Ring Out Montana’s Sesquicentennial (1864-2014)

When Montana’s birth year ended and the first day of 1865 dawned, the Montana Post heralded the milestone with a long poem, perhaps penned by editor Thomas Dimsdale. It is addressed to the paper’s subscribers, commemorating the territory’s eventful first year that included the Civil War, the Vigilantes’ work, and laying the cornerstones of religion and education.

By 1864, Virginia City was Montana's first commercial and social hub. This photo was taken circa 1866.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

As Montana’s sesquicentennial comes to an end, here is a much-shortened version, taken with quite a bit of poetic license, of a celebratory epic:

Wake up! Wake Up! This New Year’s morn.
The Old Year’s dead—the New is born!
Wake up! The carrier’s heart is stirred
To emulate the early bird,
This birthday dawn of ‘Sixty-five,
And let you know he’s still alive.

And while you hear him gladly sing,
Toss him your New Year offering,
Nuggets are welcome to his hand
With good fair dust without much sand;
For Greenbacks, too, his fingers itch,
Since Jeff is nearing that “last ditch.”

What mighty burdens of the Past
Has the Old Year behind him cast;
Good old Uncle Sam—the rare old chap—
Has blazoned on his ample map
Another name—Montana fair—
And promises a future rare.

She’s put her servants all to work
To find where golden treasures lurk—
They’ve torn the gulches, burrowed far
In mountain, hill and rocky bar;
They’ve bound the waters to their use,
To turn the wheel and run the sluice.

The Vigilantes, staunch and true,
Have done a useful thing or two.
And smiling farms in valleys fair
Are made to team with riches rare.
They’ve builded towns with magic art
Where Traffic holds her humming mart.

Another year! How like an eagle’s flight—
How like a vision of the Summer’s night,
Its dying months have swiftly sped—
And great events put to bed.
The mighty page of History seldom bore
A nobler tablet than old Sixty-four.  

Happy New Year, Montana, and here’s to 150 more!

P.S. You can view the original poem on Chronicling America.

A Christmas Ghost

There is a beautiful house on Helena’s lower West Side that has been home to a number of tenants in the past twenty-five years. Some of those who have been associated with the house report odd experiences that I have detailed in Haunted Helena: Montana’s Queen City Ghosts. For the Scott family, the house was a magical place that holds special memories of family and one unique Christmas dinner. The house was built in 1877, and its longtime owner was Christmas Gift Evans, whose pioneer hardware firm of Sanford and Evans was a well-known, reputable Helena business. Chris Evans was born in Deerfield, New York, on Christmas Day in 1840. His parents felt so blessed at his birth that they named him Christmas Gift.

The Christmas Gift Evans House, listed in the National Register of Historic Places, is a rare example of the French Second Empire style. Its Mansard roof has elegant wrought iron cresting and inside, the handsome dark woodwork evokes another time. Original built-in furniture includes a dining room breakfront with exquisite beveled glass. The house has seen its share of tragedy including the death of Evans. Suffering from circulatory problems in 1915, Evans died in the house after the surgical amputation of his leg.

Christmas Gift Evans, born on Christmas Day, 1840, still likes to celebrate his birthday.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

Garth Scott was a single parent with two children when the family moved into the house in 2004. During the year they lived there, the Scotts thoroughly enjoyed the historic home and created some wonderful family memories. But it was Christmas that year that was especially memorable. Garth’s mother cooked a huge family dinner for some thirty family members who gathered around the dining room table. They took many photographs to capture Christmas memories. An extra guest appears in many of the photos, reflected in the beveled glass of the breakfront. The image of a man with a distinctive goatee does not match any of the guests seated at the table.

The family later discovered a portrait of Evans in a drawer of the breakfront. The identity of the image is certain. Christmas Gift Evans, perhaps in celebration of his birthday, apparently shared the family’s Christmas dinner.

Christmas in Butte 1876

Butte was still a crude mining camp built around mining claims at Christmas in 1876. It was customary to salute the dawn of Christmas Day with firecrackers, tying them in packages and hanging them on the telegraph poles. In the aftermath, Park Street and Broadway were littered with bits of paper from the explosions. Then on Christmas night, families gathered at Loeber Hall on Broadway. A play had been presented weeks before raising $170 to pay for the party. The tree was brilliantly lit with candles and a committee of ladies had spared no expense in its decoration. But, according to the Butte Miner, some “croakers” complained that the base of the tree was left unfinished, and it would have been better had the ladies added some moss or other decoration.

