Prohibition and Ice Cream: From Breweries to Creameries

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Leisure activities, Popular Culture, Regional History

Say the word ‘Prohibition’ and people think of those years in the early 20th century when America went dry with a blanket ban on hard liquor consumption, but much less well known is its connexion to that most popular of frozen desserts, ice cream.

(Source: Flickr)

The Volstead Act in 1920 outlawed the manufacture and sale of alcohol in the United States. The 18th Amendment to the Constitution invalidated the licences of brewers, distillers, vintners and sellers of alcoholic beverages✴. The anti-alcohol legislation had its roots in the formation of the Anti-Saloon League (1893) supported by et al the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, sharing its alarm at the growing prevalence of hard drinking and the development of a culture of drink. These like-minded groups coalesced into a national movement which successfully lobbied Washington for the desired reform (‘Why Prohibition?’, Temperance & Prohibition, Ohio State University, www.ose.edu)❂.

(Source: Flickr)

Nature (and business opportunism) abhors a vacuum
Into the void left by plummeting alcohol consumption (in the early 1920s consumption of beverage alcohol was around 30% of the pre-prohibition level (‘Why Prohibition?’), came ice-cream, marketed partially as a “comfort food” for those committed drinkers bereft of the booze. The advent of Prohibition was thus a boost to the ice cream business. Americans didn’t simply stop drinking beer, wine and spirits and take up iced confectioneries…over the nine years from 1916 ice cream consumption increased 55%, against a population increase of only 15% (‘Thanks, Prohibition! How the Eighteenth Amendment Furled America’s Taste For Ice Creams’, Rachel Van Bokkem, AHA Perspectives on History, 08-Aug-2016, www.historians.org).

(Image: Omaha World Herald, CooksInfo Food Encyclopedia)

Even before Prohibition the ice cream business surge started, due to improvements in technology which boosted ice cream’s popularity. Improved methods led to mass production of ice cream; improved refrigeration preserved the product better. Other recent innovations in the industry enhanced ice cream’s appeal to the public, eg, the development of single-serve products (the chocolate ice cream bar, the Popsicle, the Dixie Cup), notably the Eskimo Pie (marketed initially as the “I-Scream-Bar”) by Christian Nelson; Harry Burt’s “Good Humor Bar” which added a wooden stick to the frozen confectionery…a further advance by Burt was the introduction of a mobile service (trucks with freezers bringing the bars to the neighbourhoods) (Van Bokkem). Another factor was the spike in the number of soda fountains in American drugstores (the New York Times estimated that there were over 100,000 soda fountains in 1922, generating $1B in sales (‘Why Ice Cream Soared in Population During Prohibition’, Farrell Evans,
History, 28-Jan-2021, www.history.com).

Coors Porcelain Co (Source: coortek.com)

Breweries’ strategies responding to Prohibition
When the bans were enforced, the bulk of breweries went to the wall. Research by Maureen Ogle indicates that of the 71,300 American brewers in 1915, no more than 100 survived Prohibition (Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer, 2007). The big names in US brewing stood more chance of surviving, but only by diversifying. This they did by branching into the manufacture of everything from ceramics (Coors) to dyes to farm equipment to police vans. Beer giants Anheuser-Busch and Yuengling followed the trend into ice cream production (as did Stroh Brewing), contributing to the estimated 40% growth in consumption in the 1920s (Evans). Pabst Brewing went into making cheese (“Pabst-ett” spread), which was sold to Kraft after Prohibition ended. A number of the brewers made the logical switch to soft drinks, malted milk and malt syrup. Busch also produced frozen eggs, infant formula, carbonated coffee and tea (‘How America’s Iconic Brewers Survived Prohibition’, Christopher Klein, History, 16-Jan-2019, www.history.com).

The alcohol drought prompted the big brewers to fall back on their substantial real estate property holdings to stay afloat and generate ongoing income. Miller resorted to selling off its chain of saloons when things got tight. Some enterprising ice cream parlours bought the disused equipment and facilities of liquor businesses (Van Bokkem).

