OLD NEWS: Thrilling houseplant wasn’t the one oddball information from Little Rock 100 years in the past

If ever I’m assigned to cowl the uncommon flowering of a tremendous aged citizen’s Queen of the Evening, any individual please stand beside me throughout the watch occasion and now and again lean in to whisper, “Watch out.”

An unknown correspondent of the Arkansas Gazette, probably social scribe Miss Nell Cotnam, was tasked with such an task 100 years in the past. Eighty-eight-year-old Mrs. Margaret Rose, widow of the once-famous Choose U.M. Rose, opened her residence at 620 W. Third St. so everybody might witness the marvel of her houseplant in bloom.

Given that there have been no less than three society dames on the town with related crops, Probably-Nell acquitted herself OK.

“There has at all times been a sure thriller hooked up to the flowering of a night-blooming cereus,” she (or another person) reported within the Sept. 2, 1922, paper. “Whether or not as a result of this unusual, lovely blossom opens solely after the solar has set; or as a result of its temporary magnificence vanishes with the daybreak, or as a result of the unique, fairylike bloom contrasts so sharply with [the] gnarled, naked plant of which it springs, it’s inconceivable to say.

“However it’s true that when a night-blooming cereus exhibits indicators of flowering, everybody inside the radius of the proprietor’s acquaintance makes a particular journey to see it and the edge is thronged with guests.”

One flower would have been adequate to imbue the Rose residence with an aroma of thriller, however Mrs. Rose’s 25-year-old cactus had placed on 13, and their scent was “nearly overpoweringly candy.”

This factor had a circumference of 15 toes. I assume that features all of the leaves, every of which was one foot lengthy. The leaves had been slim, spongy, inexperienced strips with common, reverse indentations, or nicks, from which every flower had began as a tiny inexperienced bud.

“In form, in dimension, in perfume and in shade, the bloom most resembles a water lily,” Probably-Nell continued. “Across the fringed, lemon-colored pistils and stamen, the waxen leaves open out right into a white cup, narrowing beneath into pale inexperienced and delicate rose coloured leaves.”

Alas, Mrs. Rose’s second can be eclipsed two years later, when 5 (5) night-blooming cereus crops owned by Mrs. Arthur M. Fewell, 1312 Broadway, opened 70 (seventy) flowers without delay. However we needn’t dwell on that.

Fruits, ought to they survive, can be edible. It additionally would possibly curiosity Buddy Reader to know that Epiphyllum oxypetalum attracts bats.

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Human curiosity information flourished in Little Rock newspapers that week.

BROTHER, WHO ART THOU?

Homer Poe of Enola and James Poe of Little Rock, half-brothers ages 35 and 27, had neither met nor heard of one another till 7 p.m. Aug. 29, 1922, when a hospital nurse in Little Rock observed they shared a final identify.

This occurred at Dr. L.L. Marshall’s non-public surgical facility, the Analysis Hospital, 820 W. 14th St. (That lot right now is a part of the Philander Smith Faculty campus.)

Not fairly 4 a long time earlier than, the boys’s father, John Poe of Grant County, married Homer’s mom, a Faulkner County lady, they usually had 4 kids. All however one — named Henry — died. The couple break up up. She left Henry with John and returned to her household.

5 months later, the previous Mrs. Poe gave start to John’s son Homer. Ultimately, she married H.L. Strickland and moved to Faulkner County.

Again in Grant County, John Poe remarried. He and the previous Betty Criglow had three kids, together with James. James and (Homer’s full brother) Henry, grew up collectively.

Homer Poe and his spouse had been staying on the Analysis Hospital (for 3 weeks!) whereas he recovered from an operation. Mr. and Mrs. James Poe arrived and had been positioned in a room subsequent to the Homer Poes. Mrs. James was very ailing.

Nurse Christine Dearie famous their names. She stopped Mrs. Homer Poe within the corridor to jokingly inquire whether or not any extra Poes had been coming.

Mrs. Homer’s fast response was that she did not know. But it surely wasn’t lengthy earlier than she regarded into the opposite room to fulfill the James Poes. The temporary trade piled coincidences excessive sufficient for James to wonder if Homer had a brother named Henry. When she mentioned sure, James hurried subsequent door.

“Why, he appears to be like similar to his brother Henry,” James exclaimed.

James mentioned his father (who died in 1916) and brother Henry had by no means talked about Homer. Fairly doubtless they did not even know he existed.

NOT A REAL MAGGIE

At Danville, a postal clerk discovered herself attempting to elucidate to an aged woodworker that the cartoon strip “Bringing Up Father” within the Arkansas Democrat was not about actual folks.

“Uncle Dick” Roane needed to mail a bundle to Mrs. Maggie Jiggs.

Drawn by George McManus, this strip adopted the marital battles of newly rich Irish immigrants: The spouse, Maggie, typically misplaced persistence together with her floozy-chasing, former hod-carrying husband, Jiggs, and beaned him with the rolling pin.

Roane sympathized with Maggie. He’d made her some new rolling pins.

HUMAN CALCULATOR

The Aug. 27 Democrat carried information {that a} human calculator resided in Fayetteville. And he was a well known businessman.

Marshall Douglas (1881-1936), president of the Washington County {Hardware} Co., at about age 10 rejected commonplace directions for arithmetic and as an alternative developed his personal psychological methodology — which sounds rather a lot just like the method fortunate children study at school right now.

He might add or multiply with lightning velocity.

For instance, a pal requested him so as to add: 12; 333; 5,444; 121; 875; 459; 3,346; 447; 623; 513; 754; 1,236; 864; 443; 2,360; 885; 444; 132; 624; 489; 746; 143; 578; 854; and 386.

Shortly he replied, 23,111.

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“It is quite simple,” Douglas instructed a reporter. “It’s observe and a spotlight. Totals don’t come to me subconsciously. I add the figures as I hear them, and I see them mentally.

“I don’t start on the proper hand of the figures so as to add or multiply, as mathematicians do. I start on the left. For example, in case you requested me how a lot is 37 occasions 520, I’d let you know 19,240, however I would not get my whole by your laborious methodology. You’d say: ‘Thirty-seven occasions 0 is 0; thirty-seven occasions 2 is 74, with 7 to hold; thirty-seven occasions 5 is 185 and plus 7 is 192, making 19,240. That takes a very long time. I get the identical figures by multiplying from the left. It is vitally easy.”

“Quite simple,” mentioned the listener. “How a lot is 6 occasions 3,120?” Douglas replied: “18,720.”

Look this man up in previous newspapers from Arkansas and Oklahoma and you will study that he and companions took their enterprise public within the two states, promoting inventory because the Benton County {Hardware} Co. He later turned a financial institution president and a tax commissioner in Oklahoma. He died in Muskogee at 54, run over by a automotive whereas crossing the road.

SUBTRACT IT UP

Just a few years earlier than 1922 in Pangburn, one Jake Pierce had married a widow with a number of kids. The Aug. 30, 1922, Democrat reported that, just lately, Pierce’s father, a widower, married one of many daughters of Jake’s spouse.

Pierce’s father thus turned his son-in-law. Jake Pierce was his father’s father-in-law.

Tales like these make newspapers nice enjoyable. Talking of human curiosity, a Gazette home advert printed that very same week 100 years in the past reported that there have been 286 newspapers and periodicals in Arkansas in 1921. Thirty-nine (39) had been each day newspapers.

E-mail:

cstorey@adgnewsroom.com

 Gallery: End of August 1922