Picturing the Past

Picturing the Past Story and photos: Mayor Greg Wright.

The Labor Day Celebration in Princeton, Indiana, is the oldest in Indiana, and the second oldest continuous Labor Day Celebration in the United States. The first Labor Day Celebration held in 1886, in Princeton, was eight years before Labor Day was made an official U.S. national holiday in 1894. That first celebration was almost like our present-day one. It was sponsored by the Knights of Labor, which was one of the labor groups representing unionists in Indiana. A train from Chicago, Illinois, brought four coaches of unionists. They were met at 3:30 a.m. in the morning by the Princeton High School Band and escorted to the Princeton Fairgrounds. At 10:00 a.m. another train brought six coaches full of Knights of Labor, along with two bands. A parade, as it is now, was the highlight. Speeches were made by area labor leaders, and a tradition was born. By 1900, the celebration moved a few miles to Petersburg, Indiana, and it grew several hundred times over what it had been just a year before. It drew between 8,000 and 10,000 people, and a free meal was served to all union men who marched in the parade. Over 1,500 meals were served that afternoon. In the first part of the 20th century, the celebration moved between Evansville, Ft. Branch, Vincennes, Oakland City, Princeton, Boonville, Washington, Sullivan and Petersburg in Indiana, Mt. Carmel, Illinois, and Henderson, Kentucky. In the late 1920’s, the celebration saw a growth that would take it from a local event to a national event. In 1930, attendance at Princeton, Indiana, was over 40,000 on parade day. In following years, that attendance would never drop below 30,000 and would reach its peak of 75,000 in 1949. A single union alone had over 10,000 members march in the 1936 parade.

The celebration started drawing national attention in 1931, when a movie company, Fox Movie Town, sent its film crews to Princeton, Indiana. They traveled by train to film the event for newsreels. Fox Movie Town was to become 20th Century Fox and was only one of the many major studios to cover it. Between 1931 and 1949, every major movie studio in the country sent camera crews to southern Indiana to cover what had become one of the largest celebrations of union labor in the nation. From 1950 to 1980, only the U.M.W.A. sponsored the celebration because the other international unions were associated with other ones. In the early 1980’s, a steelworker local union joined the association. At that point, other international unions returned their support so that today 40 locals, representing 23 internationals are dues paying members of the association. From 1950 to 1992, the celebration moved between Boonville and Princeton. In 1993, the association traveled to Evansville, Indiana, for the first time since 1942. This ever changing and traveling event continues to be one of our area’s most honored traditions.

From Yesterday & Today The Dreaded Parking Meter

Story & Photos courtesy Jeff Minnis

If you grew up in Gibson County chances are you fed one of them around the Princeton square and quite possibly received a parking ticket like the one pictured. Before I go any further, how many parking meters do you think Princeton had in the downtown area? The answer will be at the end of the article. Holger George Thuesen and Gerald A. Hale designed the first working parking meter. Thuesen and Hale were engineering professors at Oklahoma State University and began working on the parking meter in 1933. The world’s first installed parking meter was in service in Oklahoma City on July 16, 1935. The device was NOT well received by the motoring public and many deemed it un-American to have to pay 5 cents an hour to park. Retailers loved them since it caused a faster churn of cars and potential customers. By 1940, there were over 140,000 parking meters operating across the United States. The first parking meter ticket to be challenged in court was by Rev. C.H. North of Oklahoma City’s Third Pentecostal Holiness Church. He had his citation dismissed when he claimed he had gone to a grocery store to get change for the meter. Working at JC Penney all through high school I saw many people get tickets. Most of the stores on the square like JC Penney would not allow their employees to park on the square so customers could have the prime spots. There were some businesses who didn’t care, and you would see those employees as well as Court House employees, running out to feed the meters before the Meter Maid, “Dorthey Mowery” would make her rounds and slap that dreaded fine of $1.00 under your wiper blade. In the early ‘90s, the city finally removed all the meters from around the downtown. The one pictured is an actual meter from here in Princeton, that I acquired from former Police Chief Bo Hardiman. Bo knew I was a history buff and made sure I received one as well as one of the old ticket books. OK, to answer the question I asked at the start of the article, if you look at my meter it was for parking spots 145 and 146. I would love to know the location of those spots. I was surprised at the amount of meters but it came from a newspaper article from the ‘70s that was talking about raising the price from 5 cents to 10 cents to park for an hour. Some of the quotes from people interviewed were interesting. One lady stated it’s terrible. People will stop shopping on the square if they have to pay a dime for an hour. One man commented he didn’t want to have to put a dime in the meter and only park for 15 minutes. He said that’s giving the next person 45 minutes of free parking at my expense. I guess he didn’t like the idea of “paying it forward”. Another gentleman said they needed to pull them out and dump them in the Wabash River! The total number was 274!

Parking meters 145 & 146