Author: Vance Lauderdale

Hard to believe, but in the early 1930s, a Texas businessman named B. Lee Torrance visited Memphis and told a reporter, “[Your city] has the most careful drivers I ever saw. They sure obey the speed limit, too.”

Based on that observation, I think we can safely say that: 1) Mr. Torrance was insane, or 2) Memphis drivers have sure changed a heckuva lot since the early 1930s.

At any rate, for other reasons that we may never know, Torrance decided that the Bluff City seemed to be a “good business town,” and so he decided Memphis should be the next link in his nationwide chain of Alamo Plaza Hotel Courts. After all, as he explained, “If people are speeding through town, they won’t be able to see my tourist courts.”

The boundary between East Memphis and Midtown has always been rather vague. Some Memphians insist that East Parkway serves as the border between the two neighborhoods; others say it’s Highland — which these days is still many miles west of the development that you might call “East Memphis” today.

Heck, you might as well consider the I-240 loop as the boundary, while you’re at it.

But in the 1940s, a gas station could be called the East Memphis Motor Company, and no one questioned the location — even though it stood right in the heart of today’s Midtown, at the northeast corner of Cooper and Madison, today’s Overton Square.

Last week, I told you about a cheerful advertising campaign conducted by Johnson & Johnson in the 1940s that was designed to scare the heck out of parents. Either use J & J first-aid products, they warned, or live a lifetime of guilt dealing with your crippled child. Well, here’s another installment in this amazing series. The headline is “HEARTACHES … THAT NEEDN’T HAVE HAPPENED” and I think the copy speaks for itself:

“With heavy hearts, they watch their boy learning to walk again — on crutches.

“Crutches! They were things unthought of when he cut his foot … before germs entered the wound — and infection spread.

“But now! The tap, tap, tap brings heartaches — needless heartaches.

Most Memphians no doubt associate the name Digger O’Dell with the fine plant nursery out on Highway 64. But in the early 1960s, another Digger O’Dell showed up in Memphis, and he made his livelihood by planting something quite different in the ground.

Himself.

In late September 1961, workers dug a hole in a parking lot at 739 Union Avenue, and Digger hopped down into a coffin-like chamber, where he promised to remain underground for 60 days as a promotional stunt for Bluff City Buick. An 18 x 24-inch plywood air shaft allowed him to receive air and food, and photos show that he carefully stocked “the world’s smallest apartment,” as he called it, with lights, reading glasses, and even packs of cigarettes. Buick customers could peer through a viewer at him, while a colorful banner overhead wondered, “How Long Can He Stay Buried Alive?”

The police decided 13 days was plenty long enough. In early October they ordered construction workers to dig up Digger because the cops wanted to charge him with “non-support” of a wife back home in Atlanta. Even buried underground, he couldn’t escape from her, it seems.

“I can’t even blame my wife too much,” he told reporters as he clambered out of the hole. “She just can’t help being money hungry.” No word on how much dough, if any, Digger earned for his underground stay.

Memphians who remember this stunt used to go to Digger O’Dell’s nursery all the time and ask if it was the same fellow, the nursery owner once told me. But that Digger — real name: Kenneth — retired years ago and moved to Kansas. The whereabouts (or more likely after all these years, the gravesite) of the Digger O’Dell who liked to be buried alive? I just can’t tell you.

PHOTO COURTESY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, UNIVERSITY OF MEMPHIS LIBRARIES

Johnson & Johnson has manufactured first-aid and medical supplies for more than a century. Are their bandages, tape, and cotton swabs really that much better than anyone else’s? Hmmm, probably not. So in the 1940s, the company embarked on one of the most astonishing advertising campaigns I’ve ever seen. Employing a series of stark magazine ads — with such morbid headlines as “Never to Dance Again,” “Tragedy,” and “Loneliness” — they warned parents that using first-aid products from other companies would leave their children crippled, maimed, even dead. Oh, they laid on the guilt pretty thick.

I first noticed these ads while thumbing through a 1941 issue of Good Housekeeping magazine. A full-page advertisement carried the cheery headline, “WHAT’S FATHER BRINGING HOME TONIGHT?” And a close look at the photo revealed that Father, with a downcast face, was walking to the front door with a pair of brand-new CRUTCHES under his arm. Now why would Father be bringing home crutches? Let the rest of the ad tell the whole grim story:

Nobody who dined at Mario’s Pizza Palace ever forgot it. The stone cottage at 3836 Park Avenue was sheathed in handmade signs, urging patrons to “Protect Your Health Now!” and “Eat Well and Forget Di-Gel!” Diners crammed themselves into two little front rooms and munched on baked pizza and ravioli, sipped wine from mayonnaise jars, and were serenaded — in Italian, no less — by the feisty owner himself, Mario DePietro.

So many stories were told about (and by) Mario that it’s hard to sort them out: He won the indoor bicycle races at Madison Square Garden in the 1920s. He personally delivered an airplane-shaped chicken (huh?) to Charles Lindbergh after his transatlantic flight. He — and he alone — brought pizza to America from his native Naples, Italy (and for years displayed the battered tub he carried on his head as he walked the streets of New York peddling them).

Most Memphians know about the lovely Japanese Garden in Audubon Park, and the arched red bridge there may be one of the most photographed attractions in Memphis (especially popular with yearbook photographers). Those of us of a certain age may remember the older Japanese Garden in Overton Park, a lavish construction that was destroyed because of anti-Japanese sentiment following the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

But few people, I’ll wager, remember the Japanese Garden that was constructed downtown — mainly because it was located in a rather unusual location: on the roof of the 100 North Main Building. I managed to find a photo of the garden (above), along with a trio of attractive visitors, in the old Press-Scimitar archives at the University of Memphis Special Collections Department.

Anyone familiar with the 1932 cult-classic movie Freaks has seen members of the Doll Family — a family of “little people” (two brothers and two sisters) who performed in films and circuses for more than half a century. Grace, Harry, Daisy, and Tiny adopted the stage name Doll, but their real last name was Schneider, and they were born in Germany and then brought to America at an early age.

And why am I telling you this? Because I stumbled upon a 1936 Memphis Press-Scimitar article that discussed the Dolls’ “foster parents” — who just happened to live in Memphis, in a very unusual house on Poplar. The article was written by Eldon Roark for his popular “Strolling” column, and here’s what he had to say. The headline was “Business Good With Midgets”:

“If you want to know how business conditions are, just ask any sideshow midgets. They have a most reliable barometer. And if you don’t know any midgets to ask, then see Mr. and Mrs. A.E. Willis, 2599 Poplar. They are the “foster parents” of the famous Doll family of midgets, now on tour with the Ringling Circus, and they get regular reports from them. There are four in the midget family — Daisy, Grace, Tiny, and Harry. Professionally they go by the name of Doll, but their real name is Schneider. They are from Germany.