Godey's Lady's Book and Magazine, 1876, offered suggestions for tree decorating
 and included this engraving to illustrate.

All agreed, however, that the tree was spectacular. The ladies carefully chose gifts for each of the children sparing no expense. Some community members also sent gifts. All were hung on the tree as was the custom. Stockings made out of mosquito netting were filled with apples—a rare and a very special treat—along with popcorn, candies, and nuts for all children ages two to thirteen. Young ladies who had reached the age of 14 had reason to wish they were children again, reported the Miner.

William Porter played St. Nicholas, dressed in a buffalo overcoat, buffalo shoes, and a buffalo cap with long white whiskers and jingling bells. He distributed the gifts, but unfortunately, not all the gifts went to those for whom they were intended. Some of the gifts were taken off the tree by persons unknown before St. Nick could hand them out. This caused some hard feelings, and a dance planned for parents and friends unfortunately never materialized. Children, however, were unaware of others’ bad behavior and went to bed happy as Christmas 1876 passed to become a pleasant memory. 

Friday Photo: Santa Claus is Coming

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, H-3736

Santa Claus stopped in front of F. Jay Haynes's photo studio to have this photo taken in 1897.

Christmas Trees from Forest to Fireside

We all know that Christmas trees can be a drain on the budget, and that is nothing new. In the first settlements of territorial Montana, Christmas trees might come fresh cut from the forest but required an outlay of cash to decorate. Ribbons and ornaments—even those made by hand of scraps—were expensive and hard to come by. Churches, meeting halls, and courthouses were the usual venues for Christmas trees because they could be communally decorated. Gifts, including fruit and candy, were hung on the trees and not usually placed beneath as we do today. Distribution of gifts on the tree was done with great ceremony.

By 1880, Christmas trees were more common in private homes and sold in larger cities for ten to fifty cents. In the next decade, one in every five families had a Christmas tree. By the early 1900s, Christmas trees cost from twenty-five cents to a dollar and most families had their own Christmas trees.  While decorations could still cost more than the tree itself, saving decorations from year to year helped Christmas trees become almost a seasonal necessity. An editorial feature in the Daily Missoulian, December 18, 1910, advised that Christmas trees were for everyone. Even those too old to hang a stocking and those with no young people in there households should not give up on the custom.

Maurice Hain poses with the family's Christmas tree in 1936.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 945-214

While some argued that cutting trees desecrate the forest, Gifford Pinchot, conservationist and first chief of the U.S. Forest Service, answered these critics. He maintained that cutting a five-foot tree is not the same as logging an old-growth lodge pole pine. A five-foot farmed tree grows in half a decade and can be replaced. Pinchot further remarked, “Trees were destined to be used. What better use could be made of them [than] to give pleasure to millions of people at Christmastime?”

Whether you cut your own or buy your tree, keep the custom and fill your home with Christmas.

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was a harvest tradition long celebrated in New England, but it took a while to catch on in Montana. In 1863 there really was no harvest to celebrate and Henry Plummer was perhaps the only resident to observe the occasion. He used it to cultivate good relations with the Sidney Edgerton family, and spent a small fortune freighting in a turkey. You can follow that story here.  

In 1864, miners at Last Chance were too busy searching for gold to celebrate. In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving a holiday to unify the nation torn by the Civil War. Cornelius Hedges observed, however, that southern sympathizers were too busy mourning the “lost cause” to be thankful. In 1875, the Montana territorial legislature formally proclaimed Thanksgiving a holiday. At Sun River, residents held a grand Thanksgiving dance with music by the Fort Shaw band. When the dance ended at three in the morning, everyone had had such a good time they organized a dance club.