Ice cream mania…a health food?
US newspapers got in on the public’s ice cream craze, ascribing purported but unspecified health benefits to be had from eating the product. Some dietitians also sought to give the frozen confectionery validity with claims that ice cream was one of the best foods for children’s physical development (Van Bokkem). The Anti-Saloon League added its endorsement to the dairy industry’s marketing campaign for its sweet frozen cream and milk treat, declaring it a “refreshing and palatable food” (Evans).

At its peak during Prohibition New Yorkers were consuming 300 million gallons of ice cream a year by themselves. Among those businesses seeking to cash in, a number of confectionery and butter factories starting manufacturing ice cream as a by-product (Van Bokkem).

Cotton Club, NYC’s premier speakeasy

Speakeasies, drugstores and “Near beer”
For the aficionado or the hardened drinker there were ways, illegal and legal, to get round Prohibition’s national ban on liquor. With the ingredients still obtainable for backyard stills moonshiners and bootleggers benefitted from an upsurge in demand for the home-brewed stuff. As formerly legal saloons were closed down in 1920, the void was filled by the mushrooming of ‘speakeasies’ (unlicensed bar rooms) selling ‘hooch’. These operations were commonly run by city gangsters, organised crime ‘luminaries’ such as Al Capone and his lucrative Chicago racket.

Brewers like Pabst, Busch and Miller were able to exploit a small window of opportunity—beverages containing less than 0.5% alcohol were legal—to produce a concoction described as “near beer” (Miller’s equivalent brand was called ‘Vivo’). Busch manufactured a non-alcoholic malt cereal beverage, ‘Bevo’, which apparently tasted much like actual beer. Genuinely serious drinkers ultimately rejected “near beer”, opting for real beer which could be procured from Speakeasies and bootleggers (Klein).

(Source. vinepair.com)

Another, legal avenue for sourcing alcohol were drugstores. Licensed druggists were allowed to sell liquor for “medicinal purposes” – or to clergymen for “religious reasons”, eg, “Kosher Wine” was available to rabbis for “sacramental purposes” (‘Speakeasies Were Prohibition’s Worst-Kept Secrets’, Prohibition, www.prohibitionthemob.org).

In 1933 Prohibition was repealed and brewers and drinkers went back to doing what came naturally, although the taste for ice cream was by then “permanently engrained in US culture” (Van Bokkem). As it remains today with Americans, who per capita consume 20.8 litres of ice cream a year, second only to sweet-toothed New Zealanders.

(Photo: US Naval Institute)

End-note: The Navy jettisons liquor
The US Navy was the first arm of the government to move against the “demon drink”, banning alcohol from its ships and ports in 1914 (Secretary for the Navy Josephus Daniels was a fervent supporter of the Temperance Movement). Later on the Navy replaced it with ice cream – building two floating ice cream factories on concrete barges during WWII (‘How Ice Cream Became America’s Native Treat Because of Prohibition’, Cleveland Whiskey, 16-Jan-2019, www.clevelandwhiskey.com).

_________________________________
✴ Prohibition legislation did not ban the consumption of alcohol, just its production and distribution. Nor were the ingredients for making beer prohibited
❂ there were prior American moves, initiated by Temperance activists, to outlaw alcohol at state-level, the earliest to succeed was in Maine (1846)

A Mythical Rovers Derby, Melchester v Felchester: Two Very Different English Fictional Football Fantasies

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Creative Writing, Leisure activities, Media & Communications, Memorabilia, Popular Culture, Sport

The ardent British football fan while waiting for match day or counting down the off-season days to next August can often be found lapping up all the available literature he or she can get their hands on about the beloved round ball game. The appetite for football fiction extends to the graphic novel and it’s predecessor the comic book. The perennially popular exemplar of this quintessential “Boy’s Own” exploits genre is Roy of the Rovers. 

