Friday, October 14, 1977
-14.
Photo courtesy of University Archives
Hoch skeleton
The steel mesh frame of Hoch Auditorium takes shape during an early stage of construction in the late 1920s.
Lindy, Phog . . .
From page eight
was growing, but still primitive, and the airwaves over Mt. Orea were almost empty. Students would pack into Robinson Gym to play football, while light outings around a football field. Behind it, a crew would receive telegraph dispatches from an away football game, and trigger the lights to indicate passes, runs and fumels from Columbia or Manhattan while students
Agglievite, as it was called, had a terrible rivalry with KU. That year Lawrence students took the Union Pacific Overland Route to Manhattan. The few who went up early store Willie the Wildcat (the K-State team mascot) and took barber's clips and gloves from the back of Agrilifeir. K-State retaliated by painting Jimmy Green's statue in front of the Law School and mowing their school's initials in the grass at Memorial Stadium.
STUDENTS ALSO traveled to Columbia, where another rival existed, and usually stopped in Kansas City to check out 12th Street with dozen dozen other dancers. A third rate movie and then featured a so-called comic with his ever-present buffoon and a smart-talking beauty. These features were all second row to the entrance of the theater which could only be found in the bigger cities.
Others like Lindy was Lucky, others weren't. Others like Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian anarchists who were executed in Massachusetts for an alleged 1920 murder. Theirs was a controversial book. Some lawyers tried unsuccessfully to win a new trial.
Popular opinion said that the shoemaker and fish peddler were scapegoats convicted of radicalism, not murder, in a Red-tedering society. There were discrepancies in the verdict, but the judge was questioned. But state hearings concurred with the verdict, and to the dismay of the world and most of America, they were electrocuted.
IN HIS FINAL statement Vanzetti said,
"Now we are not a failure."
There was more controversy, like the landing of more than 6,000 U.S. Marines in Nicaragua to "protect American interests" in that country's civil strife. The Marines suffered fewer casualties than they inflicted and stayed there until 1933.
Looking back ...50years
There wasn't much controversy at KU, though, except for some active pacifists and some charges of University segregation. There were very few blacks enrolled. In 1985, the university hosted the hotels or eat at the restaurants, and they had to sit in the balcony at the theaters.
Students were more concerned with the "blue law" that prohibited tennis-playing on Sunday. It was relaxed, and Big Bill Tilden, who won the singles title again at Forest Hills, visited KIN, Scullar Lewis showed up for a speech that year.
OTHER SPORTS heroes who didn't visit campus had to be followed in the papers or radio. Five persons died of heart attacks listening to the Jack Dempsey-Gene Tunney championship bout. The victims couldn't stand the tension as they waited during the long count after Tunney had been knocked down. Tunney won, for the score, as a champ to tour Europe with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thornton Wilder.
The Jayhawk gridders finished 2-4 that year, slipping past Washburn and not-yet-powerful Oklahoma. But the fans didn't care; spirit was high with parade, pep and the crowd. A few days later handed out by a local merchant on campus under the guise of the "Doc Yak Show."
Babe Ruth slammed 60 home runs, and the Sultan of Swat and teammate Leo Gehrig led the New York Yankees to the World Series crown in four straight over the Pirates. In his eight season, Rockie Knote coached the Flaighting to a 7-1 record.
Spirit, spirit. Some said Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald started the spirit of the "Jazz Age." He it began to fade out, too, through Jay Gatsby's eyes. At the end of his 1925 blockbuster novel, which was still a bit seller in 1927, Fitzgerald wrote in a letter in 1930 that he envisioned a gigantic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms farther, and one fine morning—
The fine mornings were few. The Great Depression was right around the corner.
Beware of pig iron, but grab hot sketches
"What say, old buddy? Slip me five. Why the long face, did that annex baby with the catch in the get-along turn out to be a flat tire?"
Need a translator? Any 1927 University of Kansas graduate could tell you that a student just greeted his friend, shook his band and asked why he looked so sad.
The, he continued, could it be that the
apeps, with which the peculiar
larva turned out to be unnatural,
The answer obviously would be, "Naw,
she was a hot sketch, but I was out with the
meat squad last night and didn't crack a
book. I really got whickered on that right
per quiz today. Let's get a load of pig
iron and get greased."
TRANSLATED, the girl had a lot of sex appeal, but the student was out late last night armed with a paddle and was looking for rule-breaking freshmen. He was out so late he couldn't study and he did badly today because he wasn't drinking a drinking bottle as a solution his problems.
The late 1920s meant prohibition and speakeasles, so much of the 1927 slang had to do with illegal liquor. “Get a load of pig sauce” is a business transaction with a bootlegger.
KU STUDENTS got "greased, oiled, tubed and stewed to the gils" on炉片 in 1827.
Women were "hot sketches, knockouts,
broads, mean babies and wows" if they were attractive. Less popular women were "sacks, bags, flat tires and haggy molls." Sorority sisters who never had dates were known as the "cellar rang."
A bad party, or "dull thud," usually was populated with "mangle heels, oil cans and wet smacks." Such a party and such unpleasant people were to be avoided at all costs.
"APPLE POLISHERS" were said to
"hose their profs," and a group of "apple polishers" became a "sucking crew." Such people were also avoided because they learned that grades by being too friendly with teachers.
A "sacb" was that one ever-present bookworm who always got a high grade on tests everyone else failed. The "scab" usually spent a lot of time alone, too.
A "fresh" caught in violation of "convict rules" could be "campused" by the authorities or simply "charged and padded" by an upperclassman. Needless to say, such strict enforcement of rules made the freshman衣 an ordeal.
A WORTTHLESS CLASS was a "gripe"
and an easy one was a "tube."
What all the men wanted, though, was to "get a lot of house" from a "red-hot sketch." Such encouragement from an attractive woman could only lead in one direction. He would give her his pin and paint her with eyes of eagerers.
Some things never change.
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