By the 1880s, Thanksgiving was a tradition. In 1881, ladies at Helena’s Presbyterian Church held a holiday sale of items that mirrored their roots. New Englanders contributed, for example, miniature Boston baked bean pots. In 1892, the Red Lodge Picket noted that on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the Miners’ Meat Market featured an exceptionally artistic display arranged by E. J. Dugan, a Kansas City butcher. Beautifully dressed beeves, sheep, and veal hung on the pegs along with turkey and other fowl. The fantastic display was the “finest of any ever made in Red Lodge.”    

By the start of the twentieth century, Thanksgiving traditions were well established, and elaborate meals the norm. The Anaconda Standard noted in 1903 that “The stranger will find Anaconda equal to providing the great American feast.” At the Montana Hotel, orchestra music filtered throughout the hotel from nine till midnight. But the meal was the focus. Along with standard fare, the menu included green sea turtle quenelles, calves’ sweetbreads Genovese, orange fritters with brandy sauce, and frozen egg nog.

May you all once again eat too much and enjoy this day of national celebration.

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, postcard collection

Labor Day

The late nineteenth century was a time of national labor unrest when workers nation-wide protested deplorable working conditions. Labor unions in New York City celebrated the first Labor Day on Tuesday, September 5, 1882. Ten thousand workers took unpaid leave to march from City Square to Union Hall. The idea caught on, and many states followed New York’s lead. In 1891, Montana joined nine other states whose legislatures had previously designated the holiday: New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Colorado, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey and Ohio.

Early telephone operators often worked ten to twelve hour days for as little as thirty dollars per month. In 1907, Butte operators struck and were granted a minimum wage of fifty dollars per month, an eight-hour workday, and a closed shop. These operators are working in Helena in 1906. Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 75-43 folder 23

On September 7, 1891, flowers looked their prettiest and birds sang their sweetest when Montana celebrated that first Labor Day. Deer Lodge was the main center of celebration where people from all points gathered. They came from the country, from outlying camps, and on the train from Butte. Seventeen rail cars dispatched some two thousand visitors and two bands. They formed a procession and marched to a pavilion prepared for the occasion. Hon. E. D. Matts of Missoula, who authored the legislation making Labor Day a state holiday, addressed the crowd. Other speeches followed, filling two hours. The crowd listened intently. At four o’clock, rail cars brought five hundred more guests from Butte where all the labor organizations had marched in a huge parade. Revelers quietly scattered, some participating in races and games, others strolling the grounds among the trees and quietly enjoying the holiday. An evening of dancing brought the pleasant day to a close.

This photo by N. A. Forsyth, taken circa 1905, shows the dangerous working conditions in Butte's mines that contributed to labor strikes and unrest. Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, ST 001.168

Several years later in 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed legislation designating the first Monday in September a federal holiday. Congress passed the Labor Day act on the heels of a violent strike by employees of the American Railway Union in Chicago. Federal troops were called in and thirty-four workers lost their lives during vicious riots. Although President Cleveland was not favorable to unions, he signed the act in an attempt to mend damaged ties with American workers.
While we celebrate the workingman’s holiday today more as a symbol of summer’s end and the start of the school year, we should remember that it was a originally a workingman’s holiday born of national unrest.

Friday Photo: Working on the Railroad

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, Railroad Collection

Happy Labor Day weekend! Here's a classic photo of laborers. Japanese railroad crews like this one built hundreds of miles of track in Montana. These men are getting ready for the last spike celebration of the Chicago, Milwaukee, & St. Paul Railroad, better known as the Milwaukee Road, four miles west of Garrison, Montana. The photo was taken on May 19, 1909.

Friday Photo: Happy 4th!

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, Lot 26 Box 8 Folder 5, Mines and Mining photograph collection

Happy Independence Day! This patriotic boy climbed into a bucket on the Montana Coal and Coke Company’s tram line in Electric, Montana.

Mining Camp New Year’s

Martha Edgerton Plassman wrote in 1926 about early New Year’s celebrations in Montana and how they evolved as times changed. On New Year’s Day at Bannack in 1863, fourteen-year-old Martha and two other young girls set out to keep the custom of visiting. There were few women in the mining camp, and no proper houses to call upon, and so the three stopped at George Chrisman’s cabin, then moved down the street to Thompson and Swift’s general store. Inside they found Henry Plummer—later hanged by the vigilantes—in an argument with another fellow, both quite inebriated. The conversation was heated, and Mr. Thompson put a hand on Plummer’s shoulder, pointing him to the back door. The three teenagers, caught in the middle, made a hasty retreat out the front. Martha was so frightened that she never again stepped inside a store in Bannack.

