Helen Korngold Diary: July 14-20, 1919

Helen Korngold, Dec. 1919, New York City

This year I am sharing the 1919 diary of Helen Korngold of St. Louis, MO.

After graduating from Washington University Helen went on a trip to Colorado.

July
Monday 14

Village not very exciting. Edith & I waded in Big Thompson – lots of fish – Met Mr. Strothers from K.C. Used to go to Central. Played ball with him & danced. He’s a fine chap. To bed, after a long chat with him.

Tuesday 15

Mr. & Mrs. Nieman took me riding – They are just too dear for words. We had a lovely dinner – time to go to lunch. Danced with Edith & Durand. Fooled around – dinner – talked & danced.

Wednesday 16

Walked to Country Club with May – rode back – met a mutual friend Harry Thomas McGarry. Took pictures & talked – lunch – home to ret. Dinner. Danced all evening. Smith is a wild dancer. While Strother is almost pep-less.

Thursday 17

Tired. Rest all morning. Read. Lunch – talked. Took a long hike with David. Home – He’s nice, but not very excellent company. 

Friday 18

To town with May & David. He’s a sport when it comes to (?) Home in time for lunch. Slept all afternoon. Dinner – played cards. Edith may leave tomorrow morning.

Saturday 19

Write letters. Walk to village with Durand. Longs Peak Inn & Copland Lake. Drove into lake. Wild. Danced in evening.

Sunday 20

Judge went to Longs Peak. Outside all morning. Met Betty Kouchin’s chum Julia Cross. Spent afternoon with them. Out with David & girls in evening. Durand & I got home at 11 bells. Not very exciting.

NOTES:

July 14

Mr. Strothers of Kansas City who went to Central High may be Lewis Strothers in the 1905 Central HS yearbook, born 1889

July 16

Longs Peak Poster

Harry Thomas McGarry appears in the Colorado Springs 1922 City Directory as an attorney. He was born in New York around 1895. In the 1921 Colorado Springs City Directory, he is listed as president of Farmer’s and Miner’s Trading Company. July 19 Copland Lake is a manmade lake in the Rocky Mountain National Park Longs Peak Inn was a lodge purchased by Elizabeth and Esther Burnell summer of 1916. In 1918 Esther married Enos Mills and they ran the inn together.

1912 photo of Long's Peak Inn

See another photo here

July 20

Betty Kuchai/Kouchin may be the Betty G. Kuchai on the 1916 through 1922 Denver, CO city directories, working for Cranmor & Co. as a stenographer or bookkeeper. There is a death record for Betty Kuchai Mendel, born October 10, 1901, in Colorado and died October 31, 1980, in Los Angeles. Her father’s name was Kuchai and mother’s maiden name was Kirchner.

An Abraham Kuchai appears on the 1910 Denver Census married to Ray with children Rebecca, Esther, Lena and Hyman. He was Russian/Yiddish, arrived in America in 1904, and worked as a job lot peddler. In 1915 he appears on the Denver City Director working for Girvan Furniture & Auction. In 1916 and 1917 his business is listed as ‘clothing.’ In 1924 Ray is working as a milliner and Hyman is a clerk in the Piggly Wiggly. In 1942 Ray Kuchai donated $35 towards the Jewish American Congress, organized in 1917 to secure Jewish rights at the end of the war.

Helen Korngold Diary: June 16-22

100 years ago in St. Louis, MO, a Washington University student kept a diary. I found it in an antique shop in 2001. I was so taken by the author that I spent years researching her, her family, and the people and places she wrote about. This year I am sharing weekly posts from Helen Korngold's diary along with my research.

Helen's school days are over. The weather has turned hot. There isn't much to write about over the next weeks.

June
Monday 16
Haven’t recovered from effect of last night – Hope I get to sleep all afternoon.

Tuesday 17
Tired.

Wednesday 18
Picnic of Y.H.T.S.S. Highlands – Bernard Spiro came out in evening and took me riding on all the things & swimming & home. Had a dandy time. From now on will not be very full in my notes – too hot.

June 18, 1919 ad from St. Louis Star

Thursday 19
Tired. Slept 2 hrs.

Friday 20
Nothing exciting

Saturday 21
Downtown – lunch at Leader

Sunday 22
Nothing doing.

Notes:

June 18
YHTSS is likely her Sunday School class. A history of the movement for Jewish religious education patterned after the Christian Sunday School can be found here.

June 15
Forest Park Highlands was an amusement park located in St. Louis. It was the sight of the former St. Louis World's Fair and is today the site of The Forest Park Community College.
http://www.forestparkhighlands.com/
http://fox2now.com/2013/07/18/remembering-forest-park-highlands-amusement-park/

June 22
The Grand Leader Department Store tea room in downtown St. Louis. Learn more about its history here.

Read about the history of Stix, Bauer and Fuller, previously known as The Grand Leader, and the tea room here.


Other news this week in 1919:

The Uncle Wriggly Coloring Contest had a huge response!

June 18, 1919 St. Louis Star article

Daylight Savings Time was controversial.

And so was the Mexican Border.

