Ocean City Boardwalk Trump T-Shirts, 2019

Posted on October 5, 2019 by atomictv

A selection of Trump fantasy t-shirt designs found on the Ocean City Boardwalk  at the end of the vacation season, late September 2019.

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Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Palmer long wondered if he’s related to JFK. At 72, he learned the truth

Posted on August 14, 2018 by atomictv

Jim Palmer, adopted at birth and pictured in 1979, had a Hall of Fame baseball career, never spending much time thinking about his birthparents. After 72 years, though, his wife put the pieces together. (Associated Press)

By Dave Sheinin (5/10/2018)

It would have been January 1945. It would have been somewhere in Manhattan, out where the Irish people gathered. It must have been cold out, driving Joe Geheran and Mary Ann Moroney indoors, into the same building and eventually the same room, maybe the same corner of a bar or nook of a kitchen, where they must have been overtaken by the same feeling and where one thing, as one thing is known to do, must have led to another.

They must have found somewhere to be alone.

They may have known each other already but probably didn’t — he, a dapper, 41-year-old, well-known man about town; she, a 37-year-old domestic to a wealthy family; both of them Irish immigrants. He was married, without children. She would marry just over a year later and quickly start a family with her new husband.

But on this night in January 1945, as fate would have it, Mary Ann Moroney got pregnant. Joe Geheran was the father.

This secret, dark and potentially explosive, may have belonged to both of them or just to Mary Ann because it isn’t clear whether Joe ever knew he would be a father. But regardless of whom it belonged to, the secret survived the subsequent birth of a baby boy Oct. 15, 1945, in a hospital on the east side of Manhattan, and it survived the baby’s adoption two days later. It made it to the grave with both Mary Ann and Joe, and it survived, as well, the life span of the daughter Mary Ann would have in 1946 and go on to raise.

And the secret would survive the first 72 years of that baby boy’s life, even as the world came to know and revere the man he grew into.

Continue reading at New York Times.

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Back River Amusement Parks Hotbed of Prostitution and Venereal Diseases, 1920s

Posted on May 17, 2018 by atomictv

Report of the United States Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board
for The Fiscal Year Ended June 30 1922

Baltimore, Md. — “Back River” has been a by-word in Maryland for 20 years. Navy medical officers and the surgeons at Camp Holabird, Edgewood Arsenal, and Fort Howard, and perhaps those at the Veterans’ Hospital at Perryville, know it as a source of venereal diseases. “Back River” stood for “Goeller’s Place” and “Bob’s Locust Grove.”

Joe Goeller, with a large investment in an “amusement park,” had so entrenched himself with the local forces of law and order that he had nothing to fear except (he said to a board’s agent) the prohibition officers.

Federal inspectors in September, 1921, found upwards of 40 prostitutes operating with soldiers and sailors at Back River. Prostitution and bootlegging were the head liners on the “amusement” program.

Bob Mundon, on a smaller scale, imitated “Goeller’s Place” with “Bob’s Locust Grove.”

With the assistance of State authority the board brought the evidence before the courts. The proprietors were sentenced to six months in jail and fined $500 each. Their places are boarded up, and they are serving their sentences, having failed in their attempts at pardon.

The county police force that failed in enforcing the law was found to have been corrupted and a part of Goeller’s “Machine.” They were tried and dismissed in disgrace.

Investigations by the agent of the board in the city of Baltimore showed that houses of prostitution are on the increase. These were placed in the hands of the police commissioner. No action has been noted. The police commissioner claims that when houses are watched, raided and the cases brought to court for trial, the cases are indefinitely postponed, and it is hard to secure a conviction. One well-informed authority who has to deal with venereal diseases resulting from the situation, stated that Baltimore was one of the worst cities he had ever known.

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Posted in 1920s, Essex / Middle River, Sex, Vices | Tagged | 1 Comment

Dark Shadow’s David Selby Haunts 1969 Baltimore Parade

Posted on April 17, 2018 by atomictv

19690914-darkshadows-DavidSelby

On Sept. 14, 1969, David Selby was grand marshal of the “I Am An American Day Parade” in Baltimore, Maryland. It was a huge event: Crowd numbers were estimated to have topped 200,000 for the Sunday parade.

“Thousands of teen-age girls swarmed next to the reviewing stand, where Mr. Selby sat throughout the day, screaming at the top of their lungs,” reported The Baltimore Sun the following day. “One police officer, who helped escort the television performer during the parade, said the youths were ‘behaving themselves’ and had caused little trouble, but another officer attempting to control the crowd indicated the police had some difficulty. ‘Motorcycle escorts don’t mean anything,’ he said, adding ‘They knock over the motorcycles.'”

The newspaper also included the following quote from Selby, taken from a speech he delivered to the crowd: “With all the troubles and problems we have today, I wanted to tell you it’s really not so bad to be an American.”

Continue reading at The Collinsport Historical Society.

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