History

Route 66 and an Unexpected Beginning

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Route 66, running from Chicago to Santa Monica, California, turns 100 years old this year. It’s iconic in a way that few other American roads are—so much so that a television series was created around it. Route 66 is probably unique in combining all of these things: a famous name, a clear beginning and end, and a mythology built around freedom, Depression-era migration, postwar family vacations, roadside architecture, and, eventually, nostalgia.

Known as The Mother Road, Route 66 was officially established on November 11, 1926, when federal and state officials approved its famous number as part of the new U.S. Highway System. Road signs were installed in 1927, but the full 2,448-mile route from Chicago to California was not completely paved until 1938.

Historic Route 66

In Southern California, the highway followed much of the earlier National Old Trails Road. That route crossed the Mojave Desert from Needles on the Arizona border through Barstow and San Bernardino before ending at the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica.

I think three American highways reward exploration more than any others:

  1. Route 66 — the story of twentieth-century America.
  2. The Lincoln Highway — the story of the birth of the automobile age.
  3. The Blue Ridge Parkway — the story of the American landscape and conservation.

Taken together, these three highways tell different chapters of the American experience: how we first learned to drive across a continent, how the automobile reshaped the nation, and how we came to preserve some of its most beautiful landscapes.

I’ve traveled all three. Living in Virginia, with the Blue Ridge Parkway winding through the nearby Shenandoah Mountains, I’ve enjoyed countless drives along its ridges. I’ve also driven portions of Route 66. Yet it is my own family’s story that connects me most directly to that highway’s history and to the larger story of the Great Depression.

During the 1930s, Route 66 carried thousands of families west in search of opportunity. After World War II, it became the highway of family vacations, lined with neon motels, diners, and roadside attractions. Then, as the Interstate Highway System bypassed town after town, Route 66 was transformed almost overnight into a symbol of a disappearing America. Few highways have experienced such a complete journey—from necessity, to prosperity, to nostalgia.

Route 66 Diner

Several years ago, my wife, granddaughter, and I drove from Las Vegas to Williams, Arizona, on our way to the Grand Canyon. Along the way we stopped in several Route 66 towns, hoping to experience The Mother Road as it might once have been—or perhaps more accurately, as it has been lovingly remembered and recreated.

A roadside diner painted in turquoise and pink, a museum filled with vintage signs and memorabilia, small coffee shops, and family-run motels all helped sketch the outline of what traveling this highway must have felt like before today’s interstates quietly sidelined so many of these towns.

But my family’s connection to Route 66 reaches back much earlier.

In 1933, the California section of Route 66 had only recently been rerouted and fully paved. My grandparents happened to be traveling that highway at precisely the right—or perhaps wrong—moment. What began as a cross-country move ended with a baby being born in the middle of the Mojave Desert.

That unexpected stop tells a story of resilience, determination, and adventure.

An Emergency Stop at Wayside Camp

By April 1933, the newly paved Route 66 directed nearly all desert traffic through the tiny community of Essex, California. The Wayside Camp was the only formal roadside stop there at the time. It consisted of a handful of simple wood-frame tourist cabins, a modest café, a general store, and a service garage.

The buildings were captured in a postcard from the 1940s. I imagine they looked much the same when my mother’s family arrived on April 5, 1933, traveling from Colorado Springs to San Bernardino.

An Ad in the San Bernardino Sun from May 3, 1935.

What you’re looking at

From left to right:

  • The Essex service station with the large “ESSEX” sign on the roof.
  • Cabin office where travelers checked in.
  • Wayside Café, serving meals to motorists.
  • A long covered parking area, offering shade for both fuel pumps and guest vehicles.
  • Several tourist cabins, rented overnight.

This combination of gas station, café, and cabins was the classic roadside “motor court” that flourished before national motel chains appeared.

It was here that my grandparents stopped—not for convenience, but because circumstances left them little choice.

The Mojave Desert in April 1933 was beautiful but unforgiving. Roads were narrow, automobiles had no air conditioning, and thousands of families were migrating west during the Great Depression. The simple wooden cabin at Wayside Camp offered shelter and safety before the family would continue over the mountains into San Bernardino.