[R] 17-y-o Roy Race on his ‘debut’

The comic Roy of the Rovers had its debut in Tiger magazine in 1954…the strip follows the fortunes of fictional football team Melchester Rovers, with the spotlight very much on its star centre forward Roy Race. Captain Roy and his team invariably find themselves the underdogs, battling adversity, foul play, injuries and bad luck, somehow in the end they manage to beat the odds and spectacularly win the game in the last minute usually with a corker of a goal by Roy (for supposed ‘underdogs’ Melchester Rovers are decided overachievers – over the years racking up eight fictional FA cups, three European cups and one UEFA cup!).

Roy on the field epitomises fair play (often in contrast to his opponents), his personality embodies all the virtues of “sportsmanship, etiquette and why a fractured ankle, a broken rib and an early case of polio should never stand between a determined team captain and victory in FA cups” (McGinty). Roy’s Rovers competed against the other teams in the League—like their arch-rivals Tynefield United—who never come close to ever matching up to the ethical pedigree of Melchester Rovers.

Roy of the Rovers moments
Roy of the Rovers permeates English football culture to the extent that it is a standard trope for fans of the game to invoke the comic strip to describe memorable sporting incidents, unexpected comebacks, miraculous wins from behind, etc.

Roy is beyond the slightest doubt the absolute gun player in Melchester’s colours, however it’s not quite a one man band. He gets stirling assistance from teammates, most notably from Johnny Dexter the team’s “hard man” and goalie Gordon (“the safest hands in soccer”) Stewart (cf. Gordon Banks).

The créme de la créme, the “Roy of the Rovers Annuals” were a staple for boys each year…over the years of the publication Roy and his team go through all the highs and lows – relegation to Second Division; kidnapping of players; a terrorist attack; the club experiences financial calamities and so on. In the process Roy briefly defects at one time to a rival club before returning to the fold before losing a leg in a skiing accident. After enforced retirement he becomes Melchester manager and his son Rocky assumes the mantle of the side’s star striker.

[B] Roy with his Prince Valiant hairstyle

By the early 1990s, with the inevitable ebbing of ROTR’s popularity, the publication folded. However, at several intervals, the comic, phoenix-like, has been resurrected for the diehearts, most recently in 2018.

 ͡°° ͡° ͡°° ͡° ͡°° ͡°

Socialism in one football club
In 1988 the BBC produced a two series radio program drawing inspiration from the legendary Roy of the Rovers comic but taking it in a very different direction. Lenin of the Rovers, “the story of Britain’s only communist football club”, written by Marcus Berkman, is both spoof and affectionate satire, sending up the football comic classic while retaining a sliver of nostalgia both for Roy of the Rovers and the British game of yesteryear. Lenin of the Rovers conversely takes a massive swipe at the contemporary (that is, as at 1988) world of Brit soccer, ridiculing big game commentators and pundits alike, skewering top-flight players for being overpaid, pampered show-ponies with their “in-car leopard skin yoghurt dispensers” (nothing’s changed!). Also in the program’s cross-hairs is the run amuck degree of football sponsorship (eg, the “Heinz Sandwich Spread FA Cup”) and stockbroker hooligans (Hughes). The LCD gutter press also gets a pummeling for its bald-faced lies and facile and trivalising reporting (eg, “Curvy Corinne’s” tabloid article in The Daily Tits: “My night of lust with Ralph Coates”✧).

The story line is pure farce, supposedly detailing the experiences of communist East European football player Ricky Lenin (Alexei Sayle in a heavily accented voice which appears to be channelling his Balowski family character from The Young Ones) at Midlands club Felchester Rovers. Lenin is portrayed as a “tactical mastermind/balding midfield maestro” but more accurately might be described as thick as two planks. Through constant rhetorical flourishes Lenin lectures the team on dialectical materialism, the inevitable destiny of Felchester Rovers football club*, but he is exposed as a faux Marxist for covertly trying to enrich himself through football connexions. Lenin launches a proletarian coup which removes the club’s manager Ray Royce (a  transparent pun on Roy Race), and then himself has to ward off a challenge from Felchester’s “burly defender” Stevie Stalin and “hard nut” henchman Terry Trotsky.

