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Your Hometown For Pulp


SKJAM!

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While the overview of the world in Pulp Hero was extensive, it obviously had some unavoidable holes in it. (Such as nothing about the USA between Chicago and California.) So, tell us a little bit about your hometown as it was in the 1920s and '30s.

 

To lead off...Sandstone, Minnesota is approximately halfway between St. Paul and Duluth. If you look at a map of the eastern border of Minnesota and imagine it as a face in profile, Sandstone's on the bridge of the nose.

 

The primary employer in the time period is the quarry which gives Sandstone its name. In the 1920s, Minnesota sandstone is used in important buildings throughout the US, and the town is booming. It's not as rough as it was back at the turn of the century, when Sandstone was nearly denied a Masons chapter due to "moral turpitude", but quarrymen are still a rowdy lot.

 

The important local buildings are made of sandstone, too, the most impressive and largest of which is the three-story tall fortress-like high school. It was built on the highest hill in town, so dominates the skyline (such as it is.)

 

The quarry and central location also make Sandstone a busy railroad town, with its own roundhouse and switching yard. There's also a creosote factory, as they're busy paving roads.

 

Outside the town, the soil is poor and rocky, and the landscape is dotted with hard-scrabble farms and pine forest (all new growth, due to the Hinckley Fire some decades before.)

 

The Depression hits Sandstone hard, as construction of new buildings slows immensely. The quarry is still open, but the handwriting is on the wall, with new construction materials and methods taking over. The railroad yard is still busy, though.

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Re: Your Hometown For Pulp

 

Hmm, Canberra was just being built and settled around then, starting with North Canberra

The location was originally chosen because of the weather similarity to England. Which is kinda weird.

So it would suit games involving settling, construction and the formation of identity for a nation.

http://www.idealcity.org.au/

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Re: Your Hometown For Pulp

 

Anybody looking to set a story in my hometown of Buffalo, NY, need look only at this page, which details the city's history from 1929-1945.

 

Buffalo was a center of industry at the time, and as WWII loomed, the aerospace industries picked up, although the famous Pierce Arrow company went out of business in 1937.

 

And a nazi sabotage plot might involve the enormous steel-making operation at Bethlehem Steel.

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Re: Your Hometown For Pulp

 

A quick overview of the history of St. Louis, contains a specific section on the pulp era (though they call it "WARS - PROSPERITY - DEPRESSION: 1914-1945").

 

http://stlouis.missouri.org/heritage/History69/

 

Looks like St. Louis had two baseball teams during the era, the St. Louis Browns, and the St. Louis Cardinals.

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Re: Your Hometown For Pulp

 

Thanks for the useful bits so far, keep them coming!

 

A couple of liquid tidbits about Sandstone:

 

The original name of the town was Cold Springs, after the natural fresh water source that made it a good place to settle back in the logging days.

 

The most interesting geographical feature nearby is the Kettle River, which has cut a small gorge through the local sandstone. The name comes from the many circular depressions ("kettles") in the bed of the stream that make the water swirl and bubble as though boiling. The river has dangerous rapids, the most challenging of which are known as Hell's Gate.

 

During the Pulp Era, one fork of the Kettle River has been dammed for hydroelectric power. It's a pretty dirty river at the time, due to all the quarrying.

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  • 3 months later...

Re: Your Hometown For Pulp

 

Bumping up...

 

In 1929, the Foshay Tower was erected in Minneapolis, then and for many years to come the tallest building between Chicago and Los Angeles. It was modeled after the Washington Monument, and John Philip Sousa was commissioned to write a march in honor of the opening.

 

But a few months later, the Crash embroiled Mr. Foshay in financial and legal troubles that led to his imprisonment and eventual suicide. To protect Sousa's reputation, his family confiscated all extant copies of the score for the Foshay Tower March and sealed them away for fifty years.

 

Searching for that score might be a time traveler's goal (if from before 1980), or hearing the march could be a background detail for a character.

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Re: Your Hometown For Pulp

 

In the 1920s and 30s people in Flint Michigan actually had jobs. I was shocked to discover that.

 

Flint covers a land area of 87.5 sq km (33.8 sq mi), with a mean elevation of 217 m (712 ft).

 

GM was founded here by Billy Durant (been in the room where it was done, the filing of the papers was inexplicably in New Jersey and GM was eventually moved to Detroit) in 1908. Durant lost control of the company (twice) and eventually ran a bowling alley in Flint until his death in 1947.

 

Prior to that it had been one of the largest Carriage Manufacturing center in the world (19th century). The heaviest decline began in the 1970s and 1980s and has continued (unabated) since then so that the place has become the shell of a city.

 

In 36-37 there was the Flint sitdown strike, very big for Union workers (my paternal grandfather was involved, my Grandmother used to climb part way up the fences and threw him his lunches; my maternal grandfather was management at the time, which makes me the product of a mixed marriage).