This is how Mom remembered that remarkable journey.

“Mother had inherited real estate in San Bernardino, and we moved in March of 1933. It was warmer there and she had family and property. Daddy was an electrician; had been a telephone lineman, climbing spurs and all. Could get a job anywhere, and did.”

“In my great Aunt Belle’s diary was this notation regarding Mom and her family: “When Orlo moved his family away from Colorado Springs to go to San Bernardino, Calif, she wrote ‘Quite an undertaking with the car, trailer, six children, goat with two kids, canary bird, and a cat and dog.’ Orlo’s caravan left March 15, 1933.”

“Neil (the youngest) was 18 months old . We had a goat and our stuff in a trailer, and the dog riding on the running board . And Mother pregnant. And six kids in (I think) a Rickenbacker. Shirley and I sat on jump seats that let down from the backs of the front seats. We had to sit out a sand storm in the desert on the way. Mother handed out raisins to us, one by one. I don’t know when we left Colorado, but we hit Essex, California April 5, 1933.”

For families with several children, the promise of steady work could outweigh the risks of relocating across the country. California had earned a reputation as the “land of opportunity.” Even during the Depression, it projected an image of abundance. A mild climate, productive farmland, and rapidly growing cities such as Los Angeles and San Diego offered employment in agriculture, construction, oil, and manufacturing.

At the same time, Southern California was experiencing an enormous expansion of its electrical infrastructure. For an experienced telephone lineman and electrician like my grandfather, moving west was more than a change of scenery—it was a smart career decision. San Bernardino sat at the center of one of the largest regional infrastructure booms in the country.

But before the family could begin that new chapter, there was one final, unplanned stop.

They had left Colorado with six children. When they drove away from Wayside Camp in Essex, California, they had seven. The newest passenger was my aunt, Dorol Elizabeth Willis, born that day in one of the small cabins beside Route 66.

For my family, Route 66 isn’t simply an iconic American highway.

It’s where our California story began.

Photo Credit:
Wayside Camp, Essex, California
Burton Frasher, Wayside Camp, Cafe and Store, U.S. 66 Essex, California, 1932
Photographic postcard, Frasher Foto Postcard Collection, Pomona Public Library

Letters From the Past

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One of the most memorable examples of handwriting analysis appears in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, in the story The Reigate Squire (also published as The Reigate Puzzle).

In that story, Sherlock Holmes examines a torn fragment of a note and performs a brilliant bit of analysis. He deduces that it was written by two different people—a younger man and an older one—based on subtle differences in pen strokes. Even more impressively, he observes that the two alternated writing individual words. From the handwriting alone, he infers personality traits and even the relationship between the writers (who turn out to be the Cunninghams, father and son).

Holmes explains his reasoning in terms both simple and elegant: the weak, irregular strokes of an elderly hand contrasted with the bold, confident lines of a younger one. The analysis becomes central to solving the crime.

The Reigate Squire is really a showcase—a kind of set piece built around handwriting as a forensic tool—and it remains one of the more scientifically intriguing episodes in the Holmes canon.

My own interest, however, is far more personal.

Recently, I came into possession of an envelope filled with old letters—ones I had written to my mother and stepfather more than fifty years ago. She had saved them all: along with grade school photos, birthday cards, and other bits of life that somehow survived the decades. When she moved into a smaller apartment, the whole collection found its way back to me.

And that raised an unexpectedly difficult question: what do you do with handwritten letters from the early 1970s?

Do you throw them away?
Or do you sit down and read them—slowly—and try to rediscover your 18-year-old self?

I chose a third option.

I scanned one of the letters and submitted it for handwriting analysis, pairing it with a recent sample of my writing. If nothing else, I thought, it might create a kind of “before and after”—a small window across half a century.

The results were…interesting.

What’s especially striking is not just that the structural traits match—it’s that the movement signature matches. Handwriting, it turns out, is less about the shapes themselves and more about how the hand moves across the page. In both samples, the rhythm, the rightward momentum, the confident t-bars, and the distinctive descender curves all carry the same kinetic “accent.”

In other words: it still feels like me.

