Note: This is a post I wrote in 2006 for the 1947project.
Also notice that because newsprint was scarce, the Los Angeles Times didn’t publish the classified ads so it could provide adequate space for stories – I cannot imagine any American newspaper doing that today.
Dogpatch
Noo Yars Day, 1947
Spoke by Pansy Yokum
Writ (by hand) by Available Jones
Deer Fokes:
All us 100% red blooded Americans done our customary number of stooped things in 1946 an no doubt will do ‘em all over again come 1947.
Likewise we done some good things. Fo’ instance Mistah Capp done tole me how, visitin’ Army horse-pittles, he seen us doin’ a good job for our handy-capped boys whose laigs an eyes an innards we had to use up during the late, lamented (espeshly by our enemies) war.

It is an era of compulsions. Apparently everyone has had them all along but now it’s considered not only proper but fashionable to express them, no matter in what murky paths they lead.
(News item) CHICAGO, Dec. 30 — Wilbur Geoffrey Gaffney, associate professor of English from the University of Nebraska, today revealed the results of a 10-year study on the significance of names.












By the end of 1938, Weldon sensed that he was a marked man and that death was not far off. He could have stayed out of Los Angeles and maybe he would have lived–at least for a while. But he evidently decided to face whoever it was that killed him in what The Times called the “perfect murder case” — a case that was never solved.





Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and