OK, gang, it's about time we had some visual excitement around here. (Not to mention working on the graphics here, but I'll be getting to that fairly soon.)
I'm talking photos. This past Saturday I got some good ones at some motocross races on the other side of the county.
I had been taking pictures at races there in the past, but this was my first chance to try it with my new camera. David came along. Here's what I saw through the lens ...
With all our dry weather, it didn't take long before the bikes were kicking up big clouds of dust. But some water trucks were on hand to settle down the dirt ...
Action was pretty intense among these racers near the finish line ...
Most of the racers were young, and some were kids. They had the most rabid cheering sections of all ...
I didn't watch the racers all the time. Like when I saw this butterfly ...
That was the only wildlife we saw ... until the trip home, when we saw some sandhill cranes looking for goodies by the side of the road ...
Earlier on Saturday, my wife and I went to a parade in town. This was held to commemorate a local event from early 1920, when federal agents came to town to enforce the brand new Volstead Act--the bill that gave teeth to the 18th Amendment and effectively started the Prohibition Era in the U.S.
Why did the feds step in? Because the local prosecutor refused to enforce the Volstead Act. The feds felt compelled to come here and throw their weight around.
This local celebration was held on the weekend occupied by the rodeo until this year, when it moved to early June. The search immediately began for a new event to take its place. Thoughts turned to the "Rum Rebellion" of 1920 and the effort to enforce Prohibition on the local area.
Here are a few pictures from the parade. We saw a still or two ...
Some wine-making ...
One float depicted a speakeasy, also called a "blind pig" ...
Other floats depicted proper ladies from the local temperance league, armed with pitchers of lemonade, who declared ... well, you can read it for yourself ...
And, of course, there were adorable moppets in "1920s" costumes ...
To sum it up, it was a romanticized version of the 1920s. It was all about doing the Charleston and wearing fringed dresses and headbands with feathers stuck in them.
I thought it ironic that they had a display of American flags at the start of the parade, with many units prominently featuring American flags. It's ironic because it was the feds who felt compelled to come into the area and lay down the law on local citizens.
History tells us that Prohibition was an absolute fiasco, with plenty of unforeseen consequences. The Volstead Act had been vetoed by President Woodrow Wilson, but the Senate overrode his veto, and it became law. So instead of legitimate businesses distributing beer and liquor in the U.S., that industry was handed over to gangsters and organized crime.
Those people became very prosperous as a result, able and willing to bribe and blackmail local officials. Make no mistake, there was still plenty of beer and liquor around during Prohibition--you just had to know the right people.
Prohibition's parallels in today's "War on Drugs" and anti-marijuana laws should be obvious.
Why did U.S. elected leaders decide to go down the primrose path of Prohibition? I think you can look at religion-inspired groups, who had the very best of moral intentions (the same thing that paves the path to hell); various anti-vice groups, who wielded big political power at the time; and the remnants of the Victorian era attitudes, with their double-standards and paternalistic way of looking at life. The bottom line is that their moral beliefs were imposed on everyone, for better or worse. Sound familiar?
Ironically, all this happened just after World War I ended, as the soldiers came back from "over there" after getting a taste of life in Europe. Life changed quickly in the U.S. Fashions--especially for women--changed a lot. The flappers got out of their corsets and into short, fringed dresses, which they wore over figure-flattening undies. They also wore make-up. Lots of make-up. Ordinary women never did such things before!
Here are some other things the flappers did that their moms didn't: They wore rolled stockings (sometimes with a little flask tucked inside), cloche hats, big strings of pearls and chains and short "bobbed" hair. They smoked. They drank. They dated. They danced. They petted. With enthusiasm. They did everything they weren't supposed to do with enthusiasm. The ultimate sexual liberation was denied them, however; reliable birth control was still a few decades in the future.
From what I have read, the Roaring Twenties must have been an incredible time. An explosion of creativity in art, in music, in design. The Jazz Age. Women starting to take chances in life. Wild times. Wild women. Dancing to hot bands. Riding in cars that had removable seats. People exploring a new era, exploring territory that never been mapped, that had never even been imagined by many. Terra incognita.
It must have been amazing.
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