Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1921-09-06
FAMILIES OF NEW YORK
BUILDING OWN HOMES
Real Ghost Alarms Subway
Passengers in Downtown
District Other Gossip of
the LII Old Town
BY JESSIE HENDERSON
(Leased Wire Service to The Journal.)
Copyright, 1921

Copyright, I92l.)
NEW YORK, Sept. 3.-Formerly
1t was supposed that when electric
lights came in, ghosts went out.
There seemed little room for phan-
toms between the trolleys and taxls
of place SO busy as, for example,
New York. You could not quite fig
ure a wrath trailing phosphorescen-
garments round the elevated plat
forms downtown or blocking traffic
with transparent forefnger at For
ty-second and Broadway.
But the germ of unrest has infect
ed even the Beyond. When ghosts
return these times, do they seek the
gloomy calm of messy manse or
country lane? They do not. They
come galunphing right where things
are thickest and most modern. In
New York they are haunting the troll
ley cars.
For some evenings ghost has
been annoying passengers on the
municipal trolleys that run through
the borough Of Richmond. Some
times it merely rises up from behind
a cemetery wall in the vicinity. At
other times it canters down the read
with a gravestone on its back. But
when it actually hoped aboard a
trolley empty, except for the conduc
tor, and attempted to ride as a dead
head without paying any fare. nine
teen stalwart young citizens decided
enough was plenty.
The trolley conductor, who had
f1oated out one window as the ghost
1oated in another, was able painting
ly to describe the spot where the APP
partition had boarded his car. At that
spot the doughty nineteen waited all
night and when, just before dawn,
they one and all glimpsed the spook,
it was only natural they should let
fly with bricks, boots and whatever
other bric-a-brac came to hand I'm
fortunately, their missiles passed
right through the ghost and also
through the windows of car barn.
nevertheless failed to dampen the ar
dor of these investigators. They are
determined more than ever to get the
ghost whose existence is now more
than ever well established, for, If you
doubt it, they can show you the holes
in the car barn windows.
Ghosts Nearer Home
Meanwhile, several hundred fam
lilies from the Bronx are laying"
ghosts of their own. The specters
which they attack are the rent and
housing problems.
On the far edge, toward the sound,
they are building homes with their
own hands-father, mother, and the
youngsters all doing their share with
an occasional lift from a real car
penter. The division of an old estate
into building lots offered the oppor-
tunity. Bronxites. weary of high
rent and crowded space, are doing the
rest. Thus in the most sophisticated
town of the world the human family
has gone straight back to the cave
period and is fashioning it's own roof
tree with it's own fingers. And, Incl
denta!ly,, revelling in the fact. A
fair-sized village has risen in the last
two months, with dwellings far less
queer and quaky than one might
suppose.
Hotfoot also on economy's trail
are the people in Brooklyn who
formed a retail grocers' syndicate.
The idea is to get back to normalcy
in the matter of high cost of living;
or, specifically, to cut one-third from
retail grocery prices.
Perhaps one reason why groceries
have been high hereabouts was re-
vealed at the inquiry into graft in
the city markets. Spectators wept
when widow told how sixteen hun
dred dollars had been demanded of
her for the privilege of occupying
a small booth and of her efforts to
raise the money, although three
children and two invalids were de-
pendent on the proceeds from the
booth. At the same moment, various
public women gave it rs their opin-
Thousand dollars a week alimony
was not necessarily asking too much.
They felt that a woman could easily
spend five thousand a week without
wasting dollar-now that, among
Dther thlngs-steam yachts, and
Paris apartments come so high.
Another request for alimony has
brought sout the fact that even
though a mans wife fails to have a
hot dinner ready for him, this is no
reason against granting alimony to
her. She can even say in writing
that she believes in treating a hus-
band rough" and get away with it..
Indeed, she can get away with a
weekly thirty-five dollars and coun-
sci fees as well.
Girl Gags Herself
For the rest, the week has trundled
along easily enough with 15-year-
old Marion Goebel swimming across
Long Island sound and back, towing
five hundred and twenty pounds of
canoe and passengers; the discovery
of a 14-year-old girl bound and gag
ged in a doorway and the further
discovery that she had bound and
gagged herself because in the movies
a little girl, so found, was Treated
to ice cream; the apparit;on OF q
young man clad only in conscious
rectitude strolling down Bronx
road and smoking a cigarette-till
the police intruded and the case of
Mrs. Ellen Mackless.
Mrs. Mackless, arrested for disor-
derby conduct, spent four days in a