How They Wrote in '29

As I perused the scrapbook of the 1929 flood that hit Cedar Rapids compiled that March by Bertha Alden Grueterich (see today's Ramblin' column in The Gazette), I was fascinated by the writing style of the day.

A March 18 story talked about men sandbagging to keep the water at bay:

"Higher, higher, higher came the waters, and the men redoubled their efforts. So fast did the water creep on them that sack-filling was abandoned, and the trucks and men rushing back and forth in the night, built dams of sand."

And this:

"The 'Shock Troops' were put into action at this point with sand bags, but they could not plug up the gushing manhole. The water caught their bulkwark from behind and in a trice, the torrent swept in, and raced westward into yards and cellars."

And, yes, those were different times:

"Two reporters tried to drive through the main entrance of the packing plant in a milk wagon but the horses refused to go after they had plodded into water up to their bellies."

"The basement of the Horak drug store No. 1 First street and First avenue west, was converted into a gold fish pool yesterday, when the little fins escaped, via the flood waters, from the tub in which they were being kept."

Later, as floodwaters receeded:

"Cedar Rapids, relaxed from forty-eight hours of anxiety, began today to take stock of its loss caused by the most disastrous flood within the memory of the oldest inhabitant."

"A dozen families in Stumptown in the southern part of the city were forced to spend the night in a school house, fifteen others were quartered in a private home, and men in half a dozen boats patrolled the territory ready to spread the alarm to flee to the hills."

And there's the tale of two men, Louis Binko and Joseph Prachar, who nearly escaped drowning when their motor boat crashed into a pier on the First Avenue bridge and capsized:

"The boat, belonging to Binko, had been piloted up the river from the Palisades yesterday. In the afternoon, Binko and various companions shot up and down the river between the bridges, thrilling the spectators and risking their own necks as they shot under the arches of the B avenue bridge and up almost to the foaming waters below the dam. It was on one of their more leisurely cruises near the First avenue bridge that the accident happened."

"The Camera shop and Baldridge's had the biggest run on films since the Douglas starch works disaster. Hundreds today were turning in rolls of films for developing."

And then there was the rescue of a woman by police from Second Street NW: "I was more scairt while I was in the boat than I was getting in, or in the house," she said. "The house foundations were being undermined so we had to go."