The Funnies - Forgiveness (1914)

"Now, Ethel, Harold says he's sorry he broke your doll, so I want you to forgive him."

"I'd feel more like forgivin' him, Mother, if I could swat him one first."

Life Magazine, October 22, 1914

The Funnies - The Peacemaker (1922)

"An' make Jimmy Brown stop tellin' lies about me or you're goin' to see th' terriblest blood-curdlin' fight ye ever saw! Amen."

Life Magazine, 1922

The Funnies - Captain Kidd (1914)

Life Magazine, 1914

Indiana State Fair - The Better Babies Contest

At its heart every State Fair is a celebration of mankind’s control of nature. Proud farmers from across the state come to Indianapolis with the best of their hybrid crops and selectively bread flocks, judges tally up pluses and minuses based on how well each conforms to established breed standards, and ribbons and prizes are awarded for the best representatives in each category from cabbage to cattle. It’s a tradition that’s nearly as old as agriculture itself – pride and competitiveness paired with a festival on the downhill side of the growing season and I enjoy digging through the records of the past to bring up little quirks and interesting tidbits. Unfortunately, not every aspect of the Indiana State Fair’s history is quaint, bright, and nostalgic. Our American past is troubled and murky, and as a people we've stumbled in the darkness of ignorance as often as we've stood tall in the sunlight. I end this year’s fair season with a post about a shadowy facet of the Indiana State Fair, one that combines advances in healthcare with the ignorance of bigotry and pseudoscience.

In the early 20^th century a growing awareness of the importance of the health of mothers and babies swept across Indiana and in 1920 this new wave of awareness manifested in the form of a new competition at the Indiana State Fair. I’ll admit, when I first saw pictures of the Better Baby Contest I thought that’d I’d be writing a comic piece. Frankly, the thought of mothers and fathers displaying their offspring for a panel of judges in an attempt to win a blue ribbon and cash prize sounded like fodder for a mocumentary or maybe one of those child beauty contests that plague reality television.

But the Better Baby Contest was a symptom of something more sinister. Yes, it marked a shift in the understanding of the nature of childhood and motherhood, but it also embodied an attempt legislate the sort of selective breeding that had to that point only been seen in raising livestock on the human population. Eugenics sought to “strengthen” humanity by restricting and controlling procreation. It sorted people based on measures of genetic worthiness and desirability. The poor, mentally ill, blind, deaf, developmentally challenged were deemed “defective” and a danger to the strength and purity of mankind. Likewise women deemed promiscuous, homosexuals, and non-whites were identified as “degenerate” and, therefore potentially dangerous to the health of the nation’s population as a whole. Under the guise of racial improvement governments put in place policies of segregation, institutionalization, sterilization, and even euthanasia.

In Indiana the eugenics movement took the guise of a drive for better Hoosier children and a direct outgrowth of this was the Better Babies Contest held at the Indiana State Fair from 1920 through its discontinuation in 1932. Parents from every county in the state brought their children to the Better Baby Pavilion located on what is now the western end of the Fairground’s Main Street where they would be would be weighed, measured, and tested by physicians and psychologists affiliated with the State Board of Health's Division of Infant and Child Hygiene.

At the forefront of Indiana’s better babies program was Dr. Ada E. Schweitzer, a rare feminine presence in the medical profession who worked tirelessly and in the course of just over a decade constructed a nationally recognized health agency which promoted the application scientific methods and modern medicine to motherhood and child rearing. By 1907 Indiana enacted its own Pure Food and Drug act as well as a Vital Statistics act requiring accurate birth and death records. The dark side of the movement showed through and that same year Indiana put in place the country's first eugenic sterilization law. By 1915 The American Medical Association (AMA) ranked the Indiana State Board of Health sixth in the nation and it seemed there would be no stopping her Division of Infant and Child Hygiene.

