Frank Farnum is coaching Pauline Starke in the Charlston in this 1925 photo. Farnum was an actor who appeared in 1,100 films, while Starke appeared in silent films, accordign to the internet. Local history records are somewhat silent on when and if the Charlston caught on in Ellensburg.
Looking Back: Roaring (wind) 20’s
by MICHAEL GALLAGHER managing editor
P
erhaps hopes are irrationally high and, just as perhaps, no one actually knows what they’re talking about, but one hears the common refrain of late, “It will be just like the roaring ’20s.” The reference is to what life will be like once the COVID-19 restrictions are completely lifted — the sense that people will feel a need to get out and live life a bit. The roaring ’20s were a reaction to both coming out of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic and the end of World War I. Given that none of us were of age during the 1920s and few
22
K V LIVING
popular movies (actually no movies) focus on life in Ellensburg in the 1920s, there is only one place to turn for a sense of how much roaring took place locally in the 1920s. That one place is the The Evening Record. And, in turning to the Evening Record, the one person we turn to is Dorothy Black, the woman behind The Evening Record’s In Society column. (Readers were directed to call Dorothy at Main 9, not sure who has that number now). As we start the process to come out of our COVID coma, it is timely to look back at Ellensburg, circa de April 1921. In following are excerpts from Black’s April 1, 1921 In Society column. She starts with an introductory essay, as pertinent today as it was 100 years ago. Yes, Dorothy does