A riotous hoot
Many misadventures follow as Lenin and the club bungle their way through sex scandals, corruption and dodgy business deals, and a disastrous mid-season holiday in a war-torn Central American banana republic (El Telvador)+. The latter episode spoofs cult movie Apocalypse Now (“I love the smell of shin-pads in the morning”), with a side reference to the WWII football plot of Escape to Victory!

In the episode where Felchester travel to Germany to play Borussia Mönchenpastry (cringe!), they encounter diabolical German tabloid publisher Max Gut, a thinly disguised Robert Maxwell. Piss-taking comes fast and furious in LOTR, another episode involving Ricky putting out feelers for a move across the Irish Sea to represent the Republic of Ireland national whose team sheet reads like the United Nations with not a solitary Gaelic name in it! One of the team apparently qualified for Ireland due to having once read a James Joyce novel!

A recurring device sprinkled liberally through Lenin of the Rovers has Ricky Lenin speaking random lines from well-known pop songs – “We are family! I have all my sisters with me”; “A rebel to the core”, “Don’t go breaking my heart“, etc. ad nauseum.

From go to whoa it’s a pun bonanza, reminding me a lot of those exquisite Sixties radio comedies like I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again. Felchester’s Euro opponent is Swiss club FC Toblerone (groan!). Their arch-rivals in the English comp is the thuggish Crunchthorpe United, however the Felchester team itself triumphs in the Cup employing the same tactics of illegal crunching tackles and skilless brawn. Needless to say that in the computer football universe, Felchester Rovers would be Melchester’s Crunchthorpe United.

 

_____________________________

✧ LOTR takes no prisoners with the reputations of past FA stars with a constant flow of running gags at their expense (particularly cruel on Ralph Coates)

* with ideological fidelity he also devises a “five year goal plan” for the club, prompting his teammates to slag Arsenal for its “five goals a year plan”

+ there’s a reference to Terry Venables here, the former English manager’s nickname was “El Tel”

 

Reference material:

‘A teen magazine for boys — but will they buy it?’, The Scotsman, Stephen McGinty, 15-Jan-2004, www.thescotsman.co.uk

‘Lenin of the Rovers’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org

‘Radio revolution’, Rob Hughes, When Saturday Comes, November 2010, www.wsc.co.uk

‘Lenin on the goalpost’, Paul Shaffer, Lion and Unicorn, 2017, www.thelionandunicorn.wordpress.com

Parramatta Park Peripathetically

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Leisure activities, Local history

 

A journey in time from government domain to “people’s park”

Leaving the fringe of Parramatta CBD at O’Connell Street, we venture west onto the north bank of Parramatta Park… traditionally, before the white colonial takeover, this was Burramatta Darug country. Passing the car park at the front of Bankwest Stadium, we soon arrive at the park’s first slice of colonial history. The sloping grassland running down to the river—now the habitat mainly of ibises and swamp hens—was once Government Farm, the infant Sydney colony’s first successful farm. The early settlers (such as Dodd’s Farm) found the undulating fertile land here more conducive to growing crops¹ than the sandy soil and unreliable water supply at Farm Cove.The colony’s first governor Arthur Phillip gave the Parramatta area its first English name, Rose Hill².

Following the riverside path we come to the Old Kings Oval with its small Doug Walters Pavilion, a reminder that the 60s and 70s star cricketer played for the local Cumberland team when he first came to Sydney. The name of the oval is a clue to the fact that the prestigious independent boys school, the Kings School, occupied the surrounding land for 130 years (to the late 1960s). A sign on the pathway alerts us to another by-gone sporting activity of the park – there was also a (horse)racetrack that snaked around the river in the early colonial days.

If we cross the skimpy narrow metal foot bridge and head back towards O’Connell Street, we can spot the park’s principal building, Old Government House, an impressive grand Georgian mansion with a fascinating life story. Construction commenced in 1799, thus the UNESCO-listed structure is the oldest surviving public building in Australia. For the early governors this was effectively a country retreat for them, a preferred residence because of it’s superior air and distance from the crime-infested, unsanitary conditions of Sydney Town.

