Good Soup

Published Sep 5, 2024, 9:00 AM

Mundane actions often have a curious backstory, as these two seemingly innocent tales from history will prove.

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Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. When the stock market crashed in nineteen twenty nine, a country that was in the midst of the Roaring twenties, a time of excess and excitement, ground to a halt. In Chicago, a booming downtown full of bustling business people transformed almost overnight into long lines of citizens, endlessly waiting. People waited for work, waited for money, and most importantly, waited for food. In November nineteen thirty, a soup kitchen sprang up on State Street to feed the hundreds of thousands of job bless Chicagoans. It had no name, just a huge marquee out front that read free soup, coffee and doughnuts for the unemployed. Every morning, the State Street Soup Kitchen served up three hundred and fifty loaves of bread, one hundred dozen rolls, and thirty pounds of coffee, lunch, and dinner was hundreds of gallons of fresh made soup. No one was required to prove their financial need, and no hungry soul was ever denied a second helping. It was a mystery. The whole world was broken, and yet somehow this unnamed soup kitchen, not affiliated with any major companies or charities, had the means to feed over two thousand people each day. Nearly a week later, Chicago's soup kitchen mystery was finally sold. The newspapers reported that the Windy City's big hearted benefactor was none other than the notorious mobster Al Capone. Despite his reputation as a murderous grifter, helping the common man wasn't always out of character for Public Enemy Number one. He'd been giving handouts to orphans and widows as the country crashed into the Great Depression. Even before the economy crashed. He thought of himself as kind of a capitalist philanthropist. He was a businessman, he said, who simply gave the people of Chicago what they wanted, never mind that what they wanted was alcohol made illegal under prohibition. Capone acted like he funded the soup kitchen out of the goodness of his own heart, and while there may be some truth to this, the reality was more complicated. Just like when he sold alcohol to beer craving Midwestern nurse during Prohibition, Capone rarely did anything without something being in it for him. Shortly before the stock market crashed, Capone had been accused of perpetrating a gangman shooting the press dubbed the Saint Valentine's Day massacre. On February fourteenth of nineteen twenty nine, seven members of the North Side Gang, one of al Capone's biggest rivals, were found to death execution style in a Chicago garage, and while he was never found guilty of orchestrating the hit, most people believed that Capone was behind the attack. Shocked by the brutality of the massacre, public opinion turned against al Capone. By opening the Soup Kitchen in nineteen thirty, Capone thought that he could get the public, if not the police, back on his side, and not surprisingly, it worked. Al Capone achieved nearly full hero status for his generosity, even if the bounty of food and funds he offered wasn't exactly his. You see, as part of his racket, al Capone bribed and bullied supplies out of businesses under his protection. In one case, a grocery store claimed that he sent a shipment of ducks to another charity to be put into Christmas baskets for the poor. Somehow, the ducks mysteriously ended up in al Capone's kitchen. Despite its dubious food sources, the soup kitchen continued operating until April of nineteen thirty one, when it abruptly closed its doors. Just a few months later, al Capone was found guilty of federal tax evasion, which put him in prison and put an end to his control over Chicago's vice. Whether people believe that he was a good hearted Robin Hood or the Napoleon of crime, Capone's kitchen did some real good in a city down on its luck. Still, because of its association with Capone, eating at the kitchen was sometimes a trip into the city's cd underbelly. For example, Thanksgiving dinner of nineteen thirty, nearly five thousand Chicagoans celebrated with a hot meal of beef stew and cranberry sauce at Capone's kitchen. The reason why it was beef stew and not traditional turkey well. Earlier that week, someone had stolen one thousand turkeys from a grocery shipment, and al Capone was a cheater, a gambler, and a murderer. But by serving turkey, he would have reinforced that reputation, and he wanted to make clear to the world that he was no Thanksgiving thief. Hear ye, hear ye. This tavern dust possess beds of uncomfortable quality. The location is poor, the breakfast inadequate, and the stabling fees unconscionable. This humble writer suggests that ye seek accommodations elsewhere. That's the type of review that you might have found on Yelp or trip Advisor, if either service had existed in seventeen eighty nine. Unfortunately, there was no Internet and no review aggregate sites available during America's earliest days, but that didn't stop one dissatisfied tourist from recording his opinions. Just a few months after the constitution was ratified, a former Revolutionary war officer embarked on a unique journey. He wanted to get to know the nation he had helped create, and thought there was no better way to do that than by seeing America from the road. While most well off tourist vacation in places like Saratoga and Niagara Falls, he would be stepping off the beaten track to the more distant rural communities that comprise New England and the American South. During the journey, he took detailed notes remarking on everything from the quality of the roads he traveled to the people he met. But his most brutal commentary was reserved for the inns and taverns where he spent the night. The officer's private journals contain one scathing review after another. He wrote that Jacob's tavern in Thompson was and I quote not a good house, often intolerable, bad road, while mister Allen's inn was and I quote a very indifferent house without stabling. Meanwhile, Buck Tavern and Delaware garnered some rare, if not faint, praise when he called it a better house than the appearances indicate. Now, these negative reviews make up the bulk of the officer's diary from the period, and that might tempt you to write him off as a fussy traveler. Some tourists just can't be pleased after all. But more likely he put so much emphasis on accommodations because he knew how important they would become as the country grew. Inns and taverns have been an important form of the infrastructure going back to the days of the Roman Empire. Travelers couldn't get very far without a place to rest and feed their horses, so before the advent of railroads, these businesses were truly critical for long distance travel. Along with safe roads, they made a territory a nation. At the same time, inns served a secondary function as public gathering places. They were the spots that locals would head to for a drink and a meal at the end of the day, the places where people would swap stories and discuss which politicians they supported. Initially, most inns were simply public houses or pubs, or you could book a room for the night. Now technically licensed taverns in early America were supposed to offer a minimum of three beds and stables for six horses, but as the officer discovered in his travels, many towns didn't have a single business that met those standards. But after his visit things started to change. Local mayors were so embarrassed to have him receive poor lodgings in their community. They immediately enacted plans to erect more substantial hotels. And that's without him ever bothering to publish his opinions. Truth be told, he didn't have to because their guest wasn't just any revolutionary war officer. He was none other than President George Washington, who had just been elected to his first term in office. His tours from seventeen eighty nine to seventeen ninety one were away for him to see the country that he'd be leading and to meet the people that he would serve as president. And thanks to those tours, America is now full of hotels that once hosted the first president. Many of them proudly advertised the fact, even if Washington himself didn't have glowing things to say about them. The good news is you can always check for yourself. Washington's private journals are all online now, as accessible as any Yelp review, So the next time you're planning some travel, consider checking them out for some recommendations. After all, who would you trust more some anonymous wanna be travel blogger or America's first President. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities, subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.

Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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