Ancient Romans didn’t have weekends, at least not in the way we think of them. In the republican era, they lived an eight-day week, capped by a work-free market day known as the Nundines.
Throughout the entire year, however, the weeks were filled with feriae — annual holy days, public festivals and religious feasts. On such holidays, public business ceased, courts closed, and laborers, including many enslaved people, got at least some time off work.
Romans crammed their calendars with holidays, even multiple ones observing the same thing. On the 5th of Quintilis (July), for instance, they celebrated Poplifugia — a holiday with obscure origins. It supposedly commemorated a mass exodus from Rome when neighboring Latin tribes attacked the nascent republic around 385 BCE.
Then on July 7, Romans held Caprotinia, a festival remembering their return to the city after Marcus Furious Camillus defeated those same Latin enemies two days later. A third holiday followed on July 8 called Vitulatio, a joyous day of thanksgiving set aside to honor the very same victory. By the end of the republic, these July festivals were overshadowed by a new multi-day feast, Ludi Apollinares — games in honor of the god Apollo.
The main takeaway here, dear reader, is that everyone living in ancient Rome got the second week of July off work.
We’re not so fortunate today, although many Americans take vacation around the Fourth of July. I love it when the holiday falls near a weekend, as it does this year. I’m guessing many fellow Munsonians are like me and have little motivation to work this Friday. Why not a four-day weekend?
Our forebears came to a similar conclusion when the Fourth fell on a Friday a century ago in 1924. Many Munsonians took a long weekend. The Morning Star hoped that “Muncie will celebrate the Fourth of July in a quiet and sane manner.”
Most businesses closed, as did “each of the courts of justice and the post office.” Grocers and butchers operated for a half day. Only parks and restaurants remained open as usual. Muncie’s theaters, however, expanded hours.
Like most Fourths in the 1920s, there wasn’t a city-wide celebration in ‘24. Muncie’s gas boom era tradition of grand Independence Day festivals had died out during World War I. The big municipal fireworks extravaganzas we know today didn’t begin until the Great Depression.
Nevertheless, most Munsonians honored Independence in 1924 with a leisure-filled day.
The weather was nice — rain free and in the low 70s.
“Aside from celebrating with a great variety of fireworks,” the Press observed, many residents “spent the day and evening in city parks, at the movies, swimming, playing tennis and golf, at picnics … dancing and just riding in the family automobile.” Some locals headed “for the lakes in the northern part of the state and will not return until Sunday or Monday.”
The Star wrote that some residents went “to Middletown, others to Greenville, Ohio, and the bulk to Funk’s Speedway to attend the automobile program.” Today we know Funk’s as Winchester Speedway, a half-mile race track in nearby Randolph County.
Frank Funk ran holiday races often on his oval track and July 4, 1924, was no exception.
Fourteen-thousand spectators from across east central Indiana packed Frank’s that Fourth. After time trials, racers competed for $3,000 in two races.
Driving a Powell Special, Claude Fix of Greensburg came in third in the 40-mile heat and first in the 60-mile. The races ended in a spectacular fireworks display and a “glittering array of high class vaudeville acts, mirth, music and novelties.”
Back in Muncie, some honored the day with baseball.
The Star reported that “Shafer Chapel A.M.E. Church won two games in the Colored Sunday School Baseball League.” Both were played at McCulloch Park, on what is today Gainbridge Field. Shafer Chapel beat Bethel A.M.E. in the first game, 11-5 and crushed Union Baptist in the second, 10-0.
About 100 Munsonians caught a semi-pro game that afternoon at North Walnut Street Park, about where Central’s Field House is today. The Muncie Athletics played nine innings against the Marion Boosters in what the Star dubbed as “the worst game of the season.”
Although Muncie won 15-0, the match apparently was very boring, according to the Press. “Forty-one fans stayed to the bitter end, though it cannot be imaged why.” Muncie firefighter Herb Morrett “was the big stick artist for the home crew, with four safeties, of which, one was a three bagger, one was a two base hit, with two singles, six times up.”
Munsonians that weekend also prepared for the production of a two-reel comedy film titled, “Muncie’s Hero.” The movie was basically a Muncie Morning Star marketing ploy. The paper boasted it would feature many “familiar and beautiful spots of the city and vicinity.” The film starred Munsonian Kathryn DeHaven. It was shot around town the week after the Fourth. A mock car accident was even staged at the corner of Main and Walnut streets.
Just like today, Fourth of July fireworks burst incessantly in the skies over Muncie. In an attempt to curtail excess, the city banned sales of incendiaries before July 2. However, “despite the law prohibiting the shooting of fireworks before July 4,” the Star wrote, “there were hundreds of violations.”
On the evening of July 3, 1924, Muncie descended into fiery bedlam.
The Press reported that many Munsonians out and about downtown “were compelled to seek shelter” when “gangs of celebrators threw firecrackers and torpedoes at their feet.” War ensued when groups of teenage boys “divided and threw giant crackers, bombs and torpedoes across the street at each other.” Some pulled guns and fired blanks. The only arrest was “one little boy who was caught with a revolver.”
Some hooligans even made flash bombs out of potash and sulfur, “of such size and powder as to be dangerous to persons within several feet of the explosion.” A Union Traction streetcar was knocked “out of commission temporarily by a jar caused when it ran over one of these bombs on the track at Charles Street.”
To everyone’s relief, the violent merrymaking had run its course by midnight. The actual Fourth of ‘24 was relatively calm. The Star reported that “Independence Day yesterday was one of the safest and sanest in many years.” While the “observance was accompanied by quite a bit of noise, no accidents of any kind had been reported.”
Thankfully Muncie honors the Fourth of July a century later with a little more civility. I wish you a happy, quiet and sane Fourth of July!
Chris Flook is a Delaware County Historical Society board member and a senior lecturer of media at Ball State University.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: ByGone Muncie: The city's Independence Day celebration of ‘24
Most Popular
Comments / 0