1919

I remember Grandma Hancock telling me a story of Dad's birth. His older brother Uncle Eddie was born at home and her blood pressure went so low she fainted. Before she passed out she frantically asked the doctor if the baby was alright and he quickly assured her he was. She had the same doctor for Dad and right after he was born she asked same question, "Is he all right?" The doctor hesitated then answered, "No…. half of him is left!" Grandma nearly had a heart attack until she got his "joke". Then she was so furious her blood pressure rose and she didn't faint. Of course that was the doctor’s plan all along to raise her blood pressure. So Dad's first moments of life began with a bad joke from a doctor and a very angry mom.
When we think of Dad’s lifetime and all he has experienced it is like a history book. I thought it would be interesting to mention some statistics, headlines and play some music from the decades of his life.
When Dad was born in 1919 Minimum hourly wage $.28 per hour, there were only 2,000,000 cars in the US, up from 1,000,000 in 1918.


Avg. Income......................................$1,125/yr
The medium price New Home...........................$5,626
New Car (Avg. Cost)....................................$ 826 most people drove open touring model fords, but other competitors were Packards, Studebakers and Hudsons
Gas........................................................25¢/gal

Headlines in 1919:
• The League of Nations is formed
• Rene Thomas becomes the first driver to break 100 mph at the Indianapolis 800.
• The 18th Amendment, authorizing Prohibition, is passed by the Congress of the United States. It went into effect one year later. The 18th Amendment to the Constitution made drinking illegal in the U.S. so everyone stopped. Except for the 40 million people who continued to get illegal alcohol and who didn't stop!
• The first Miss America is crowned (New York City) Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith launch United Artists.
• Leslie Irvin of the United States made the first successful parachute jump and free fall. The NC-4 aircraft arrived in Lisbon after completing the first transatlantic flight. . The British dirigible R-34 landed in New York, completing the first crossing of the Atlantic by an airship
• The atom was first split in Manchester, England and observation of shifted star positions during a solar eclipse confirmed Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.
• The Treaty of Versailles is signed, ending World War I with Germany