For quite some time, as those who wander/stumble across this here outpost on the Internet hinterlands have surely guessed, I’ve been wondering: What’s the point of this blog at this point?

Varied feints, thrusts, and parries have been employed in search of a metaphorical heart/point to pierce, wild misses and sightless stabs the result. Without getting into the weeds of my mental journey (Because WHO would want to experience THAT? Certainly not me.), I’ve decided upon what might be, again might, a more satisfying conceptual framework rack to hang this here blogging hat upon.

Namely, Scot looks through old Albuquerque newspaper stories and riffs on history therein that isn’t widely known today. This set-up seemed to work well back in ye olde Twitter Days (remember those?), so what the Hell. Let’s give it a shot, starting with this front page “story” from the Albuquerque Journal on July 9, 1932.

There’s just a lot going on in these few column inches. For those of you who haven’t lived in Albuquerque for 80+ years, the Sunday motor boat races and scandalous “bathing beauty contest” were at what was then a small lake called “Conservancy Beach,” and is now a couple of small ponds called “Tingley Beach.” Rev. Harrison J. Vander Linden was evidently not the name of a character in a Booth Tarkington novel turned into an Orson Welles movie, but instead preached at the old First Baptist Church at Central and Broadway.

I don’t know if there is still an Albuquerque “Ministerial Alliance.” If there is, let me know as I’d love to attend their meetings. Notably, 1932 was during that “pre-Code” Hollywood period and entities such as the “Ministerial Alliance” eventually ended up successful in making movies less interesting through the Hays Office, Joseph Breen, and all that “Code.” As you probably know, the Code included rules on miscegenation that resulted in White actors playing non-White characters and studios making sure everyone in the audience knew the actor involved was white because…

Yeah, things were not perfect back in the “good ‘ol days.”

In case you’re wondering if Mayor Tingley made it to the good Reverend’s Sunday night sermon on “Sabbath Desecration,” alas he did not.

Surely consigned to Hell, the blasphemous Mayor not only failed to attend the sermon but instead attended a baseball game at NIGHT. It is slightly unclear from the story if sinners end up in a worse place in Hell through attendance at night games, versus godly day baseball, but it is clear that Tingley attended night baseball at a stadium that ended up being, like so much here including the “Beach,” named after him. Tingley Stadium is now that hard/softball field at 8th and Atlantic facing the main gate of the Zoo.