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Re: Your Hometown For Pulp

 

Well, I don't know about my hometown back then, but my current metropolitan area was quite bustling place in the 20's and 30's. Kind of a Chicago in miniature.

Kansas City was really the gateway to the West back then, not St. Louis, and it had its share of high society and corrupt politicians to be sure (wait, have they left after all these years?). Boss Pendergast was everything you think of when it comes to big, wealthy, corrupt and politically connected.

KC was quite a crossroads for gangsters at the time, as many of the popular ones from that day were from the Midwest (e.g., John Dillinger from Indiana, Pretty Boy Floyd from Missouri, Bonnie & Clyde, etc.). In fact, the main event that kicked off J. Edgar Hoover's arming the FBI and giving them big political clout was the Kansas City Massacre at Union Station.

If you want to know more about that event, you should check out the graphic novel "Union Station" by my high school friend Ande Parks. You can find it at Amazon here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1929998694/sr=8-10/qid=1141160175/ref=pd_bbs_10/102-9296993-3112147?%5Fencoding=UTF8

 

-ME

:cool:

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Re: Your Hometown For Pulp

 

I had a long phone conversation with my dad last night. He had some great information that I hadn't found researching online. The article should make a great location for a pulp campaign. There is enough information you can have a campaign go through the area and remain for five or six sessions.

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Re: Your Hometown For Pulp

 

My hometown -- Los Alamos, NM -- wasn't really a town in the Pulp era. There was a ranch school there from 1917 until 1942 when the Manhattan Project kicked them out.

 

"Detroit businessman Ashley Pond started the Los Alamos Ranch School in 1917 to help boys become strong young men through a life of rigorous outdoor living and classical education. Plagued by bronchitis and other ailments as a child, Pond wanted to give youngsters a chance to improve their health away from polluted, urban environments."

 

http://www.losalamoshistory.org/school2.htm

 

Meanwhile, nearby Santa Fe already had more than 300 years of history under its belt (having been founded by the Spanish 13 years before the Mayflower colony was established).

 

[Edit: the area had, of course, been settled by Pueblo Indians for centuries before that.]

 

Following New Mexico statehood in 1912, Santa Fe was still transitioning from being the capitol of a Spanish territory to capitol of an American state. IIRC, at that time Santa Fe was still the largest city in New Mexico - I don't think Albuquerque passed it until the 50s, but I could be wrong there.

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Re: Your Hometown For Pulp

 

My hometown, still called 'Siegfried Station' back then, was badly hurt by te Depression. The main local industry was a cement plant called 'the Dragon' by locals, and they aid off a lot of guys.

 

On the other hand, some local farmers got through things by cooking up bootleg booze and selling it to the Sun Inn in Bethlehem for the private parties the local politicians ran. BUT... that lead to some trouble with Philadelphia gangsters, which started off with attempted murders, and ended with the Philly gang bribing the local Prohibition agents into arresting the farmers and jailing them on outrageous charges.

 

That latter I got some very good first-hand info on from my uncle, who didn't just live through it, he *worked* as a bootlegger with a local farmer. It was a memorable experience, especially when he almost got shot dead one night by a shotgun-toting killer.

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Re: Your Hometown For Pulp

 

I don't know why I haven't posted about these books before because they are GREAT sources of info and photos of the period. Arcadia Publishing has several series of history books but the one I'm going to focus on is called "Images of America". They highlight different areas of the nation in text and photo during significant historical periods. The focus of most of the books I've purchased seems to be the 20's through the 40's. Here are a few that focus on Cincinnati.

 

Cincinnati Revealed-

0738519553.01._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_AA240_SH20_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

A Photographic Heritage of the Queen City, features nearly 200 rarely seen photographs and vintage postcards. Through these striking images, together with the insightful text, authors Kevin Grace and Tom White take the reader on a unique visual tour of this historic river city.

 

Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine -

073853157X.01._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_AA240_SH20_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine captures a fascinating urban neighborhood in vintage photographs. For over 150 years, the culture, politics, and architecture of Over-the-Rhine have influenced Cincinnatiís development. Early German immigrants gave the neighborhood its moniker, after the bordering Miami-Erie canal, and also contributed to its beautiful architecture. Appalachian and African American citizens later contributed to the cultural diversity.

 

The Cincinnati Subway-

0738523143.01._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_AA240_SH20_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Cincinnati emerged from a tumultuous 19th century as a growing metropolis committed to city planning. The most ambitious plan of the early twentieth century, the Cincinnati Subway, was doomed to failure. Construction began in 1920 and ended in 1927 when the money had run out. Today, two miles of empty subway tunnels still lie beneath Cincinnati, waiting to be used. The Cincinnati Subway tells the whole story, from the turbulent times in the 1880s to the ultimate failure of "Cincinnati's White Elephant." Along the way, the reader will learn about what was happening in Cincinnati during the growth of the subway-from the Courthouse Riots in 1884 to life in the Queen City during World War II.