June 21, 1919 from St. Louis Star

Alcoholic Blues was a popular song by the Tin Pan Alley hit writer Albert Van Tilzer. I have the sheet music in my personal collection. Listen to Bill Murray sing it here.

The Alcoholic Blues

(Albert Von Tilzer / Edward Laska)

I love my country, 'deed I do

But oh, that war has made me blue

I like fightin', that's my name

But fightin' is the least about the fightin' game

When Mister Hoover said to cut my dinner down

I never even hesitate, I never frown

I cut my sugar, I cut my coal

But now they dug deep in my soul

I've got the blues, I've got the blues

I've got the alcoholic blues

No more beer, my heart to cheer

Goodbye whiskey, you used to make me frisky

So long highball, so long gin

Oh, tell me when you comin' back agin

Blues, I've got the blues

Since they amputated my booze

Lordy, Lordy, war is well

You know I don't have to tell

I've got the alcoholic blues

Some blues, I've got the blues

Prohibition that's the name

Prohibition drives me insane

I'm so thirsty, soon I'll die

I'm simply goin' to 'vaporate, I'm just that dry

I wouldn't mind to live forever in a trench

Just if my daily thirst they only let me quench

And not with Bevo or Ginger Ale

I want the real stuff by the pail

I've got the blues, I've got the blues

I've got the alcoholic blues

No more beer, my heart to cheer

Goodbye whiskey, you used to make me frisky

So long highball, so long gin

Oh, tell mw when you comin' back agin

Blues, I've got the blues

Since they amputated my booze

Lordy, Lordy, war is well

You know, I don't have to tell

I've got the alcoholic blues

Some blues, I've got the blues

Theft By Finding by David Sedaris

"In the U.K., if you discover something of value and keep it, that's theft by finding."

I kept a diary for long periods in my life. So, I like to read diaries. I read Samuel Pepys' diary. It took me two years. I read it in bed so every night the last line I read was usually, "And so to bed."

I thought it would be great to read David Sedaris's diaries. I have read several books by Sedaris and I've heard him on the radio. The first book I read was on recommendation by a library staff person.

I was living in a teeny rural town where the police chief had his own untrained militia and was armed with ex-military weapons, including a Hummer. I heard the KKK left flyers on driveways. The local church was splitting because the denomination was not strongly anti-abortion and anti-gay and anti-anything else progressive liberal. I went to the library and asked for funny books to raise my spirits, and I was given Holidays on Ice.

Its no wonder funding to libraries has been on the cutting block under the current administration.

Consquently, I should have known what I was getting into when I requested Theft by Finding, excerpts from his 156 volume diary kept between 1977 and 2002.

I had no idea.

"What I prefer recording at the end...of my day are remarkable events I have observed.."

And he has observed some pretty strange events.

At times I thought, what did I get myself into? Other times I laughed out loud, but no way was I going to tell anyone what was so funny. It's  embarrassing to laugh at something so incorrect.

And yet, I realized, Sedaris's stories were, well, pretty believable for all their bizarreness. I lived in Philadelphia and seen some pretty weird stuff myself. But that's another story.

Also, Sedaris has some pretty spot-on insights.

One of my favorites is from November 17, 1987, Chicago. The police had caught a man who had smashed windows and painted swastikas on Jewish businesses. He was a skinhead with tattoos, Sedaris writes,"which is strange, I think, because Jews in concentrations camps had shaved heads and tattoos. you'd think that anti-Semites would go for a different look."

His self-knowledge is also commendable. On January 26, 1999, in Paris, he is called a misogynist. "No," I corrected her, "I'm not a misogynist. I'm a misanthrope. I hate everyone equally."

Sedaris is thoughtful. On December 31, 1998, he wrote that his dad, visiting him in Paris, had the evening before leaned near a candle and set his hair on fire. He wrote, "This morning we went to buy him a hat." Such a good son. Helping Dad keep his dignity by covering up the scorched hair.

In his forward, Sederis suggests readers peruse the book, sampling here and there, now and then. Good luck with that. Frankly, it's hard to put down.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

"Raw glimpses of the humorist's personal life as he clambered from starving artist to household name... though the mood is usually light, the book is also a more serious look into his travails as an artist and person... A surprisingly poignant portrait of the artist as a young to middle-aged man." —Kirkus (starred review)

Theft By Finding
David Sedaris
Little, Brown & Co.
Publication May 30, 2017
$28 hardcover
ISBN: 9780316154727

Search for Helen is Laid to Rest

I wrote a post on this some years ago.

About a dozen years ago I found a 1917 diary in a south Lansing, MI flea market. It was a lot of money but I was very intrigued and paid $15 for the diary. The author was a young student teacher named Helen Korngold of St Louis, MO. She was a vibrant, intelligent woman with strong family ties. I felt I knew Helen from her diary, and did genealogy research to find out more about her. I have her family tree on ancestry.com.

Helen Sarah Korngold Herzog

I made a series of small, page like quilts that included scanned images of her diary pages, and the quilt appeared at the Women's Historical Center as part of a small quilt show.

After all these years, I have finally found out what happened to Helen and how her diary came to be in Lansing! She showed up on another family tree on ancestry.com. I had all the information up to the late 1930s, but this tree had a spouse and death date and place.

