#hooverpreslib

"Ya Got Trouble"  from Meredith Willson's "The Music Man", Robert Preston & Shirley Jones, online here, GIF from here. 

YA GOT TROUBLE!  PRIME YOUR SOUL OR PIMP YOUR RIDE?

Trouble in River City:  Hoover shares Aunt Hannah’s vision of his town’s descent into SIN!

Yet another quirky post by Miriam Kleiman, Program Director for Public Affairs.

While campaigning for reelection in Iowa in Oct. 1932 (spoiler alert: he lost to FDR), President Hoover spoke of dramatic changes to his hometown (West Branch, IA) since his Quaker boyhood (emphasis added): 

“As you know the Quakers had an old-fashioned meetinghouse...  I have a vivid recollection of an elderly Aunt Hannah who delivered herself one day very emphatically on the subject of increasing wickedness of the world... she prophesied that if these habits were followed the day would come when that meetinghouse would be turned into the mockery of a theatre. That was the worst thing she could think of. I went back 25 years later and to my astonishment her prophesy had come true. The community had become affluent enough to build a better meetinghouse, and they had moved the old one across the street and changed it into a moving-picture house.”

Aunt Hannah called it - Hoover’s boyhood Quaker Friends meetinghouse went through an extended identity crisis, the equivalent of an Amish Rumspringa, changing from a sex-segregated place of (often) silent prayer to a movie theatre (with mixed seating!!!), then a car garage, then a meetinghouse once again.*

I say, first, medicinal wine from a teaspoon, Then beer from a bottle. An' the next thing ya know, Your son is playin' for money (from The Music Man)

You decide - prophesy or progress? Read the Hoover Heads blog post by Hoover Library Director Thomas F. Schwartz and weigh in:  

What’s better? Wait quietly until the spirit moves you? Or help the spirit along with a music and a paid spiritual guide?  

What’s better? Repair souls or repair cars?

If you were a building, what would you want to be? A quiet house of worship? A movie theater? A body shop?

Friends Meetinghouse on the grounds of the Hoover National Historic Site. NPS Photo by John Tobiason

*Thankfully, the building’s soul was saved when the Hoover Birthplace Foundation bought, moved and restored it (redo circa 1964, pre-HGTV). Aunt Hannah would be so relieved! 

One fine night, they leave the pool hall,  Headin' for the dance at the Armory! Libertine men and Scarlet women! And Rag-time, shameless music That'll grab your son and your daughter With the arms of a jungle animal instinct! Mass-steria! Friends, the idle brain is the devil's playground! (from The Music Man)

STAY TUNED to learn how Robert Preston, the Broadway Music Man himself, became the paid flack for the President's Council on Physical Fitness, the group behind that awful Presidential Fitness Test, and:

Hear “GO YOU CHICKEN FAT”, the Youth Fitness song!

Read a student’s complaint about teachers having “midriff bulge”

Better Homes in America Guidebook, 1926, USDA National Agricultural Library

Capital Journal, Salem, OR, 5/10/1924

When I think of home, I think of... Herbert Hoover???

We’re spending lots of time at home these days. When I think of home, I never thought of Herbert Hoover - until now. Thanks to a post by Hoover Library AV archivist Lynn Smith, I learned that celebrating home ownership dates back to the 1920s, and was sparked by then Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover!  

One of Hoover’s goals as Secretary was to improve lives of all Americans, and he believed that better housing would contribute to quality family time and more time to relax (despite the fact that those of us stuck in our homes with our families during this pandemic may feel otherwise). 

Read the Hoover Heads “Better Living through Home Ownership” blog post to learn:  

How Hoover’s work predated HGTV with Demonstration Weeks and model homes hyping the latest in home tech and design (circa 1920s)

What Hoover did to standardize the size of bricks

The connection between the Better Homes movement and the Girl Scouts

FUN FACT:  Lynn Smith is the one who discovered what may be the earliest color film of the White House grounds and of Hoover himself: “It was like opening a door and going back in a time machine,” she said. 

Read the Washington Post story that went viral: Experts find what may be the earliest color film of the White House grounds  

The Original Meatless Monday

By Thomas Schwartz, Director, Hoover Presidential Library & Museum l  Hoover Heads 

A recent opinion piece advocated for the return of meatless Monday as a way of addressing climate change.  Certain animals release methane, a greenhouse-gas that adversely impacts the ozone.  Foregoing meat on Monday, according to the editorial board, would help the environment.  This view is hardly new.  A website was launched in 2003 called “Meatless Monday” stating: “Our goal is to reduce meat consumption by 15% for our personal health and the health of our planet.”  The origin of the phrase “Meatless Monday” was part of a larger initiative of Herbert Hoover as United States Food Administrator during World War I.  The idea of disciplining the body to abstain from certain foods dates back to ancient times and transcends any geographic setting.  Fasting tends to be associated with religious or philosophical doctrines that codified a structure to follow.  Hippocrates, considered the father of modern medicine, thought fasting benefited overall health.