 

Stepping Out In Cincinnati-

0738534323.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Long before folks had a television set and radio in every room, they sought entertainment by stepping out for a night on the town. The choices around Cincinnati were nearly limitless: live theater at the Cox; spectacular musicals at the Shubert; hotels featuring fine dining and dance orchestras; talking pictures at everyone’s favorite movie palace—the Albee; burlesque and vaudeville shows at the Empress Theater on Vine Street; and gambling casinos were just a short drive across the river in Newport. All of the major entertainment venues in the Queen City during the first half of the 20th century are explored in Stepping out in Cincinnati. From saloons to ornate movie palaces and from the Cotton Club to the Capitol, you join those pleasure seekers, getting a real sense of what they saw: wonderful events and their countless images—the things of which fond memories were made. Today, those memories have faded and virtually all of the once-glittering showplaces have been bulldozed into history. But within these pages, we get to experience first hand what it was like to be there. Unique among the many photographs featuring unforgettable movie houses and nightclub orchestras are never-before-published images of actual live vaudeville performances onstage at the Shubert, plus rare, clandestine pictures snapped inside the casinos in Newport. Also revealed are the locations of the better-known speakeasies during Prohibition; where the best halls to dance to live orchestras were; what the earliest movie houses were like; and what black Cincinnatians did for entertainment.

 

Check out Arcadia's website. There's a chance they have a book about your hometown or at least the local area.

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Re: Your Hometown For Pulp

 

I grew up on Cape Cod. Most of their industry revolved around fishing and whaling. Since it was mostly small towns during that era, it would be a good place for a criminal element to hide out for a while.

 

Then, during the Prohibition, it was used to illegally smuggle in liquor. There were a lot of unguarded ports, with a whole lot of boat traffic; too much to keep track of, really. Word has it this is how the Kennedies made most of their fortune. At least, that's what the locals say.

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Re: Your Hometown For Pulp

 

Bloomington Normal during the 20s and 30's, where to start...

 

probably one of my favorite quotes from the era comes from a Mr GJ Meherle, who said "Once a Man fails at everything else, he goes into the insurance business" he was formerly a farmer in the area... somehow I dont think anybody will call his last business venture a failure.... it would become State Farm Insurance

 

the era also saw the forming of the Eureka Williams company, which made oil burning furnaces, and vacumn cleaners... during WW2 they would also make bombsights among other things.

 

the first railway pullman car was built here, along with the first brick street, while the railroad shops are long gone, you can still drive that brick street today.

 

I am going to have to do more research, for a small town in the middle of corn country, I could see a fair number of pulp or golden age plot

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Re: Your Hometown For Pulp

 

Today' date=' two miles of empty subway tunnels still lie beneath Cincinnati, waiting to be used.[/quote']

Now if that ain't a great plot seed, I don't know what is! :cool:

 

Speaking of which, I highly recommend the documentary Dark Days (2000) about squatters living in an abandoned New York City subway tunnel. It's not pulp, but has all kinds of campaign potential...:sneaky:

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Re: Your Hometown For Pulp

 

Now if that ain't a great plot seed, I don't know what is! :cool:

 

Speaking of which, I highly recommend the documentary Dark Days (2000) about squatters living in an abandoned New York City subway tunnel. It's not pulp, but has all kinds of campaign potential...:sneaky:

I was in a supers game a few years back that was set in Cincinnati and our base was in the abandoned subway tunnels under downtown.

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Re: Your Hometown For Pulp

 

My old home town of Danvers, Massachusetts was a pretty typical town during the pulp era. Mills and leather tanneries were big, and there was still some farming going on (the town was once famed for its onions).

 

There are two things that stand out in the history of Danvers. First - before it was incorporated in 1757 ("The King Unwilling"), it was part of Salem and was known as Salem Village. The infamous Salem Witch Trials of 1692 actually began in Salem Village (I grew up on the next street over from the Rebecca Nurse homestead). Possibly useful for a pulp campaign.

 

One institution that could be a major player is the now-closed Danvers State Hospital, a very creepy insane asylum perched on a hill that overlooks much of the town. It was so creepy that some say it was the model for Lovecraft's Arkham Sanitarium and is directly mentioned by Lovecraft in "Pickman's Model." The castle-like architecture just adds to the creep factor. Many of the buildings were connected by underground tunnels. Unfortunately it's being demolished to make room for condos...

 

Main Building in 1893

[ATTACH]20948[/ATTACH]

 

DSH from the air - it gives a better idea of the size of the complex

[ATTACH]20949[/ATTACH]

 

Another good DSH link is here

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Re: Your Hometown For Pulp

 

Bloomington Normal during the 20s and 30's' date=' where to start...[/quote']

 

That is too funny! I was born in Normal! I don't know much of the town's past to be able put it to words, so I chose my current home of the Kansas City area instead. Cool! :thumbup:

 

-ME:cool:

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