“An American Paper for the American People – The Great Newspaper of the Great Southwest—The Paper for People Who Think.” The Los Angeles Examiner was bold in its claims and, on February 18, 1930, for the Hall family, it was also the paper to read. On the front page of Section Two a short article proclaimed:…
One soggy March Sunday a few years ago, my daughter, Carlyn Maw, and I headed to Manhattan Beach where Jane and her small family lived between 1927 and 1930. First stop, the small cottage in Polliwog Park that is home to the Manhattan Beach Historical Society. Steve Meisenholder, the society’s former president, has spent most of his…
“Mother decided to drive it right home from the store,” Jane recalled in August 1928 when Daysie Hall bought the boxy Six -Cylinder Special. They named the Studebaker “Teresa,” but before Dickie had even seen it, they had an accident on the less-than-perfect roads. Autos still had no turn signals or rearview mirrors, driver’s licenses did not require a road test, and danger…
Redondo Union High School 1928 They seemed an unlikely pair as they climbed the wide steps to Redondo Union High School at the beginning of September 1928. Dick Wick Hall, Jr., a thin, lanky 16-year-old with dark brown curly hair towered over his sturdy younger sister. “Little Jane” was both eager and apprehensive as they passed through…
It was summer 1928 in Manhattan Beach. Thirteen-year-old Jane had just graduated from the eighth grade and remained focused on her goals. She defined herself as a writer. Her work provided a defense against the unbearable loss of a father who was also her mentor. Her stories and fairy tales about animals or other children often have…
When Daysie Hall and her children reached Manhattan Beach in 1927, the area had just begun to come into its own as a popular resort. Much of the shoreline with its massive coastal sand dunes was still undeveloped and flyers eagerly promoted “the safest beach in America.” The 928 foot long pier had been a…
She addressed the note to “My Pearls” and her bold scrawl covered the entire page. For the newly widowed Daysie Mae Sutton Hall her children were her life. She asked them to light the fire and not let any sparks pop on the floor.The mechanics of writing such as grammar, punctuation and spelling were not her…
Encouraged by her father’s success with his now syndicated Salome Sun, and his stories in the The Saturday Evening Post, “little Jane” kept on scribbling. During the fall and winter of 1925–1926, more of her poems were published, and her biography of a little colt told from his point of view came out in the…
Thomas Lansing Masson (1866-1934) Mentor to the Hall Family In this age of social networking and instant access to information, it’s hard to imagine life 90 years ago when it took a lot of patience and more than a little luck to put a tiny town like Salome, Arizona, on the national map. That’s what happened…
On summer days, Salome, Arizona, was so hot, dry, and shade free in the midday sun that its sand hills seemed to be populated only by greasewood and saguaro. In 1925, the would-be town, which had a population of less than two dozen people, sat in a valley framed on its northern edge by the Harcuvar and…
Happy Holidays to all! This illustration of “Our Christmas Tree“ (unsigned but possibly by Claude G. Putnam)* appeared in The Salome Sun in 1925. No one imagined it would be Dick Wick Hall’s last Christmas (see prior post). Dick added the following thoughts using the sporadic upper case letters that became his signature and some deliberately questionable grammar: “Christmas comes…
The Laughing Desert, a book about Jane Hall’s father, humorist Dick Wick Hall, and his nationally syndicated newspaper feature that made the town of Salome, Arizona, famous in the 1920s, came out just in time for the 2012 celebration of Dick Wick Hall Day. This year the festivities take place on October 5. The book includes a complete replica…
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