an opportunity to get rich and didn’t want to take it. The government allows a man to collect 10 percent of any claim he receives for a disabled soldier. If the colonel had received 10 percent of all the money he received for them from disabled veterans, he would be $70,000 richer. As it is, he is still working for a salary and is not five cents better off materially.
Don’t smoke a cigarette and look for a light on Comercio Street unless you want to pay a cent for a match. Some little Mexican boys look at Americans in that plight and run towards them with lit matches. After the Americans accept the lights, the boys demand money.
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Ventas by mayor
August 22, 1922
“Ventas por Mayor” is a sign on San Antonio Street. It means ‘wholesale sales’. A passerby commented, “Who is that guy Ventas running for mayor?”
A Mexican woman who lives in South El Paso and washes for families in Government Hill has a baby turkey and the dogs and larger birds are chasing it. To save the bird’s life, she takes it to work and wears it below her waist.
“Uncle Sam” and “Napoleon” are neighbors, which are the names of saloons on opposite sides of the same block in Devil’s Row, Juarez.
PD Scott, “Juarez Scotty,” who serves lunch at the Turf, claims to be the busiest man in Juarez, making between 1,500 and 2,000 sandwiches daily.
Napoleon Lucero, manager of the El Paso Gas company in Juarez, is a former press telegrapher and today can take a press release as well as the best of them.
Arthur Lockhart has a movie machine himself and he also has a big lawn. He came up with the happy idea of making moving images of his friends mowing his lawn – and it works great.
When Milton Warner was a boy, the other boys called him Miltie. Recently in an outburst of confidence he told this to Mrs. Warner and in another confidential outburst she told it to a friend and the friend told it confidentially to her husband, and now if the Rotarians or other friends want to get Warner’s goat, call call him ‘Miltie’.
R. H. Rinehart is the only living man to have served in Roosevelt’s Rough Riders and can say that he never had or ever asked for a federal appointment.
When the Mills building was under construction, a yard was kept on the ground floor and it was found that when the sixth floor was completed the building had settled about three-sixteenths of an inch.
Sign on a garage on the north side: “Cars saved $7 a month, Fords $6.”
The last two of the three trees that lined the sidewalk in front of the West Boulevard home where General Victoriano Huerta died have just been dug up and have recently died, as did the first shortly after the death of the first. Mexican dictator. Four large pulque plants in the front yard are still healthy-looking specimens of vegetation.
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‘We’ll hold your hoss’
December 9, 1922
“We’ll hold your boss, get your Ford running and even take care of your baby – but we can’t cash your check.” So reads a sign in a restaurant in El Paso.
Americans note with surprise that troops of soldiers marching through the streets of Juarez give bugle calls, rather than verbal orders from officers, as in the U.S. military.
“Very interesting” are the words that appear in black letters on the first line of a circle on the walls in Juarez, announcing the opening of a new business.
Admiral George Dewey, hero of the war with Spain, is a slot machine patron in Juarez. His photo, in the center of a red, white and blue shield, adorns the front of many of the machines. The latest type of machine to be installed in Juarez sedans has a Liberty Bell embossed in metal, with “1776” in the center.
This girl looked pretty and was sitting on a bench in the far southeast corner of Alligator Park. The bank faced south. So did the girl. A respectable young man was crossing Mesa Avenue. He saw the girl, threw out his chest and planned to give her a treat by letting her give him the chance. When on the sidewalk of Mills Street, the dapper young man’s foot came into contact with a banana peel and he did a swimming stunt on the sidewalk. The girl giggled and the boy pulled away.
A bottle of poisonous whiskey recently seized by Prohibition agents was wrapped in an old newspaper with a striking headline: “Beware of Juarez Liqueur,” says Bob Jones.
W. D. Smith, zone dry chief stationed in El Paso, was one of the first three federal prohibition agents. He was appointed to Washington in December 1919.
Trish Long can be reached at tlong@elpasotimes.com or 915-546-6179.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Oddities in El Paso News, frontier life in 1922: Trish Long