From 1910 Government House was leased to the Kings School, giving it another imprint on the park’s history. Till 1965 the former governors’ residence was home to junior boarders of the school. Two years after that the school moved holus-bolus to North Parramatta. Today OGH operates as a National Trust heritage site and the repository of Australia’s best collection of early 1800s colonial furniture.

Leaving OGH and continuing in the direction of Westmead we pass Governor Brisbane’s Roman-style bath house. It fell into a dilapidated state by the late 19th century and was subsequently converted (or reduced) into a (small) bandstand, which is it’s present state of obsolescence.

Just a bit further on from the Bath House we arrive at a curious-looking military monument to the Boer War. Mounted on a high platform supported by thick classical columns is a small 19th century canon on wheels. Menacing positioned at such an elevated vantage-point, you could just imagine it being used to take potshots at pesky Afrikaner farmer-soldiers skulking round the Transvaal veld or on the Rand.

Also near here we happen upon another, very different monument. This represents a tribute to a home-grown aviator pioneer of the Parramatta district, William Ewart Hart. The stone inscription informs us that he was “Parramatta’s Flying Dentist” circa 1912, believed to be the first Australian to fly an aircraft on this continent.

Looping round the path onto Railway Pde we take the road back to O’Connell St and the last stop on our ramble around Parra Park. The George St Gatehouse is one of six such guarding the entrances to the park. Picture-book English Tudor in style, it’s the most iconic, and since it was restored in 2014, the most aesthetically pleasing of the gatehouses.

Map identifying the main physical sections of Parra Park: Mill Race Flat, Pavilion Flat, The Crescent, Cattle Paddock, Salter’s Field, Old Orchard, West Domain.

——————————————

¹ the result of indigenous land management methods like the regular burning of grasslands

² the first settlement in Parramatta (1788) was a redoubt built by soldiers at The Crescent, a geological feature comprising flat alluvial ground contained by a bend in the river, situated to the south-west of OGH

Bibliography
‘Rose Hill and Government Farm’, Parramatta Park, www.parrapark.com.au

‘Old Government House’, (Sonya Gellert), Discover Parramatta, www.discoverparramatta.com.au

Levins, Chris, Parramatta Park, Dictionary of Sydney, 2010, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/parramatta_park, viewed 27 Feb 2021

‘The Crescent’, (Michaela Ann Cameron), Dictionary of Sydney, 2015, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/

Suburban Sydenham: A Mixed and Changing Landscape of Grand Estates, Workers’ Cottages, Industrial Concentration and Airport Encroachment

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Aviation history, Built Environment, Heritage & Conservation, Leisure activities, Local history, Politics

Sydenham is a tiny inner suburb of Sydney which sits on traditional Cadigal land, part of the Eora nation, some eight kilometres south-west of the CBD. In the formative colonial period Sydenham was subsumed under a wider area known as Bulanaming which stretched from Petersham to Cook’s River  and included  a chunk of undesirable swampy land  (Gumbramorra Swamp).

(Map: www.dictionaryofsydney.org/)

Grand designs Sydenham
From the 1850s on, the better land on the eastern part of the suburb was turned into grand estates for well-to-do colonial businessmen. These large villa estates occupied an area from Unwins Bridge Road back to Cooks River Road (later renamed Princes Highway). Perhaps the pick of these “large country retreats” in Sydenham, located between Reilly and Grove Streets, was the Grove Estate, with its two-storey Georgian villa, owned by John George Church. Adjoining the Grove Estate was ironmonger Richard Reilly’s Tivoli Estate with a similarly impressive Georgian villa➀ [Meader, Chrys, Sydenham, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/sydenham, viewed 25 Dec 2020].