What’s changed over time feels natural—almost reassuring:

  • The size is slightly reduced → more efficiency than diminished energy
  • The pressure is lighter → a common effect of age, as muscles soften
  • There’s a bit more angularity → often a sign of reflection and analysis
  • The baseline remains steady → suggesting continued motor control and cognitive stability

That consistency across decades points to something deeper: a stable personality core—expressive, engaged, structured in thought, and purposeful in communication.

And there’s one subtle distinction I find especially meaningful. The earlier sample shows an expansiveness of life; the later one shows a depth of thought. That’s not decline—it’s development.

The analysis itself considered a wide range of characteristics: letter size, loops and lines, pressure and stroke strength, formation patterns, rhythm, flow, even emotional tone. The conclusion was clear: this is the same writer.

But not the same person. Or perhaps more accurately—the same person, continued.

The evolution tells a quiet story:

  • Emotional expressiveness retained
  • Increased discipline and structure
  • A slight softening of stroke
  • A more deliberate, measured pace

If I had to summarize it in one sentence: the later sample reads like the same voice—just seasoned, steadier, and more intentional. It’s comforting to discover that 18-year-old me and 74-year-old me still have so much in common.

We don’t often get the chance to revisit our younger selves—much less to recognize them, and feel at ease with who they’ve become. It was a fun visit, less scary than I had expected. How about you? Have you taken any trips down Memory Lane lately?

DRAW!

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DRAW! Illustrator and over-sized exhibit icon of President Johnson from the Archives’ 1991 annual Report here.

Ink, Irony, and the American Eye: A (Very) Brief History of
Political Cartoons

Nearly 35 years ago, I worked on a museum exhibit that explored the cultural influence and reach of political cartoons. The National Archives hosted the exhibit “Draw! Political Cartoons from Left to Right” starting in 1991, which celebrated American political cartoons and their role in public discourse, as noted in their annual reports from 1991.

The exhibit company that I worked for produced and installed the exhibit. At a time from before large scale digital graphics have become widely used throughout the industry, we silkscreened all the text and background imagery on large painted panels. Hand drawn political cartoons were scanned, enlarged, and turned into photo stencils to serve as a kind of supergraphic to fit the many panels that lined the curved walls of the Circular Gallery.

Political cartoons have been part of the American conversation almost from the beginning. Long before radio, television, or the internet, these drawings carried arguments, insults, warnings, and humor directly to the public. Benjamin Franklin’s “Join, or Die” snake, published in 1754, is often cited as the starting point—not just of political cartooning in America, but of visual persuasion as a civic act. From the outset, cartoons were not decorative; they were meant to persuade, provoke, and occasionally unsettle.

The late eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries now feel, in hindsight, like the glory days of political cartooning. As literacy expanded and printing technology improved, newspapers multiplied at an astonishing rate. From a few hundred papers in the early 1800s, the country grew to thousands by the Civil War and beyond. Editorial pages became expected reading, and political cartoons claimed a permanent place there—bold, unavoidable, and often memorable long after the day’s headlines were forgotten.

A Most Cordial Understanding is my first shot at a cartoon in the early style of 1840s Punch Magazine. It is very much in the Punch sweet spot: Polite on its face, slightly smug in tone, faintly ominous once you sit with it. We get a sense of two “respectable” powers conducting business as usual over tea; when paired with the recent pronouncements regarding Greenland, one can only wonder what they are really thinking.

This era produced giants whose influence still lingers. Thomas Nast’s crusade against Tammany Hall corruption helped bring down Boss Tweed and left us with the elephant and donkey as enduring political symbols. Others followed—Homer Davenport, John T. McCutcheon, Rollin Kirby—each shaping how Americans learned to “read” politics visually. Their drawings assumed patience and attention. They asked readers to stop, look, and think.

One of my favorites, Pat Oliphant stands out as one of the last great heirs to that lineage. His cartoons were spare, sharply drawn, and unsparing in their judgment. Presidents, generals, and bureaucrats were rendered slightly ridiculous, sometimes cruelly so, and always human. Oliphant’s recurring penguin—part conscience, part heckler—gave voice to public skepticism with a wit that felt earned rather than manufactured. Polite on its face. Slightly smug in tone.

