August 2019 – Ann S. Epstein Writer

Learn History Through Fiction: Happy National Slinky Day (August 30)

In my short story, “The Inventor,” I creep inside the head of the person who I imagine created Mr. Potato Head. Researching the real origins of popular toys from my childhood, I discovered that the Slinky was invented accidentally by a naval engineer, Richard James, who was designing a device to secure equipment to rocking ships. While experimenting, he dropped a coil of wire and watched it roll end-over-end across the floor. Instead of thinking “Oops,” he thought, “This would make an interesting toy.” His wife Betty came up with the name Slinky, meaning “sleek or sinuous in its movements.” Richard perfected the materials and dimensions, and the toy was a hit in the stores where they demonstrated it. Richard was granted a patent in 1947, but in 1960, he left his family (slunk off) to join a religious cult. Betty, with six children to support, took over the business and masterminded the toy’s marketing into a national craze and then a perennial favorite. Slinky was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2000. An estimated 400 million have been sold to date. Learn more about my SHORT STORIES, including where their ideas originate, and see BEHIND THE STORY to discover other interesting facts I’ve uncovered while researching them.

What I’m Reading: The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray

My Amazon and Goodreads review of The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls (Rating 5) – Filling the Void with Food, Faith, and Family. Set in a Western Michigan town, The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray is the story of the three grown Butler sisters who try to pull together in the face of a family disaster. Although they are African-American, race is a minor factor in this universal narrative. As children, Althea, the eldest, was responsible for raising the two younger girls and their brother after their mother died. Now, she and her husband have been convicted of fraud, leaving behind twin teenage daughters with demons of their own who become the responsibility of her siblings. The women in this book hunger for the love of a dead or distant mother and an absent or cruel father. That craving is expressed most vividly through disordered eating, but also through material greed and, paradoxically, self-denial — vain attempts to fill the void or be the kind of “perfect”child a parent will love. The story is told from the perspective of each of the sisters speaking in a distinctive voice. Althea narrates hers from jail, where readers learn during Bible study that the yearnings of even the scariest prisoners are not so different from hers, or ours. Viola, the bulimic middle sister, alternately gorges and purges not only on food, but also on the love of her wife. Lillian, the youngest, remodels the family home but cannot eradicate the ghosts of the torment inflicted on her by her brother. Gray’s novel has autobiographical elements, but she also proves what I know as a writer (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page, namely that imagination and empathy allow all authors, regardless of their background, to make diverse characters come to life on the page and take up residence with readers.

“Read everything … like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master.” – William Faulkner)

Learn History Through Fiction: Nazi Slave Labor in World War Two

In 1942, architect Albert Speer was placed in charge of Germany’s Economics Ministry. The war required large-scale employment of forced laborers. To supply the Third Reich with slave labor, the Nazis abducted 12 million people from twenty countries, the majority from Central and Eastern Europe. Many died from mistreatment, malnutrition, or torture. Others became civilian casualties of Allied shelling. Jews were also subject to forced labor in ghettos and work camps before being sent to death camps for extermination. Org.Todt, a civil and engineering organization named for its founder Fritz Todt, administered the construction of the concentration camps used to supply German industry with a steady flow of workers from 1943-1945. Read more about Nazi Germany in A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (see NOVELS).

Org.Todt, on Albert Speer’s armband, built the concentration camps that supplied the Nazis with slave labor in WWII

A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (Alternative Book Press) by Ann S. Epstein

Learn History Through Fiction: Head of Japanese Aviation Army in WWII Trained at San Diego Naval Air Station

In 1941, the San Diego Naval Air Station began training pilots for the U.S. Air Force, a total that reached 31,400 pilots by the end of World War II in 1945. However, years before the war began, Japanese aviators trained at the school, including Lieutenant Otozo Yamada, who would later head the Imperial Japanese Naval Aviation Army. Read more about San Diego’s military facilities and aviation industry in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).

San Diego Naval Air Station trained 31,400 pilots during WW II

Lt. Yamata, head of Japan’s Naval Aviation Army in WWII, trained at San Diego years before the war

Tazia and Gemma (Vine Leaves Press) by Ann S. Epstein

Learn History Through Fiction: First Outdoor Glass Elevator

In 1956, San Diego’s El Cortez Hotel added the world’s first outside glass hydraulic elevator, designed by C.J. Paderewski who worked for Otis Elevator. The glamorous apartment-hotel, which opened in 1927, dominated the city’s skyline for years. The large “El Cortez” sign, added in 1937, illuminated the night. The elevator, taking guests to the rooftop Starlight Room Restaurant, was reportedly a bellboy’s idea. The Travolator bridge, essentially a moving walkway or flat escalator, was built in 1959 to connect the hotel with the owner’s new motel across the street. Read more about the “Starlight Express” elevator and San Diego’s history in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).