The working class swamped
Commencing in the 1880s, the grand estates started to be broken up by subdivision and the suburb’s complexion took on a recognisable working class character. Rows of Victorian cottages sprang up, many occupied by workers at the nearby Albion and other brickworks in nearby St Peters. At the same time developers sold cheap, unviable land in the swamp area to the working class. This was the notorious Tramvale Estate—badly designed, lacking in basic sewerage facilities, low-lying, prone to flooding and poor drainage—resulting in the spread of disease, plagues of mosquitos in summer and an all-pervasive, persistent stench, leaving the owners holding what amounted to a “white elephant” they couldn’t re-sell (Meader).

Adjoining suburb: Cooks River Road, St Peters (1935) 🔻

(Photo: State Library of NSW)

Industrial landscape and dichotomy
The swamp was finally drained in the 1890s and the land on it repurposed for heavy industry and engineering works. Factories took root, such as Australian Woollen Mills and the Sydney Steel Company (supplier of steel for the Sydney Harbour Bridge construction)➁. By the early 20th century Sydenham had taken on a twofold complexion: an industrial western part and a primarily residential eastern part (Meader)

The post-WWII period brought an influx of migrants to the inner west suburb, mostly Greeks, Macedonians, Croatians, Serbs and Slovenes from the former Yugoslavia, Turks and later Vietnamese. In the 1950s and 60s Sydenham proved a good recruiting ground for young athletic Aboriginal men who would go on to play rugby league for the Newtown club (Meader).

🔺 Sydenham farms

Sydenham cultural and entertainment ‘hub’  
Sydenham has at best been only modestly endowed with shopping options  (a handful of shops trailing off from the railway station➂) in comparison with  surrounding urban hubs like Marrickville, the local Sydenham community could boast a pub (the General Gordon) and a cinema, the Sydenham Picture Palace, later superseded by the art deco Rex Theatre (47 Unwins Bridge Rd) closed in 1959 and converted into a roller-drome in 1960. Sydenham at one point also had its own live theatre venue, Norman McVicker’s Pocket Playhouse (94 Terry Street), which operated from 1957 to 1973 [‘Pocket Playhouse’, www.budgeebudgee.wordpress.com].

🔻 Vivien Leigh attending the Pocket Playhouse with proprietor Norman McVicker, 1961

From under the radar to under the runway  
In the early 1990s the Federal government spearheaded a plan to add a third runway to Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport  which presaged irreparable change to Sydenham’s (eastern) residential zone. The scheme was vigorously opposed at a grass-roots level and supported by a Coalition of (thirteen) Sydney Councils including Marrickville Council (although it later did a volte-face and sided with the government). Although supposed to be ‘voluntary’, some Sydenham residents who were reluctant to sell and move were ‘persuaded’ to comply by intolerable noise levels for residents from the airport just 2km away and from adjacent demolition work in progress [‘The fight to save Sydenham’, (Tom Wilson), Green Left Review, 24-Oct-1995, Issue 208, www.greenleftreview.org.au].  When the dust had settled, in excess of over 120 Sydenham houses had been acquired and demolished for the runway go-ahead…this clean-out were described by the Sydney Morning Herald as the airport “gobbling up a whole suburb”. Only a solitary cottage of the row of historic dwellings in the frontline Railway Road survived the decimation, No 19, “Stone Villa” (now an artists’ studio)➃.

PostScript: Sydenham Green  
By way of compensation for the demolished houses in Railway Rd, Marrickville Council was handed back the land in 1994…after deliberation the Council turned it into Sydenham Green, a  public park with ‘funky’ community sculptures and a skate park—and being directly under the flight path of the third runway—a quirky arch monument of sorts recounting the local community’s valiant efforts to stop its realisation. By its very presence, Sydenham Green stands as an “everyday reminder of how aircraft noise tore the heart out of a suburb” (Meader).

_______________________________________________
➀ both the Grove and the Tivoli villas were demolished during WWI

➁ largest employer in the Marrickville Municipality, >7,500 staff

➂ known as Marrickville Station until 1895 when the Bankstown line opened and Marrickville got its own railway station

➃ a belated casualty was Australia’s first Coptic Church (24A Railway Road), which had dodged the authorities’ demolition plans for two decades only to see a fire reduce its survival efforts to ashes in 2017