The Better Babies Contest acquainted Hoosiers with the current opinions of child specialists, reinforced pediatric norms, and gave university-trained experts a sort of unquestionable authority in all matters pertaining to the biology, physiology, and psychology of children. The introduction of sponsorship into the contest helped connect consumerism with motherhood and childhood and Indiana businesses such as the Hoosier Fence Company and the Weber Milk Company became Better Babies Contest sponsors. The contest excluded African American children, reinforcing segregation in Indiana and promoting the idea only white babies could achieve perfection. Schweitzer herself declared the contest “a school of education in eugenics”, promoting racial intolerance and prejudice while purportedly seeking the betterment of Hoosier children.

It’s important to state that though immensely popular; the Better Babies Contest isn't a product of Indiana. The first contest was held at the Iowa State Fair in 1911 with Mary T. Watts’ question to Iowans, “You are raising better cattle, better horses, and better hogs, why don't you raise better babies?” Watts used the model applied to livestock to judge superior infants, developing scorecards which tallied physical health, anthropometric traits, and mental development. Soon after Woman's Home Companion magazine embarked a better baby campaign of its own, sending an editor to promote the contests in Colorado. By 1914 the contests had become a fad and Woman's Home Companion proudly proclaimed that the existence of contests in every state (except West Virginia, New Hampshire, and Utah) and the examination of more than 100,000 children a laudable mark of progress.

In Indiana Children’s Bureau workers took part in organizing, officiating, and facilitating the Better Babies Contest joining with the AMA to standardize a scoring system acceptable to the pediatric establishment. This collaboration led to alternative children's health conferences, which conformed to the credo and flawed assumptions of the contest but lacked the competitiveness. Still, by the mid-1920's, Schweitzer went on the radio airwaves and in magazine articles promoting Better Babies Contests as a means for establishing a yardstick for childhood heath standards against which parents could compare their own children. She promoted the eugenic theme that race betterment (referring to the white race only, of course) depended on restricting the right to bear children to only the fittest and “protecting” genetic health through marriage and sterilization laws. Chillingly she stated, “You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, neither can we make a citizen out of an idiot or any person who is not well born.”

I’d love to say that this contest met its end when its inherent racism and classism were recognized for what they were and that the good and honest people of Indiana rejected the tenants of eugenics, but I can’t. To be honest, the last Better Babies Contest held in 1932 was wildly popular. Its end came at the hands of the sexism of a medical establishment which could not tolerate the predominately female Indiana Children’s Bureau and the financial strictures of the Great Depression. The bureau ultimately was disbanded and its chief architects run out of healthcare. Indiana’s eugenic-driven sterilization laws would remain in place until 1974 when it was struck down by Governor Otis Bowen. The last concrete legacy of the contest is the two pavilions constructed to accommodate judging and a plaque on the statehouse lawn commemorating the end of the Sterilization Act.

Farewell Sammy Terry

Childhood is a frightening time. You’re smaller and less powerful than everything in your world, you have no say about what happens in your life, and then there are people (or creatures of the night) like Sammy Terry. Sammy, aka Bob Carter, appeared on WTTV channel 4’s Nightmare Theatre every Friday night, bringing classic b-grade horror flicks to the Indianapolis metropolitan area during the 1960s and 70s and I largely blame him for my being afraid of the dark for most of my prepubescent life. It was Sammy who introduced me to the classics: Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, Dracula, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and the Phantom of the Opera. He taught me the ocean is filled with giant mutant creatures that crave human flesh, that the vacuum of space is peopled by insectoid alien horrors with unspeakable plans for humanity, and that the house at the end of the block actually is haunted. Life would have seemed a lot safer without Sammy’s dark theatre of nightmare, but then it would have been a lot more boring too.


Thank you for introducing me to the dark side of things, Sammy. Without you, I might not have become a writer. You taught me fright both as high art and cheap thrill. I’ll miss you, but then you’ll be with me every time a cloud passes over the moon or whenever I hear the sound of thunder in the night.


 

Do you have memories to share about Sammy Terry? Drop me a comment, I'll put them on the air.