What distinguished Oliphant’s work was its confidence in the medium. A single image, printed once a day, was enough. It didn’t need a monologue, a laugh track, or a follow-up explanation. You encountered it over coffee, folded into the paper, and it stayed with you. His cartoons were meant to be revisited, clipped, argued over, and remembered.

That world has largely disappeared. As newspapers have closed or shrunk, so too has the space for daily editorial cartooning. Political commentary has not vanished, but it has migrated. Memes flash by in seconds, optimized for recognition and outrage. Late-night television hosts and podcast personalities deliver satire in real time—often smart, often funny, but designed for immediacy rather than endurance. The encounter is louder, faster, and easier to share, but also easier to forget.

This shift doesn’t signal a decline in political engagement so much as a change in how it is experienced. Where cartoonists like Oliphant trusted silence and reflection, modern satire thrives on performance and momentum. Where cartoons once surprised readers on the editorial page, today’s commentary must be sought out, subscribed to, and algorithmically reinforced.

Looking back—through exhibitions like “Draw: Political Cartoons from Left to Right,” and through the artifacts that remain—it’s tempting to see that earlier period as a high point. Not because it was more civil or more virtuous, but because it trusted the reader. It trusted that a drawing could carry an idea, that ambiguity had value, and that satire could linger. In an age of endless commentary, the old cartoons remind us of the power of ink, restraint, and a moment of pause.

Below are a series of cartoons I’ve created over the past few weeks that incorporate that sense of urgency compiled with a mix of wry humor or satire. I’ve been using the considerable skills of ChatGPT augmented with my own perspective of the times in which we live. For good or ill, we find our country at a very troubling crossroads. I might not get out and walk in protest as I once did; it doesn’t mean I like what’s happening and am planning on remaining silent. Quiet maybe, but not silent.

200 Years and Looking Good

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Last week we went for a preview of items to bid on from an auction at Frascasti, an 1823 brick mansion in central Virginia. Frascati was built for Philip Barbour, Associate Justice for the Supreme Court. John Perry, known for his work for Thomas Jefferson in building the University of Virginia and Monticello, oversaw construction. Frascati is on the National Register of Historic Places and is a Virginia Historic Landmark. The Federal-style brick home has a commanding view of the valley down through Somerset and on to the Blue Ridge Mountains. Hidden from the road by overgrown boxwoods, it must have been an imposing presence on the hill two centuries ago.

While the home isn’t open for tours, it was recently sold and the family, who had held the property for over four decades, released many of the furnishings in an estate auction. We went for the preview and had the opportunity to walk through the home as we marked our list of items to bid on.

The peeling paint on the first floor walls gave no indication of the grandeur the home once possessed. Entering the parlor I was surprised at the size of the room, dominated by a large chandelier set within an immense ceiling medallion. Oftentimes even the light fixtures are auctioned off—this one wasn’t and I imagine that it will be staying with the home.

We walked from front parlor to office, on through the dining room and made our way upstairs to one of the bedrooms which had items on the auction list. We had intended bidding on a pair of crystal bedroom table lamps. They were as beautiful in person as they had appeared in the online catalog though their fragile shades would need replacing. Up another flight of stairs we found a third floor lunette window at the front of the house with an amazing view over the boxwoods to the neighboring properties beyond. 

Frascati was one of four plantation homes in the area, only three of which still exist intact. A mansion designed by Thomas Jefferson, home to Governor Barbour, was built in 1820 and destroyed in a fire in 1848. Somerset Plantation, just down Rt 231 the Blue Ridge Turnpike, was built in 1821 and served as a design inspiration for Frascati. Montpelier, home to President James Madison and his wife Dolly, is now a historic site overseen by the Montpelier Foundation and owned by the National Historic Trust. 

My first impression of the mansion? What an opportunity for a grand event venue or a ballroom! The ornate plaster crown moldings and soaring interiors just speak of the Regency era in England. With examples such as Downton Abbey and Bridgerton, what a venue this could be for concerts or recitals. There is an existing deed of easement signed by the owners in 1999 with the Virginia Board of Historic Resources which guides what can be done with the buildings and the 64 acres. It remains to be seen what the new owners choose to do with this historic property. 

