The Arkansas Gazette’s front pages in 1920 were tainted or graced (sometimes both on the same day) by intentionally humorous items.
Unintended humor appeared there too, but rarely, not anywhere near so often as attempted humor that missed its mark. All too often the Gazette’s short humor items — known as “brites” — amount to nothing better than jeering at some poor person’s awful trouble.
The brites editor liked items about Prohibition and especially about inventive miscreants trying in vain to get around Prohibition. Bigamy and con artists were favorite topics, too. Rarely were brites drawn from local events, but a fun local one appeared July 22, 1920, under an intriguing headline:
Is False Alarm and Big Drought Still Prevails
Mining for oil was a trend in the southern part of the state at the time, and the reporter began his account with a nod to scores of Arkansans then seeking riches by digging wells. Also, he noted, other would-be plutocrats were quietly manufacturing depressive distillates in the hills.
One R.T. Fowler of 1103 Cross St. had been found seeking wealth in the hills, but not in the second manner. It was more like the first.
Acting on a tip from worried residents of Ferndale, then 25 miles west of Little Rock, seven well-armed law enforcement officers had ventured into the hills in the wee hours expecting to catch a moonshiner busy at his still. Instead, they found Fowler and his family digging a hole.
Before we talk about Fowler, a motorman with the Little Rock Railway and Electric Co., let’s pause briefly to accept those 25 miles. Although Ferndale has not come closer to Little Rock during the past century, Little Rock has crept closer to Ferndale. So it’s not a mistake to say that Ferndale used to be 25 miles from Little Rock.
Back to the brite: Honest people living in the Ferndale area saw a suspicious light flickering through the woods night after night. The light lasted until 3 a.m. Finally, they notified the local sheriff’s office.
That local office was in Little Rock. The call was received about 10 o’clock on a Tuesday night, and the posse formed quickly. Sheriff’s deputies Clifton Evans, W.F. Hobbs, E.S. Jones, William Sibeck, Deputy U.S. Marshal Al Reed and city Detectives Moore and Cabaniss left shortly after 11 o’clock for Ferndale.
I do not know how long it took them to reach Ferndale in 1920, but it’s clear from the brite that it took at the least more than an hour, and that there was a route suitable for autos because Fowler had his “Ford car.” When the deputies arrived, their informants assured them the light was still in the woods.
After a short council of war, the posse descended upon the light with a grand rush, but found neither still, nor gang of moonshiners ready to give battle. One glance assured the officers that no trouble was likely to occur.
They permitted Fowler, his wife and children to lower their hands.
The scene was as follows: Fowler was digging in a gravelike hole. His wife was near the hole holding a lantern, and their children — two girls and a boy — were asleep in the Ford.
Fowler told the officers that he was seeking buried wealth.
After repeated questioning, he admitted that “the spirits” had told him there was treasure buried at Ferndale and also furnished the location.
He seemed very much irritated at being bothered, and was sullen most of the time. His wife suggested that they leave for Little Rock, which they did after the officers departed.
Deputy Sheriff Sibeck was interested in the spirits. He questioned Fowler closely which spirit had “put him next to such interesting dope.” Fowler would not tell.
“Just the spirits,” he said.
Hobbs, who seemed to be disappointed at not finding a still, said in a disgusted tone of voice as he turned to leave, “I’ll bet it’s that crazy Ouija board again.”
The news that there was buried treasure in their country did not seem to excite the Ferndale residents, the Gazette reported, “but it did set their minds at ease and permitted them to slumber once more.”
WEEJEE
The Ouija board was a trendy item in 1920, even though it was already 29 years old. That’s more than a generation, plenty of time for popular culture to develop a nostalgic enthusiasm for an old toy.
According to an article about the history of Ouija in the Oct. 27, 2013, Smithsonian Magazine, the original Ouija was much like the set sold today, except its board was made of wood, not cardboard. It included the teardrop-shaped “planchette” that players touched with fingertips to maneuver to alphabet letters printed in two arcs above the numbers zero to nine. The words “yes” and “no” appeared in the upper corners; “goodbye” was at the bottom.
You sat at the board with your fingertips on the planchette, asked a question and then supposedly the planchette moved of its own accord from letter to letter, spelling out your answer.
It cost $1.50 the year it was introduced — 1891. From ads in the Gazette and Arkansas Democrat, we know it still cost $1.50 in 1920.
That was a bit of money. According to the oddly named website in2013dollars.com, $1.50 in 1920 had the purchasing power of $19.33 in 2020. And money was the point.
Writing for Smithsonian, Linda Rodriguez McRobbie explains that Ouija was manufactured as a money-maker that capitalized on the 19th-century craze for spiritualism. Although patent bunkum, holding a séance was considered a wholesome activity for Christian people who longed to talk to loved ones in heaven. Mary Todd Lincoln held séances in the White House after poor little Willie died of typhoid in 1862. But you needed a medium and her cabinet of wires and cheesecloth to pull off a proper séance. Ouija was an instant séance — séance lite. Just add fingertips.
Rodriguez McRobbie explains that Ouija does not appear to have been seen as a portal to evil before it played a starring role in a hit horror movie in 1973. “Before ‘The Exorcist,’ film and TV depictions of the Ouija board were usually jokey, hokey, and silly — ‘I Love Lucy,’ for example, featured a 1951 episode in which Lucy and Ethel host a séance using the Ouija board,” she writes.
Smithsonian also explains psychological research that offers possibly scientific explanations for why some users get the sense the board has agency other than what they supply.
Also, Rodriguez McRobbie says researcher Robert Murch learned that the board’s name was not an amalgamation of French and German words for “yes” but instead was inspired by “Ouida,” the pen name of a suffragist novelist admired by Helen Peters, a sister-in-law of one of the original investors. “Ouida” was scrawled on a photo in a locket Peters was wearing when she asked the board to find its name.
Oh gosh, here I am at the bottom of the column, and I haven’t even mentioned the 1920 interview with the Ouija manufacturer who scoffed at the “poor deluded fools” buying his product like mad or any of the other fun instances of Ouija mockery I found while gliding my fingertips over the archives of the Gazette and Democrat.
Ouija, should Old News write more about you?
“ABCDEFGHIJK.”
I wonder what that means.
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