The Blimp

In my part of the country, May brings thoughts of the Indy 500 and auto racing. I've never been a fan of motor sports. I'm not sure of the reason. It might be due to the fact I grew up close enough to the 500 track to hear the practice laps. Maybe that made the idea of the race too passé. Then again it might be a version of the same affliction that bothers the locals in just about every tourist destination, a simultaneous love and loathing of the hoards who flock to your town to spend money. The restaurants are filled, the streets are crowded, the stores are emptied, and the price on gas gets gouged an extra percentage. All of that can leave a taste of resentment on the pallet. 

The one thing I do remember fondly, though, is hearing the droning of propellers and running to my suburban back yard to watch the Goodyear Blimp passing overhead. I remember it donned in lights, flashing advertisements aimed at whoever else was drawn out by the sound of its passing to look up into the nighttime skies. Apparently the ad campaigns weren't very effective because I don't remember anything they were selling. I always imagined I might see the blimp signal to me; send a message that I should meet it in some remote field. I'd spend the rest of that evening imagining what it would be like to slip out the back door after everyone had gone to bed. I'd creep away to my rendezvous and before the sun came up I'd be gone on an adventure. The message never came, though, and May followed May until the idea of a fantastic escape died under the weight of daily life. 

Eventually, I got a toy blimp as a present, complete with a motorized, backlit sign with transparencies that could be colored in to create messages. It hung on monofilament in the bedroom window and occasionally I'd turn the battery-powered motor on to watch the messages I created scroll by. To this day I miss that blimp and when I've got a spare moment, sometimes I find myself browsing the internet in search of a replacement.

The blimp represented leaving everything behind and having nothing ahead but the horizon and scattered stars. The blimp of my memories was huge and silver, its seams ending in a bright red nosecone. The gondola that hung beneath seemed tiny compared to the envelope of helium that kept it aloft. There'd only be room for myself and maybe the dog, but together we'd find a better place and start a fantastic life there. I'm always slightly disappointed when I see the new blimp, smooth and painted in corporate colors, lacking the flickering a sign with which to signal the world. It seems smaller, though I'm not sure if that's not just an artifact of growing up. Still I can't help but running outside when I first hear that droning sound of engines, and my mind turns toward the horizon.

Sammy Terry

Dear Reader,

Recently, while searching the web for Halloween paraphernalia, I stumbled on a small piece of my childhood. As a kid I remember wanting to stay up for the late-late show. I believe every town large enough to have a local television station had (or has) a late night purveyor of B-grade horror flicks and in Indianapolis, it was Sammy Terry. He occupied the television schedule from midnight until two or three, filling the time with double features like "The Creature from 50000 Fathoms" and "The Bride of Dracula". It was a mark of manhood when I could outlast my brother in the face of the Creature from the Black Lagoon (I'll always have a soft spot for the scaly fellow for that very reason).


Reminiscing about brotherly torment aside, though, the particular piece of my childhood I encountered was Sammy Terry's MySpace page. I will repeat that - Sammy Terry MySpace. Unfortunately, repetition doesn’t make it seem any more real.

Sammy Terry being on the Internet seems - wrong. Don't get me wrong, I'm far from opposed to the idea. In fact I'm thrilled to see he's still active and has the kitsch sense of humor he always brought to his show. Maybe it's the pixelization of all my old memories that lends a surreal quality to seeing Terry on the web. Cherished things are best viewed in subdued light.

I close my eyes and I'm back in the tiny first-ring suburbia ranch house where I grew up, laying on the shag carpet and listening to Terry's ghoulish laugh. The TV is turned down so that it won't wake the parents as Sammy's coffin creaks open and the devilish MC rises to bid his fans and victims a goooood eeeevening. Then there'd be the send up of the evening's features with a good send up of the first monster to darken the screen. During the intermission between features, George (the chattering and suspiciously rubbery spider that took the role of Terry's co-host) would put in an appearance, reminding Sammy of some pertinent humorous line. Though I'd be asleep half way through the second feature, I wouldn't dare turn the television off. The staying up was the thing.

Years later Elvira, Mistress of the Dark would bring a new look to the late night horror genre but there'll always be something special about Sammy's late night antics. Through his show I saw some of the early masters of the genre and some of the great (and infamous) films of the forty's, fifties, and sixties. The world is a better place for your being in it, Mr. Terry.