We ended up with a few items from the sale: a pair of crystal table lamps, three side chairs upholstered in a beautiful striped damask, two silverplate chafing dishes we hope to use for a party, a vintage illustrated book on Paris. As I was leaving, one of the daughters of the homeowner handed me a tiny green plastic house she had found while cleaning upstairs. A missing Monopoly game piece, she said, which went with the collection of games we had acquired. And then she spent several minutes telling me about each of the items we had purchased. I suppose it was her way of saying goodbye to a home she and her family had loved for more than 40 years and which had survived more than two hundred.

Come to America

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Why? Why did my distant relatives come to America? I’ve pieced together the Who and the When and also the How. Through genealogical websites, librairies, and church records I’ve managed to sketch a fairly accurate account of my great-grandfather Paul Hilbig’s journey to America beginning with his birth in Prussia in 1870, his family’s immigration in 1874 and their settling in Petoskey, Michigan. But Why? Leaving Germany in the late 19th century would have been an arduous journey to make, especially with a young family.

Considering the political and economic climate of Germany in the late 1800s, it’s not surprising that many families made the decision to leave for what they hoped would be a more prosperous, and safe future elsewhere. On 16 July 1870, the French parliament voted to declare war on Prussia; France invaded German territory on 2 August. In the final days of the war, with German victory all but assured, the German states proclaimed their union as the German Empire under the Prussian king Wilhelm I and Chancellor Bismarck. With the notable exceptions of Austria and German Switzerland, the vast majority of German-speakers were united under a nation-state for the first time. Following an armistice with France, the Treaty of Frankfurt was signed on 10 May 1871. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War)

Meanwhile, back in Michigan, immigrants were being actively recruited from Northern Europe and especially Germany to help settle the area. Michigan was rich in mining, logging, and agricultural resources, but poor in human resources. Beginning in 1845, Michigan established an Office of Foreign Emigration in New York and published a pamphlet which promoted the virtues of the state. Between 1860 and 1900, more than 700,000 immigrants came to Michigan, and nearly 400,000 of these new arrivals were born in foreign countries.

In 1869, the governor of Michigan appointed a Commissioner of Emigration to reside in Germany “. . . for the purpose of encouraging immigration to Michigan from German States and other countries of Europe.” (A Brief History of Michigan)

Portrait of Max H Allardt, from Michigan’s Thumb, a Paradise for Saxonia Settlers

The agent, Max H. Allardt, was posted to Germany from 1870-1875 where he published a periodical and a pamphlet extolling the wonders of Michigan. Allardt was born in Germany in 1829, immigrating with his family to the US in 1833. He studied law in Cleveland, and before being appointed Commissioner, had published the Daily Review newspaper in 1861. Immigration efforts proved to be very successful and the program was closed in 1885. By 1890 an estimated 2.8 million German-born immigrants lived in the United States with a majority of the German-born living in the United States located in the “German triangle,” whose three points were Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and St. Louis.

The 1880 census lists the occupation of my great-grandfather’s stepfather as farmer. Later occupations are listed as carpenter or cabinet maker, skills he would have picked up living among the German immigrants in northern Michigan. My great-grandfather’s occupation was also listed as carpenter, the family evidently having given up on farming perhaps when they moved closer into the town of Petoskey. Whether farmer or carpenter, they exhibited skills that would have been essential in the early development of northern Michigan, at that time abundant in natural resources but lacking in manpower to develop the area. A summer of research along the Hilbig Heritage Tour has essentially answered the Who What Where When and Why questions of my ancestry. But I’m sure there are still more discoveries to be made!

You can read the first blog post about this family search on my blog here: Coming to America

Photos from Michigan’s Thumb, by U.H. Schmidt

Bandits Part 3

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The effort to rid the city of vice brings to mind the Batman movies and Gotham City except that here, there wasn’t a caped crusader fighting the sinister dark elements of the criminal underworld. But much like watching a movie for the second time, reading back through events that have already transpired, in this case more than 90 years ago, we can know the ending from the beginning. And the ending in this particular story was very interesting.

