Harmon’s Histories: Summer of 1926 brought chilly pool, bicycle ruckus to Missoula
Jim Harmon
The pool water was too cold, police confiscated bikes while kids watched the matinee, and the preacher advised to hold your tongue!
Those were the headlines in Missoula back in the summer of 1926.
The city/county health officer, Dr. F.D. Pease, reported that the water temperature at the municipal pool had barely reached 52 degrees by June 9, leaving the swimming pool commission with a tough decision.
Dr. Pease warned it would be “inadvisable to send youngsters into water of that temperature. If the cold water has bad effects in the pool, he pointed out, the city is more or less responsible.”
When built, “there was no provision made for heating the water” other than sunlight, and with a tight budget in 1926, there were no funds for any manmade heating system.
Within days, however, two local civic clubs announced they might be able to make arrangements to have steam piped from the Public Service company to the pool.
What a great idea! But it never happened. A search through newspapers in the months and years following, turned up nothing.
Now, on to those pesky progeny and their parked pedals.
“While 17 Missoula boys were enjoying the matinee this afternoon at the Bluebird theater,” reported the Missoula Sentinel newspaper, “city police placed their bicycles which they had parked all over the walk in front of the theater, into a truck and hauled them over to the police station.”
Police reported the bikes “were so thick on the walk in front of the theater that it was almost impossible for pedestrians to pass.”
Police Commissioner Ira Johnston admitted the boys couldn’t very well park along the curb, as their bikes would be “damaged by cars,” but offered no solution.
I’m sure the boys might have had plenty to say, but as the Reverend Harold H. Griffis said (in an unrelated newspaper column), there are times to “hold your tongue.”
Griffis, speaking to the graduating class of the Missoula high school, warned the young people to “guard their tongues, for the unspoken word is one’s servant and the spoken word in one’s master.”
The Missoula Sentinel editor agreed. “This is excellent advice and is of value not only to the high school youngsters, but to each and every one of us.”
“We know of no person ever to get in trouble on account of not talking enough, while we can think of thousands of incidents of embarrassment or positive injury, due to careless, unguarded or even superfluous speech.”
The newspaperman heartily supported the adage, “never speak unless you have something to say.”
The tongue, he asserted, “has since ancient days had the reputation of being the unruly member. It is still unruly, and quite as much a menace to peace and happiness as it was when the Biblical admonition first was given.”
We have learned much since those days a century ago. We now have plenty of heated pools and bike racks.
As for holding our tongues – well, the singer Meat Loaf put it best: Two out three ain’t bad.