This photo of the governor's official residence shows what Bannack looked like in 1863.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 

In Virginia City, between Christmas and New Year’s of 1867, things were different. The streets were gay with fashionable ladies visiting from house to house. Music and dancing were easy to find, and spirits flowed freely under many hospitable roofs. Nearly ten years later in Helena on New Year’s Day 1877, the New York tradition of ladies receiving gentlemen acquaintances was the practice. The newspaper listed the names of ladies receiving callers; several usually went together as hostesses. Dressed in their most beautiful gowns, they received guests throughout the afternoon. Tables were set with the best china and silver and heaped with many kinds of cakes and rolls. But Martha recalled that unlike rough and raw Virginia City, in Helena coffee usually took the place of strong spirits.

P.S. Remember when Henry Plummer hosted Thanksgiving dinner?

Christmas in Helena 1884

One of the coldest holidays on record in Montana was that of 1884 when temperatures dipped to 30 degrees below zero. That Christmas Eve there was a foot of new snow as some fifty children assembled at the Episcopal Church at Grand and Warren in Helena. They stood in awe of the Christmas tree decorated with ripe, golden fruit. With mouths watering, they anticipated distribution of the rare, precious treats. As Benjamin Benson arrived at the church late, he smelled smoke and saw telltale signs curling out the windows. Benson ushered the children to safety in a storefront at the Brown Block. The alarm sounded. Firemen came quickly with their hose carriage and the steamer named “City of Helena.” Firemen took water from a cistern at Fifth and Warren and pumped it through two hundred feet of hose. Although ice soon coated the firemen, the water miraculously did not freeze in the hose. The church was insured, but the Christmas tree with its delectable decorations was a total loss and the children were disappointed.

This map shows the location of the Episcopal Church (center). Library of Congress, American Memory Map Collection.

Christmas dinners at local eateries, however, were not a disappointment. At the Cosmopolitan Hotel, a grand Christmas tree sparkled and bouquets adorned the festive tables. The International Hotel served many who preferred the chef's traditional meal rather than one at home. The Bon Ton restaurant served the most expensive dinner adding quail and woodcock to traditional fare. And at Mrs. Norris' exclusive boarding house, guests enjoyed a Christmas feast finished with luxurious ice cream. But it was a tiny private restaurant that won the highest praise. The Nagle sisters at Porter Flats on Ewing Street—the first large apartment building in Helena with fully equipped kitchens in every unit—served the most impressive meal. The Herald praised everything from the oyster soup, roast turkey, and mashed potatoes to Philadelphia ice cream and Java coffee.  The Nagle sisters, said the reporter, “made us think that our lot was cast in pleasant places when we put our legs under their mahogany table for our Christmas dinner of 1884."

May your Christmas be just as pleasant.

Daddy Reeves

A. I. “Daddy” Reeves came to Helena in 1892 and became a Christmas institution. The Reeves Music House brought many fine musicians and musical events to Helena. Reeves liked to tell the story about how he got his name. His parents weren’t much on naming their large brood of children, and when he went to school, the only name he had was Baby. The teacher suggested he needed a name, so he came up with initials he chose from the alphabet the teacher had hung on the wall. The A and I don’t stand for anything. In 1928, Reeves’s business and a huge collection of sheet music went up in smoke when lightning struck a rooftop and burned nearly an entire city block. Reeves did not lament. He started again and ran his shop until he retired in about 1945 and moved to the Masonic home in the Helena Valley. Reeves, known to hundreds of kids as Daddy, taught music lessons to hundreds of Helena youths. He organized Helena’s newsboys and the kids at Intermountain Children’s Home and St. Joseph’s Orphanage into choirs and harmonica bands.

