THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 12, 1996 TAG: 9607100140
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Looking Back
SOURCE: Janie Bryant
LENGTH: 168 lines
Heat was the hot topic in stories that ran 75 years ago this week in The Portsmouth Star.
Readers who had not escaped to seaside or mountaintop vacation spots plugged in electric fans and read about the broiling temperatures wreaking havoc in the Midwest.
One foundry in Chicago had been forced to lay off 5,000 men because it was too hot for them to work and the mortality rate had doubled in that city, according to one story.
An editorial that week in 1921 told readers that Des Moines had seen ``a daily average of 91 degrees for about 30 days.''
Another story gave a California professor's theory that ``the extraordinary warm weather of the present summer is caused by an unusual downpour of meteors on the sun, increasing its radiation and effective surface temperature.''
Whatever the reason, Portsmouth residents considered themselves relatively fortunate.
``Our summer weather is hot but it is tempered by cooling sea breezes,'' an editorial writer pointed out. ``It is always possible to sleep at night and the breaks in the hot spells come at closer intervals here than less favored sections of the west.''
Today's residents, who live in an air-conditioned world, would be less likely to consider Hampton Roads' humid summers a plus.
Although Portsmouth residents in 1921 may have felt luckier than their Midwestern neighbors, it was obvious they still craved a cool breeze.
If you stayed in town, the best place was the porch.
An editorial writer commented on the complaints the newspaper was receiving about motorists using their high beams:
``These stifling nights it is the custom of families to occupy their front porches and a continuous procession of cars, each throwing brilliant beams along the streets, is very annoying.''
Bright lights aside, the porch is where families and neighbors gathered to cool off and communicate.
A Smith and Welton ad hawked everything from Hong Kong grass porch rockers and hammocks to porch swings - all for less than $15.
Lelia Triplett chose to entertain her friends on the porch of her West Park View home that week. She decorated her porch with garden flowers and Japanese lanterns.
Her guests likely showed up in the lightweight organdy fashions that were offering women her age a cooler wardrobe than their mothers had hoped for at the turn of the century.
Hems were higher and even more telling were the stories that cropped up that week about the new and daring swimwear.
A wire photo of five women walking arm in arm down a New York beach showed them wearing the latest one-piece bathing suit - a little longer than one of today's more modest mini-skirts.
But the headline read ``Where, Oh Where, Are New York's Beach Censors?'' - a reference to the ban of such swimming suits on many beaches.
The caption told readers that the women described themselves as serious swimmers who said it was ``no fun . . . trying to swim with half a street wardrobe clinging to one's legs.''
Unfortunately, women could wear their modern bathing suits only at private beaches - not New York's popular ``Coney, Manhattan and other public places.''
Another wire brief reported that a police ``matron'' in Michigan, responding to the trend of women shopping in swimwear, ``announced bathrobes must be worn over the bathing suits when women appear on the streets.''
But there was no turning back.
The long headline on a humorous story picked up from the New York Evening World was ``This is our annual bathing suit story and gee, how we hate to do it. . . . Every year there is less to write about!''
The writer went on to report that ``It's the one-piece tight-fitter that hits the national fancy. In some places they pinch 'em for wearing those, but the judge discharges 'em for lack of evidence . . .
``There's only one thing we can say to the reformers: They censor the movies with a pair of shears and if that's the way they'll censor bathing suits, then let the law take its course!''
Unfortunately, it's entirely possible that the advent of the new swimsuit style also ushered in the first signs of women's obsession with their weight.
Health and beauty columns had surfaced in the pages of The Portsmouth Star in 1921 and, along with those, a new emphasis on fitness, exercise and even a ``reduction menu.''
Women that week also checked the pages of The Portsmouth Star to see who was socializing here or vacationing elsewhere.
The pages of the Star had moved beyond Olde Towne and Park View and now included columns for neighborhoods from Prentis Park and Cradock to Port Norfolk.
The newspaper also published regular household hints for women that ranged from a full day's menu, complete with recipes, to a tip on how ``to remove the smell of onions from one's breath'' with parsley and vinegar.
