In January 1939, Lyra Ferguson of Missouri left her job as a church secretary and took off on a tour of the United States. Her goal was to spend a week working in all 48 states. Alaska and Hawaii weren't yet states, so she didn't have to worry about those. She was equipped with only "a new automobile, a small wardrobe, a little pistol and $200." I'm not sure of her exact age, but news reports said she was "over 40."
She made advance plans to secure a job in a handful of states, but mostly she just arrived and tried to find employment. She also tried to find jobs in industries that seemed representative of each state.
Ultimately she managed to find one-week jobs in 45 states but failed to get work in New York, Nevada, or Arizona.
Her plan had been to write a book about her adventures, but in a later interview she said her attempt at a book was "terrible." So that plan fell through.
However, she did take film footage of her entire journey and later edited this together into a movie which she showed to various groups. Unfortunately I can't find any evidence that this movie still exists.
Below is a list of her jobs in 42 states. I couldn't find any info about her jobs in Arkansas, Colorado, or West Virginia.
Alabama: performed at the assembly exercises of the Tuskegee Institute
California: worked for an overall company at the San Francisco fair
Connecticut: typewriter factory
Delaware: tanned kid skins in a tannery
Florida: packed oranges
Georgia: cafeteria
Idaho: dug potatoes
Illinois: made wax fruits and flowers
Indiana: manufactured refrigerators
Iowa: pen factory
Kansas: packed dog food
Kentucky: ironed shirts in a laundromat
Louisiana: packed shrimp
Maine: helped out in a lighthouse
Maryland: tea packing factory
Massachusetts: served as attendant in an insane asylum
Michigan: maid on a Great Lakes steamer during tulip festival
Minnesota: sewed buttons on suits
Mississippi: shucked oysters
Missouri: social hostess at a hotel
Montana: cooked on a dude ranch
Nebraska: booked well-known artists for an agency
New Hampshire: paper factory
New Jersey: cosmetics factory
New Mexico: sewed labels on ties made by Native Americans
North Carolina: weaved homespun suiting
North Dakota: picked chickens
Ohio: worked in the printing room of a newspaper
Oklahoma: wiped windshields at a gas station
Oregon: packed salmon
Pennsylvania: made chocolate candy at Hersheys
Rhode Island: baking powder factory
South Carolina: textile industry
South Dakota: took pictures of the Black Hills for the association of commerce
Tennessee: washed turnip greens
Texas: delivered packages during the Christmas holidays
Utah: wove blankets in a woolen mill
Vermont: helped make maple syrup
Virginia: weighed peanuts
Washington: worked at a general store in a logging camp
Wisconsin: milked cows for a dairy
Wyoming: worked at Yellowstone
Pittsburgh Press - Dec 24, 1939
Weekly Kansas City Star - May 8, 1940
Sedalia Democrat - Sep 23, 1941
The only follow-up info I can find about her was that in 1956 she had just returned home from a world tour during which she collected souvenirs from the countries she visited. She obviously really liked to travel!
Did this really happen twice in the space of a year, in a manner that became noticeable to a newspaper? Or was it the invention of a bored and desperate reporter, then copied by another?
Source for first item: Lindsay Gazette (Lindsay, California) 31 May 1935, Fri Page 11
Source for second item: Tampa Bay Times (St. Petersburg, Florida) 29 May 1936, Fri Page 2
This large event seems to have vanished from 2021 memory--at least judging by the paucity of Google references, most of which are for the accompanying song that was created for the occasion (below). One thing we can affirm: it did not bring Peace on Earth.
Mail clerks raised money for preserving their mascot and he was taken to the Post Office Department's headquarters in Washington, DC, where he was on placed on display for the public. In 1904 the Department added Owney to their display at the St. Louis, Missouri, World’s Fair. In 1911, the department transferred Owney to the Smithsonian Institution. In 1926, the Institution allowed Owney to travel to the Post Office Department’s exhibit at the Sesquicentennial exhibit in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. From 1964-1992, he was displayed at the Smithsonian museum now known as the National Museum of American History and in 1993 he moved to the new National Postal Museum, where he remains on display next to a fabricated Railway Post Office train car.
Roy Mack set off from New York on May 2, 1939, intending to walk to San Francisco. To make this more of a challenge, he decided to do this while living on a diet of only milk — about six quarts of it a day. He said he wanted to "prove you can live on milk." The media dubbed him the "human milk bottle."
By August he had reached Oklahoma City and had also lost 10 pounds in weight. He maintained this was due to all the exercise, not his milk diet.
I have no idea if he ever did reach San Francisco, because I can't find any news reports about him after Oklahoma City. Perhaps the milk diet got the better of him.
Introduced circa 1962 by Lyman Metal Products, the Turnpike Toll Gun allowed drivers to shoot quarters and nickels into toll baskets. I imagine that, nowadays, whipping one of these things out at a toll booth could get you in trouble. But it's still possible to pick one up on eBay if you gotta have one.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.