Daddy Reeves stands at left with the Montana Deaconess School harmonica choir in 1929.
Photo courtesy Intermountain. L.H. Jorud, photographer

Most children did not suspect that for more than fifty years Daddy Reeves was the official Elks Lodge Santa Claus. He never duplicated his grand entrances. He arrived by steam automobile or horse-drawn sleigh and once hid for hours in a fireplace at the Montana Club before bursting out. In 1944, when Reeves played Santa for the fiftieth time at age eighty-two, the Helena Independent wished him the same amount of happiness to carry him over the trail of love, kindness, and joy he blazed for Helena boys and girls.

P.S. Christmas seems to inspire good works, even from the Anaconda Company.

Lew Switzer’s Christmas Message

“If the Hoosier was for men,” read Lew Swtizer’s 1918 Christmas ad, “every modern business…would have [one].” In Kalispell, Montana, and elsewhere across the nation, the Hoosier was a much-desired Christmas gift. Switzer, a Kalispell furniture dealer, bluntly claimed that if this poplar kitchen cabinet could make man’s work easier, no man would be without one. But “men carelessly leave thoughts of efficiency behind when business hours are over.” The ad theorized that most of the nation’s work really took place in the American kitchen where millions of women spent long hours walking needless miles from one corner of the room to the other, and back again.  Organization could prevent all that walking. Switzer’s ad went on the point out that the Hoosier “restores charm to home keeping, prevents waste, and conserves strength.”

Kalispell Daily Inter Lake, December 6, 1918

The Hoosier, often found today in antique and second-hand stores, was the most popular type of kitchen cabinet from the late 1890s into the 1920s. The Hoosier Manufacturing Company adapted a baker’s cabinet to make the first model, on the market in 1899. Hoosiers were either wooden or enameled metal.The usually included drawers, cupboards, shelves, tea and coffee canisters, sugar and flour bins, spice racks with special glass containers, and work space. Until the 1920s, kitchens did not usually have built-in cabinetry, and so the Hoosier and other similar pieces of kitchen furniture were essential to a well-run kitchen. The Hoosier “released the bonds of drudgery” and made a woman’s kitchen practical and serviceable. The 1918 Hoosier had space for storing four hundred items, all at arm’s reach. Switzer encouraged his customers to “make one heart glad” at Christmastime and give the gift of convenience. Playing upon patriotism as the nation celebrated the recent end of World War I, Switzer admonished men declaring, “It is your patriotic duty to buy useful gifts and to buy early. So select your Hoosier at once.”

P.S. Remember these holiday advertisements?

Long George Francis

One of the most colorful characters of the High Line was an old time cowboy who came to a hideous end. Long George Francis was well known on the rodeo circuit. He lived along the Milk River west of Havre on a small ranch.

This photo of Long George Francis was taken at the Great Northern Montana Stampede in Havre
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 952-167

But Francis lived by the old range rules, believing unbranded stock was fair game. Times were changing, range laws evolving, and opinions about Francis were divided. Some were outraged when the court convicted Francis of grand larceny for the theft of a bay mare. Others saw Francis as a cattle rustler and approved of his conviction. But after sentencing in 1918, Francis went into hiding. He was on the lam for two years until he finally grew tired of running. On Christmas Eve, 1920, he prepared to give himself up to serve his sentence. But first he determined to make one last trip to visit his schoolteacher girlfriend near the Canadian border. He loaded his car with apples and gifts for her and the children and started out on the journey. It was snowing and cold. Thirty miles northwest of Havre in the middle of nowhere, he wrecked his car and broke his leg in the accident. Fashioning a splint from an apple box, he tried to crawl for help. Exhausted and in pain with little hope of rescue, Francis slit his own throat and bled to death in the snow.

The Gold Nugget

In the early summer of 1857, Granville Stuart and his brother James were en route from California to visit their parents in Iowa. Granville became very ill near the future site of Corrine, Utah, delaying their journey for seven weeks. During this delay, an armed confrontation between the Mormon settlers in Utah and the United States government made travel along the emigrant routes impossible. When Granville could travel, Hudson’s Bay employee Jacob Meek advised them to head for the Beaverhead valley where they could safely wait out the Mormon conflict.