Readers could pick up the newspaper and read the most recent in a series of Sherlock Holmes stories. Or they could learn about the fate of three Navy men injured when a dirigible caught fire in the air.
There was a story on Babe Ruth's visit to an orphanage, to the delight of young fans there, and another on jurors being selected for the trial of those involved in the 1919 baseball scandal.
There was no horoscope in the newspaper that week, but readers were probably just as entertained by a regular column called ``Read Your Character,'' which claimed to give information on one's personality by a person's physical traits.
It was the ultimate in stereotyping.
People with coarse hair, for example, were more likely to be a ``doer than (a) dreamer'' with ``tendencies toward aggressiveness and combativeness.''
``Broad-nosed people love the good things of life,'' another column reported. ``They're willing to work and fight for them, and when there are not too many factors in opposition you can make up your mind that they are more or less successful in getting them.''
Some broad-nosed reader seeing that might have decided to go ahead and answer the call of the real estate ad to one of the new neighborhoods on the outskirts of town.
``South Highland,'' the ad reported, ``is five minutes walk from the car line; also in reach of any man's purse to build an ideal suburban home.''
In the Saturday paper, readers learned church services on Sunday would be cut short because of the summer heat.
All sermon topics were published, and the Rev. R.F. Robinson of Prentis Place Baptist Church ``extended a special invitation to men and women out of employment.''
Robinson was to talk about ``The Present Business Depression and a Challenge to Men's Faith in God.''
That was the other top story that July week in 1921. Four years after World War I ushered in shipyard-based prosperity to Portsmouth, peacetime was taking its toll economically.
About ``1,400 navy yard men were discharged for lack of appropriations in July and 500 others were furloughed for 15 days from work on the battleship North Carolina,'' one story reported.
Another story told of 1,000 of the laid-off workers who filled the Orpheum Theater on High Street to hear city leaders discuss the problem.
Earlier in the week, about 100 war veterans had gathered at the Hotel Monroe to talk about the ``alleged failure of officials of the navy yard to give preference in employment to ex-service men.''
One editorial writer lamented the situation, arguing that ``As long as a Navy is needed at all, it must be efficient. It cannot be efficient unless the ships have the attention of experts, of men who do dependable work, that will carry a vessel and her precious cargo through storm and battle. Such experts we have at this Navy Yard. We shall not have them long, however, if the present policy continues.''
The good news was, in those days, the whole city mobilized over such a crisis.
The American Legion met that week with Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt. Members of the Rotary Club, the Retail Merchants Association and the Kiwanis also were sending a committee to Washington.
Back at home, there were some signs that not all was bleak on the economic forefront.
The Hampton Roads Port Commission was about to hold a conference in Portsmouth and would get a chance to look over the city's riverfront amenities.
About 500 men were called back to work by the Seaboard Air Line, according to another story that also told readers the Parker Hosiery Mill, ``one of the most progressive of the large Belt Line industries . . . had reopened its main plant with full force'' and would open a new branch plant on County Street that would employ black females, 14 to 25.
The Virginia Theater was about to open on Port Norfolk's Broad Street, along with four other stores built by Virginia Construction Co.
The same company was contracted by Morris Rapoport to ``build a two-story addition'' to the men's clothing store he had built out of a men's hat shop he bought four years earlier.
At a cost of $6,000, the expanded building was to have ``a five-room apartment on the second floor of the addition'' where his family would live for many years.
In fact, Herman Rapoport was born that same year. His sons - Reid and Steve - now run the business, one of the oldest surviving retailers downtown. The Rapoports also own two other Quality Shop stores in Norfolk and Virginia Beach. ILLUSTRATION: File photos
A view of the Portsmouth ferry docks, circa 1921. The Hampton Roads
Port Commission was to hold a conference in Portsmouth that year.
The Naval Shipyard Fire Department, circa 1921. Layoffs hit the
shipyard hard that year as post-World War I peacetime took its toll
on the local military-based economy. by CNB