While my grandfather may have been just one of many individuals caught up in local efforts to control vice, there were other factions involved that eventually took center stage. The long list of names covered in the newspaper at the time also included one of the arresting officers, along with the recently elected mayor and his appointed Chief of Police. There were others as well, including the county sheriff, but the mayor, police chief, and deputy police chief were at the center of the investigation.

Mayor Seccombe had been elected in April with a substantial plurality of votes out of a field of six candidates for mayor. He had been a city councilman running against several other businessmen, a lawyer, and others who all vowed to “cleanup the city”.

Upon election, the new mayor chose for his chief of police Dan Murdock, a deputy sheriff in the county. Speculation at the time had him choosing another individual and the choice eventually came down to Murdock or another San Bernardino policeman, C. Lawrence Jordan. With Murdock as Chief, Jordan was named the night Chief of Police.

By December of 1933 a grand jury was conducting an inquiry into city vice and gambling during which Mayor Seccombe, Murdock, Jordan and others were called to testify.

At the heart of the investigation were allegations that the police department, or some individuals therein, had been operating a “pay-off” system in regards to gambling in the city, which perhaps had related to the low number of raids and arrests conducted that year. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, no indictments were returned as a result of their investigation.

In March 1934 assistant chief Jordan was suspended by Chief Murdock over accusations of receiving kickbacks regarding the operation of lotteries in Chinatown. Jordan did not resign and the Chief ended up filing charges with the civil service commission which would eventually call both men, and others, to testify regarding the accusations.

The police chief filed charges of extortion against his assistant in what must have felt like a bit of payback in that, the previous year, both had been considered for the position of Chief of Police. Awkward! The extortion charges relied on testimony from three lottery game owners who basically stated that assistant chief Jordan had accepted money from them in exchange for immunity from arrest. How much was he accused of having received in consideration for allowing their operations to continue unabated? $1.50 per week. Well then.

In answering the allegations, assistant chief Jordan maintained that $1.50 per week payoff for a gambling operation that reportedly netted thousands of dollars a week was absurd. He also maintained that it was the chief of police who “expressly forbid” him to raid those or any other form of vice in the city “except under his direct and detailed command.” So then, now we have a very awkward situation! Whom to believe?

So then it seems that the individual responsible could be the police chief and not his deputy. But wait! After the civil service commission hearing regarding his suspension, Jordan was exonerated and his job reinstated. He was however reprimanded for “frequenting of questionable places other than in the performance of his duty as an officer and the intimated purchase by him of lottery tickets.” Result? Suspension without pay for thirty days.

Several weeks later, two members of the city council sought to have the chief of police removed from office; the move was blocked by the mayor but taken up a week later at a special session. During that session, one of the councilmen who had voiced opposition to the chief changed his position. The inquiry ending up with yet another exoneration, this time for the police chief who ended up retaining his job. Following his exoneration, the city councilman who had spearheaded the drive to have the police chief removed was himself facing a recall effort by voters in his own ward. Those efforts proved to be short lived and the councilman not only kept his seat but shook hands with (forgive and forget) with the police chief he had attempted to have removed.

It seems with that last city council session, the dust-up involving the assistant chief, the chief of police, and the city council had come to an end. Chief Murdock continued to make periodic arrests for gambling and other forms of vice within the city; assistant chief Jordan was reinstated though not at his previous position; and the councilman who was at the center of the police chief recall movement managed to retain his seat. Arrests continued to result in hefty fines being added to the city’s treasury. All-in-all, it reads like another episode of Law and Order in Gotham City. Admittedly my grandfather’s part in all of this was quite small, but in researching him I did get a very up-close look at small town politics, intrigue, and the way public morals have shifted over time here in the US. Ninety years ago but it sounds like today.

*UPDATE*

In a surprising, somewhat ironic note, my Mom wrote this to me:
“When your dad and I got married, the former mayor’s  grand daughter, Evelyn Seccombe, was my maid of honor.  Her mother and my mother had been close friends in San Bernardino High. They were both in the very first graduating class…1918, of the new High School.” Lora Lea (Willis) Chamberlin 9/10/2024

Bandits Part 2

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Some Comparisons…

It started with an election, as these things often do, and a new mayor promising to “clean up the city.” The election in April of the that year brought in a new mayor and with him, a new chief of police with a renewed emphasis on curbing vice in the city. And so they took action: 60 people were arrested in a series of raids in July, 1933. While 60 doesn’t seem to be such an extraordinary number to us today, in 1933 there were only 39,000 people living in San Bernardino, California. That seems like quite an effort.