Granville Stuart, 1883. Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 981-260

It was this circumstance that led to Montana’s first recorded gold discovery. On Christmas Day of 1857, as the Stuarts and others camped in the Beaverhead valley, trader Richard Grant had built a three-room log cabin for his family, and he invited those camped in the area to Christmas dinner. Among the invited guests were the Stuart brothers, Jacob Meek, and Reece Anderson. Grant had hoarded some flour for the feast. The men had not tasted bread in a long time, and so soda bread, chokecherry preserves, dried buffalo meat, boiled smoked buffalo tongue, and coffee made a remarkable feast. Granville’s widow many years later claimed that at this Christmas dinner, Richard Grant gave Granville a gold nugget as a gift, claiming it had been mined at a certain creek in the territory. This supposedly led the Stuarts and Reece Anderson to prospect along Gold Creek the following May 1858. There they made Montana’s first recorded gold discovery. It was later proven, however, that the gold nugget Christmas gift that prompted the Stuart party to prospect had really been mined in California. So that first gold discovery was actually an incredible coincidence.

P.S. Remember Granville's crazy book-buying trip?

Friday Photo: Butte's Christmas Tree

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

Workers used mechanical assistance to decorate this tree outside the Butte courthouse circa 1917. Have you put your tree up yet?

P.S. Remember this homesteader's Charlie Brown tree?

Thanksgiving in December

The first official observance of Thanksgiving after the creation of Montana Territory came in 1865. Although President Lincoln had established the last Thursday of November as Thanksgiving Day, following Lincoln’s assassination, President Johnson chose December 7 as the day of official observance.

President Andrew Johnson, courtesy Library of Congress

Residents of the mining camps paused in their relentless search for golden treasure and gave thanks for their good luck and for the end of the Civil War. Virginia City businesses closed. There were private celebrations and culinary preparations in many homes and restaurants. The Montana Post reported that sleighs were gliding merrily around town all day, men hobnobbed at the bars, and there was a singing party in the governor’s office. The next year, 1866, at Last Chance, celebrations were more community oriented. Young ladies put on their pretties and attended the Firemen’s Ball on Thanksgiving Eve at the Young America Hall. Markets were well supplied for Thanksgiving Day feasts. Shoppers could choose elk, deer, bear, sage hens, grouse, and pheasant. There was no mention of turkeys, however, at Thanksgiving tables on that particular holiday.

This Helena meat market on Bridge Street offered mostly wild game in 1869.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 954-179

Friday Photo: Little Pumpkin Creek

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 981-588

When he photographed these girls from a dryland farm on Little Pumpkin Creek, photographer L.A. Huffman noted that this was how the creek got its name. I hope your preparations for Thanksgiving are just as bountiful.

Friday Photo: Mule Team

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 957-871

A mule team pulls a covered wagon with a sign that reads "1864 French Gulch or Bust" at the Anaconda carnival on July 4, 1908.

A Second Perspective on the Fourth of July in Alder Gulch, 1865

While yesterday's post presents one view, here is another recollection of the same celebration. In her reminiscence, Girl from the Gulches, Mary Ronan recalls the Fourth of July in Virginia City, 1865. The Civil War was finally over, and hostilities that pervaded even the most remote mining camps in Montana Territory had calmed and lessened. Mary remembers that it was “a day atingle with motion, color, and music.” People thronged on the board sidewalks and footpaths, and horses and wagons crowded the street, lining up to view the parade. Mary was proud to ride with thirty-six other little girls all dressed in white on a dead-ax wagon—that is, a wagon with no springs—festively decorated with evergreens and bunting. In the center of the “float,” if one could call it that, the tallest and fairest of the girls stood motionless, dressed in a Grecian tunic with a knotted cord at her waist. Her long blond hair flowing behind her, she represented Columbia, the personification of the United States. The other little girls sat arranged in groups at Columbia’s feet representing the States of the Union. Each wore a blue scarf fashioned as a sash across her chest. A letter on each sash identified the state represented.

Mary Ronan at the time of her marriage, 1873.
Courtesy Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library, University of Montana

For Mary, the memory was bittersweet. Her letter stood for Missouri, a state in which she had lived. But she wanted to represent Kentucky, the state of her birth. Some other little girl, however, had already taken the K. The other bitter pill was that Mary worried self-consciously about her appearance. She had suffered all night with her extremely long hair painfully done up in rags—one method girls back then employed to curl their hair. But the result was less than desirable. It left her hair much too bushy and kinky!