“Starlight Express” outdoor glass elevator at San Diego’s El Cortez Hotel

“Travolator” was a horizontal escalator bridging a San Diego street

Learn History Through Fiction: Wizard of Oz Officially Released 80 Years Ago Today

The Wizard of Oz was officially released 80 years ago today on August 25, 1939. MGM previewed the movie in Wisconsin two weeks earlier to test its popularity in the Midwest, where the film is set, and see the audience response to Technicolor. Viewers were wowed! The film was also shown in Hollywood on August 15 and New York City on August 17 before it opened nationwide on August 25. Initial reviews were mostly positive, but some criticized MGM for encroaching on Disney territory. With average ticket prices 25 cents (and only 10 or 15 cents for children), it was a decade before MGM recouped its nearly $3 million investment, and the film’s longevity wasn’t assured until CBS began annual television broadcasts in 1956. Read more about the making of The Wizard of Oz and its “big” and “little” stars in A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (see NOVELS).

It took MGM a decade to recoup its $3 million investment in The Wizard of Oz

Learn History Through Fiction: Speaking of Bespoke

Debates about clothes cheaply made overseas have been in the news lately. Consider the other end of the apparel spectrum. Savile Row is a shopping street in central London famous for men’s bespoke tailoring. The term “bespoke” is believed to have originated there when cloth for a suit was said to “be spoken” for by individual customers. The short street, termed the “golden mile of tailoring,” opened its first men’s store in 1846 when Henry Poole moved his 50-year-old establishment to Number 15. Since then, Savile Row’s customers have included Napoleon III, Winston Churchill, Lord Nelson, Lawrence Olivier, Duke Ellington, Muhammad Ali, and Prince Charles. Read more about the creative and competitive world of fashion and tailoring in A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (see NOVELS).

Bespoke clothes from Savile Row have been worn by men from Napoleon III to Duke Ellington

Learn History Through Fiction: Eeny Meeny Miny Moe. Another Immigrant Group Has Got to Go!

While researching the short story “Spinning,” I discovered yet another (egregious) example of history repeating itself. After the Civil War, when cotton once again flowed to the North, hundreds of thousands of French-Canadian immigrants came south across the order to work in the textile mills of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. By 1900, one-tenth of New Englanders spoke French. The immigrants clustered in communities dubbed “Little Canadas,” often over-crowded, company-owned tenements. Determined to maintain their culture, the Catholic “invaders” aroused suspicion among their Protestant neighbors and raised alarms throughout the nation. In 1881, The New York Times described them as “ignorant and unenterprising. They care nothing for our free institutions, have no desire for civil or religious liberty or the benefits of education.” There was fear that they planned to colonize the northeast corner of the continent and create “New France” under the control of the Roman Catholic faith. Groups like the Know Nothings and American Protective Association burned Catholic churches, assaulted priests, and attacked Catholic neighborhoods. The fear of French Canadians waned only when immigrants began to arrive from farther afield: Jews and non-Protestants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Today the perceived threat to the “American way of life” comes from south of the border, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. The location of origin changes, but the reaction on U.S. shores doesn’t. To learn more about the immigrant experience and other topics in my writing — from historical to contemporary, serious to humorous, and realistic to absurdist — see NOVELS and SHORT STORIES.

U.S. Protestants saw French-Canadian Catholic immigrants as a threat to the “American way of life”

Know Nothings burned Catholic churches and assaulted priests

Learn History Through Fiction: Minimum Wage In; Child Labor Out

The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act creates the right to a minimum wage, and “time-and-a-half” pay when people work over 40 hours a week. It also prohibits most employment of minors in “oppressive child labor.” The law applies to employees and enterprises engaged in or producing goods for interstate commerce. States can still regulate their internal child labor force but federal rules are usually, although not always, applied if they are stricter. Read more about labor laws over the last century in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).

Fair Labor Standards Act enacted under FDR in 1938

Child labor widespread, grueling, and dangerous until 1938

Learn History Through Fiction: Gruesome Aftermath of Historic Triangle Factory Fire

Removing the bodies of the 1911 Triangle Waist Company fire’s 146 victims was grim work. Using a block and tackle, firemen lowered nets or blankets with 2 or 3 bodies at a time to policemen 8 to 10 floors below, who spread them in a row on a dark red canvas. Ambulances then transported the bodies to Bellevue Morgue. Patrol wagons were sent to help but, delayed by the slow process, were forced to line up like taxicabs waiting to pick up customers. Read more about the tragedy in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).