what do you remember about the 20s?

[spot]

Since Hope started the current craze for recollection I thought we might go for a decade I recall more vividly. I'm not sure what I was doing during the 70s but it probably involved a lot of late night shifts and some fierce deadlines.

I had a far more leisured time of it in the 20s. People these days talk of the luxury transatlantic liner crossings as essentially a phenomenon which ended with the Great War but my opinion differs, the liners of the 20s beat the earlier Cunarders hands down for comfort. The Lusitania and Mauretania were fast, of course, but they couldn't be said to cut peaceably through the water once their steam turbines were wound out to the stops. The Bremen in particular had a smooth ride. The star ships of the mid-30s beat both hands down but the reason the 20s stay particularly in my mind was the exuberance of the company on board. The Great War was done with, the clouds of Nazism were nowhere yet on the horizon, we were the gay generation the like of which was never known before or since. It's where I got my first bite of the Contract Bridge bug too.

Music, for the first time ever, moved out of the concert hall into ordinary studies and retiring rooms with the advent of live radio broadcasts. The miracle of sitting five hundred miles from Carnegie Hall listening to each of the George Gershwin world premieres under Walter Damrosch is indelibly branded in my memory. What times they were.

Prohibition inevitably forms the backdrop to these reminiscences. With money and connections nobody dreamed of enquiring into my possession or consumption of alcohol which is just as well, the cellars had several hundred cases of Burgundy and rock solid Saint-Emilions dating back to the 1880s and I most certainly wasn't going to let those be banned out of existence! For the man in the street, though, the legacy of those years is the permanent organized crime and the impenetrable corruption which goes with it. The 20s were the beginning of the end.

Who'd like to pick up the baton? My eyes brim with tears and I can type no more.

[along-for-the-ride]

Very interesting post, Spot.

My father was born in 1927 in Chicago. A few years ago, I found a newspaper on E-bay that was printed in that year from Chicago. I won it and sent to my dad. It was like opening a small window into that era......the society news, the crime news, and the pictures.

Do tell us more about what you remember. I don't believe it was "the roaring twenties" for everyone.

I was always partial to the Flapper dresses and dancing to the Charleston.

[chonsigirl]

Jazz................

[Galbally]

I myself am most fond of the 1890s, it was a grand time to be a European then, spent some time in East Africa, then moved on down to the cape, where I was involved in a minor skirmish with some Boer type fellows, I recall a young man called Michael Caine had been there several years previous and had opened a small laundry, lovely fellow.

The 1890s was a time of great optimisim, the vice trade had started to boom in London again as people (I mean the ladies) had generally recovered from that dreadful Ripper chap who had been roaming around whitechapel several years previous.

I remember I had a beautiful house near SW1 and my Handson Cab would bring me to the club in Mayfair every evening at 8 faithfully, of course being Irish some of the old boys distrusted me somewhat, but I soon put them at ease with my tales of the Tsar and Tsarina, and also my brief stint in the legation in Shanghai, with those odd Chinese fellows.

It was in the 1890s that we Europeans realized that those godawful colonial chappies in that new fangled place America might well be onto something, New York was becoming quite fashionable at the time and Wild West shows were all the rage, with real Red Indians as well, astounding.

We were all very interested in the paranormal in those days as well, I remember I made a brisk trade working for several weeks as "The Great Mephisto" in Paris (France of course being the only place to be at the time), where I told the fortunes, and stole the fortunes of many fine ladies. As yes my friends, the 1890s a wonderful decade.

[Patsy Warnick]

Spot - I am very fond of the 20's. I'm a collector of stuff - magazines - documents-photos and I love the old mesh/beaded purses from the 20's & on.
What a wonderful growth time, you have wonderful memories..?
My Dad was born 1918 - didn't talk much of the past. I find it interesting.

Thank You
Patsy

'70's - you can see that on TV

[mikeinie]

Good thread.

[koan]

I'm afraid it was all a haze to me.

[fuzzy butt]

If you can remember the twenties then you weren't really there man.

[BTS]

Nice post spot.

I was lucky that I was partially raised by my dads mother,
my..."Grandma Virginia" (Born 3rd Nov. 1907 in Kern County CA.) She was named after the state of Virginia where many of her forefathers came from.
She was born and raised on a Ranch/Farm in the 1910's-20's and related many stories to me, one I will never forget goes like this:

When she was about 13 (Abt 1920) they lived on a place about 10 miles to the next neighbors place. They were devout catholics and once a year the father would come around for tithing's or whatever he could get.
They were having a REALLY hard tyme this year and her mother told the father that they just could not make a contribution this year......

To make a long story short, the father looked around and spied their milk cow and said "Mrs. Palmer, that looks like a fine cow, perhaps you could spare it"

Her mother looked at the father and said "I'll be damned if you are to take the food out of my children's mouths"
"Now you just get out of here"

And that was the way it was in 1920 and one of the MAIN reasons I do not believe in organized religion