In a campaign to “rid the city of vice and lawlessness”, the mayor added two additional police members to the vice task force, “and the drive will include gambling establishments, houses of ill repute, boot legging places, and other similar dens of vice in our community.”

In December of 1933, Police Chief Murdock reported that he had made an initial survey of gambling establishments in the city after he first took office in April and found 20 of them. So something was going on that needed looking into.

A postcard from the 1933 Chicago World Fair

A chatty social article in the San Bernardino Sun mentioned that Mr. and Mrs. Ralph A. Hilbig left in late June, driving out to Chicago. It was understood that they would be visiting the Century of Progress Fair (Chicago World Fair) and later visit with relatives in Michigan where Ralph Hilbig grew up. 

On the 8th of July nine San Bernardino business men were placed under technical arrest during a slot machine war. The District Attorney had issued 10 complaints at the request of a private citizen who attested that the machines were gambling devices as he had played all of them. Arrested were a bar owner, cigar store owner, several cafe owners and a billiard hall owner. My grandfather Ralph A. Hilbig, who was out of the city at the time (the Chicago trip) could not be brought in. All the men were fined $25. While the police had raided 11 establishments, they only seized 9 slot machines, two of which were at my grandfather’s pharmacy. I can only imagine now why he would “assertedly” have gambling devices in his drug store (what could they possibly pay off in 1933?!). But later news articles never indicate the eventual disposition of the seized machines.

When my grandparents returned from Chicago on the 14th of July, they assumed that the drug store had been burglarized while they were away; however two slot machines had been seized from his drug store and a warrant had been issued for his arrest on charges of possession of gambling devices. He pleaded not guilty to the possession charge and was released on $50 bail with a trial set for the following Monday.

An article from December 12, 1933 has Ralph A. Hilbig listed again with a group defendants who were charged with possession of slot machines and released. Additionally, there were arrests for running a poker game, a domino gambling game in chinatown, penny ante games—all in all 48 individuals arrested. He forfeited the $50 bail when he failed to appear in court. Nine other businessmen forfeited their bail as well for the same offense in a series of gambling and vice raids which had netted almost 60 individuals. Looking back, it seems my grandfather took the fine and bail forfeiture rather than the trial.

That seems to have been my grandfather’s last close brush with the legal system. In 1934 his name appeared in a rather long list of individuals who had been selected to serve in a jury pool and indeed, he ended up serving on two juries.

But the story doesn’t end here; what was happening behind the scenes is often more interesting than the actual drama. And next week we will finish up this three-part story with a look at the police officer, the chief of police, and the new mayor. Oh! And their appearance before the grand jury. That’s when things really get interesting.

One-Armed Bandits

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In 1895 a German immigrant in San Francisco by the name of Charles Fey invented a mechanical device consisting of several metal cylinders which, when activated by a coin, would spin in random sequence until they stopped and an image displayed on the cylinders would appear in a window. Whether the original five cylinders or the later three, when two or more of the same image appeared inline, you were a winner. The slot machine had humble beginnings but would eventually make a huge impact on the California and neighboring state of Nevada’s economy and later, much of the world.

Fey pioneered many innovations of coin operated gaming devices in his San Francisco workshop at 406 Market Street, including the original three-reel bell slot machine in 1898. The international popularity of the bell slot machines attests to Fey’s ingenuity as an enterprising inventor whose basic design of the three reel slot machine continues to be used in mechanical gaming devices today. (Winkslots)

Fey’s workshop is no longer standing. The Liberty Belle Saloon and Restaurant owned by Mr. Fey’s grandsons, Marshall and Franklin in Reno, Nevada, had many slot machines, including the first three-reels, the first draw poker machine and the first three-reel dollar slot on display. Sadly the Liberty Bell is no longer standing either, torn down to make room for a parking lot for the convention center. The slot machines were moved to the Nevada State Museum in Carson City.