In 1936 she was teaching in a St. Louis high school. In 1940 she appears in a Ithica, NY city directory married to Frtiz Herzog, who became a well known mathematician. By 1945 they were in East Lansing and Fritz was a professor at Michigan State University. He has a Wikipedia page!

Helen died at age 90 in 1988, and Fritz died in 2001 at age 98. Because they married late in life, they had no children and the diary was likely sold off with other personal items. And so I found the diary shortly after, and read it, and Helen, at least for me, was alive again.

Growing up I loved biographies. And as a young adult started to enjoy reading diaries, including Samuel Pepys, which I have read in its entirety. I kept a diary starting in junior high through high school, and off and on throughout my early adulthood. I find diaries fascinating.

I had once hoped to find a family member who would want the diary. In the past I have tracked down heirs and sent them ephemera or letters that were in my grandfather's papers. I feel that everything has a proper home. Now, it appears the diary is mine and some day I will donate it to its proper resting place.

The Helen Korngold Quilt

Helen Korngold Quilt

Close to 10 years ago I found a 1919 diary in a little flea market shop in south Lansing. It was a pricey $15, but it was completely filled and the first entry compelled me to read more.

“Rise 11:30 AM! Oh, such a spiffy time last night: a regular N.Y. Eve. All dolled up in stain clown suit. E.E. proposed—tough luck! Fellows came at 3 AM today—Sam, Dewey, Morris and Sumner Shapiro. Dewey’s Bostonian friend called. We had lots of fun. All good fellows. I’m sleepy—too much champagne!”

The diary was written by Helen Korngold of St Louis, MO.

Helen's photo as a teacher in a school yearbook

Helen was studying to be a teacher. Her history professor offered a Helen fellowship and a position as his private secretary. Helen was a student teacher at the Wellston School and at Maplewood High. She did not like teaching at Wellston. After teaching there as a substitute she regretted not accepting the position at Maplewood High. “Wells came out he said I made a successful teacher, said I understood children.” After graduation she taught at the Wellston School.

Helen wrote about WWI solders, including Dewey Pierre Flambert who won the Distinguished Cross and Legion of Honor, and in 1920 was listed on the census as a Private First Class in the U. S. Army General Hospital in Colorado. She was quite smitten with Dewey while he visited St. Louis, and sought after information about him after he left for Kansas City, then New Mexico, on his way to the coast. “Dewey certainly caused a sensation,” she wrote, “Beat it with $20 gloves and overcoat –I should worry. He was best company I ever had!”

Her special friend was Sumner Shapiro. “He’s lots of fun,” she wrote. She shared several favorite books with him, “Without Benefit of Clergy” (which he did not care for) and “Return of the Native”.  They visited the War Exposition. “He’s a nice fellow! A good teaser. He’s a Bostonian propagandist. I love St. Louis!”

Helen went to chop suey joints, ‘slummed it’ by visiting ‘low class cafes’ like Hop Alley, and danced at the Arcadia. She was up late, rose late, and took afternoon naps to keep up. One night found Helen ‘joy riding’ with Morris Block, her brother Karol, and Sumner, “Morris with his feet hanging out of the machine once or twice & Sumner behaving like a postman and Karol speeding.” 

Along with her music studies and band participation, Helen enjoyed basketball, swimming and canoeing—but most of all loved to dance. She enjoyed going to the amusement park at Forest Park Highlands, once home to the largest roller coaster, The Comet.

Clothes were important. At the Union Masked Ball with Sumner, Helen dressed as Cleopatra in a ‘wicked’ beaded dress in lavender and yellow with black and white. She describes buying a dark blue beaded georgette dress, a peach blow evening dress, black jersey silk petticoats, silk stockings, a green silk dress with silver lace, a blue suit trimmed in fur, suede pumps, dresses in black tricolate and blue velvet, and white georgette plainly embroidered.

On December 31 she climbed the Statue of Liberty That evening she heard ‘La Forza del Destino’ performed by Enrico Caruso and Rosa Ponselle. She had to visit "Lord & Taylor, Altman’s, Macys, etc.” and bought a seal ‘cootie’ hat.

“This certainly has been a most exciting and pleasant year for me. If grandpa had only lived it would have been perfect. Wishing myself and all those I love happiness—Helen Korngold

I researched about Helen's life, using ancestry.com and St. Louis genealogy website. In 1920 Helen was living in St. Louis, MO with her family. Jacob B. Korngold was 56 and a manufacturer who was born in Austria. His work took him on many travels. Helen's beloved brother was Karol Abraham, who became a lawyer after his service in WWI.

I decided to make a make a quilt for Helen. I scanned diary pages and printed them on fabric. The quilt is made to look like pages of a book. The diary page scans are surrounded by a crazy quilt border incorporating old handkerchiefs, lace, old buttons, and scans of postcards of Helen's Alma Mater,  Central High, and other St. Louis scenes. The pages are hung together by strips of lace. And empty ‘frame’ is missing Helen’s picture as I did not find one until recently.

The quilt appeared at the Women’s Historical Museum in Lansing, MI as part of a juried show created by the Capital City Quit Guild.