California the “Golden State” is the US’s largest Indian gaming state, with yearly casino earnings of around $9 billion. California has 76 Indian casinos and five mini-casinos, owned mainly by its 109 tribes. (playtoday.com) Today nearly everyone is familiar with slot machines, the original “One-Armed Bandit” and they can be found in many states which now have legalized gambling of one type or another. Below is a machine from the collection of a family member, an early 1940’s Mills Diamond Front Slot Machine, originally produced in 1933 by the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago. Mills was one of the few companies which manufactured both gambling and vending machines.

But their rapid adoption also became the key to their eventual downfall. In 1911, 16 years after the invention of the slot machine, slots were outlawed in California.

The first few decades of the 20th century saw rapid social changes as well as industrial and technological ones. The proliferation of gambling devices, though regulated to some extent, saw them popping up “everywhere,” along with lotteries and card games. And gambling was considered to be one of the chief vices, often found in proximity with alcoholic beverages and prostitution, numbers rackets, off track betting and other “vices.” Reformers managed to get laws passed to control if not outlaw many of these. But whether legal or illegal, many of these activities simply went underground, available but not “too” visible.

Due to the ban, cash prizes would not be distributed any longer, but the fruit machine found a way to work around the ban. To emphasize that they were vending machines, not gambling machines, fruit symbols–cherry, orange, lemon–replaced the poker symbols and then the prizes were given out as sweets and chewing gum according to the corresponding slot flavor.

The headline couldn’t get any more graphic: “Grand Jury Summons Mayor in Gambling Probe.” The date of the newspaper, December 12, 1933. That attention-grabbing headline overshadowed three other articles on the same page. The editorial, “City’s Intolerable Gambling and Vice Must be Stopped,” gave some indication of what was going on in the city of San Bernardino that year. A smaller headline read “Seek Teeth in Gambling Law”. But the one that caught my attention simply stated “Raid Suspects Before Court”. And there in the second paragraph, in the last sentence, was my grandfather’s name. Ralph Hilbig, Highland Avenue and E Street. 

What on earth is going on here?

Caught up in the sweep to rid the town of vice, gambling, and lotteries were any number of small business owners in possession of slot machines which were paying out in coin, not sweets or candies. With the legalization of gambling in the neighboring state of Nevada in March 1931, Californians may have felt emboldened, expecting their state too would take up the cause. Or perhaps just thinking that gambling, in small venues or as a side hustle, would be overlooked, tolerated even in communities that prided themselves on being “progressive.” After all, with the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, the cultural climate did seem to be changing dramatically.

With gambling being illegal at the time throughout the US, one wonders how, or why there were so many slot machines in use. According to Nevada Magazine several California novelty companies made their own versions of the slot machine. Shortly after the slot machine’s invention California law banned cash payouts. For a time winners were paid in redeemable trade checks, chewing gum, candies, and sometimes cigars.

My grandfather’s pharmacy was one of several small businesses in San Bernardino, California during the 1930s which had a slot machine on their premises. The Mills Diamond Front machine introduced in 1939 which is pictured above and owned by a family member, is an example of the slots in use at the time. This beautiful Mills Gooseneck Silent, also known as a Mills Skyscraper machine, was produced by Mills beginning in 1932 (below). It is available on eBay from a vendor who lives in Escondido, California (ironically, my grandparents’ home city).

An article from the 1904 edition of the Hanford Weekly Sentinel spoke to public opinion at that time. Slot machines had been abolished in nearly every California city by that time, though still legal in California. The Hanford notes that “the contrivances were the outgrowth of the gambling spirit which abounds among the people, not only here, but everywhere. The machines were robbers, not doubt; all gambling schemes are robberies.” (Thursday, June 2, 1904)

It wasn’t until February of 1911 that a bill would be introduced to the California State Legislature which would criminalize possession or operation of slot machines. The bill was signed by Governor Johnson in April after having been amended, reducing the penalty of possession from a felony to a misdemeanor.

One would think that all of these laws would have been sufficient to shutdown gambling for good. Yet 12 years later, my grandfather was one of many who were arrested in his home town of San Bernardino for possession of two slot machines. What happened? Stay tuned! We will take a deeper look next week.