The Lowly Coat Hanger

You probably never gave a coat hanger much thought. I know I didn’t until my character was hanging her clothes in an armoire in chapter 7.  That’s when the question came up. What did they use to hang their clothes in 1904?

Most of us use clothes hangers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They lovingly support our clothing investment, some of our most prized possessions. But have you ever stopped to wonder where the idea originally came from? Who invented this humble little device? What year was it invented?

 

Some historians believe that Thomas Jefferson, our third President, invented the predecessor to the coat hanger. However, it seems likely that the earliest version, one with a hook and shoulder shape was developed later, after the invention of the coat hook by O.A. North on Connecticut in 1869.

 

It didn't take long for others to jump into the game and a variety of patents were filed with the US patents office. The one pictured below looks like it would have been use with a coat hook.

In 1903 at the Timberlake Wire and Novelty Company in Jackson Mississippi, Albert J. Parkhouse, an employee, decided that the coat hanger needed improving. He took a simple piece of wire and shaped two ovals and twisted them together, then finished it with a bent hook at the top so it could be hung over a bar. It was revolutionary. More clothes to be stored together in one place.
 

 More design ideas came along in the ensuing decades. The more rigid variation of the design (depicted below) incorporated wood and further wire support struts to add strength and durability.

 

 In 1932, Schuyler C. Hulett mounted cardboard tubes on the wire sections which supported the clothing in order to prevent excess wrinkling.

In 1965, Gerhard Wieckmann filed a patent for a revolutionary new hanger that still had a wire hook, however used a new design wooden frame. This wooden frame was developed to minimize the creases in clothing caused by wire hangers. This version of the hanger cost a little more, but would have a much greater lifespan. Then in 1967, J.H Batts filed a patent for a molded plastic hanger, the kind I like to well. The advantage was not only lower production costs but increased the durability. 

Golly, the things we take for granted. So there it is. Yes. Della could have had a hanger to hang up her clothes in 1904.

My Summer Reading Collection

You never know where you’ll find a great book. I found the first one on the Friends of the Library sale shelf. The second book, I’ve on my own shelf waiting to be read, the same with the last on the list. But the two in between came to my hand in a less common way. I was in the Dollar Tree store, wandering down an aisle and saw a shelf of books. It’s hard for me to pass any collection of books, so I pawed through the pile and picked two. Boy, am I glad I did.

Starting in June I read Oxygen by Carol Cassella. When I realized this book is about an woman anesthesiologist, written by a real life anesthesiologist, I knew the medical side of the story would be accurate. In the story, Dr. Marie Heaton, a tightly wound doctor, is sent into a tailspin when a child under her care unexpectedly dies while under anesthesia. Struggling to cope with the disaster that follows, she finally rallies and is determined to discover the underlying cause of the death. Ultimately she is lead to realize she’s been betrayed by the person she would least suspect. Highly recommended.

Memories Can Be Murder by Connie Shelton. I’ve enjoyed a number of Shelton’s Charlie Parker series. her characters are like real people, and I like the way she plots her stories. In this one Charlie finds a notebook of her father’s which opens old wounds and sends her on a quest to find out what really caused the plane crash that killed her parents.

The Striver’s Row Spy by Jason Overstreet. This book is an interesting peek into the post-WWI era of black America. The protagonist, Sidney Temple, a man of color in 1919, is tapped my J. Edgar Hoover to be one of the 1st African-American agents. His assignment is to move into Harlem, and infiltrate the organization of Marcus Garvey, a man who is advocating that the colored population relocate to Liberia. Hoover wants Temple to find and report incriminating evidence against Garvey.

Zodiac Station by Tom Harper. This is a tale of sabotage, suspicion, and paranoia among a group of scientists on a remote Arctic island of Utgard. It’s a good book to read during the hot summer. The description of Arctic cold and the difficulties of living in that sort of climate almost make you shiver. The science and the puzzle are fascinating.

Night Passage by Robert B. Parker is the first Jesse Stone novel. While reading this book I kept hearing Tom Selleck’s voice. He did such a great job of portraying Stone’s manner of investigating in those movies about corruption in the small New England town of Paradise.

Hope you find something here you'd like.

Visalia Library Book Festival 2018

The Book Festival at the library in Visalia was a huge success with lots of browsers and many, many children. Tulare-Kings Writers were well represented as you can see by the pictures. The library plans to make it an annual event.

Celebrate Library Week 2018

In Meiners Oaks, where I lived during the biggest portion of my school years, our library was housed in a Quonset hut less than two blocks away from my home. I wish I had a picture of it. It was a branch of the Ventura County library system and is long-gone now.

I spent many evenings there, especially during the summer months, perched on a stool sampling books I wanted to read. The librarian was a older lady (I thought she was ancient) by the name of Mrs. Lett-Haynes. She was a not only nice to children, but often made suggestions about books she thought I’d like. And during my high school years, she kept an eye on the subject matter I chose. But I’ll get to that later.

During 5th and 6th grade, I favored animal books—Spike of Swift River, Lassie, Lassie Come Home, Call of the Wild, Bambi, Black Beauty—all the kids classics. When the movie Little Women came out, I launched into Louisa May Alcott’s books and read them all. I also became interested in historical novels, like the Hornblower series, and those about well-known people, such as Lady Jane Grey. I even named my cat Emma after a character in a book.

After I saw movie From Here to Eternity, I decided to read the book. At the time, the book was considered unsuitable for someone my age. One day Mrs. Lett-Haynes stopped my mother on the street and said, “I thought you ought to know Gloria is reading From Here to Eternity.” My mother never censored the books her children read, and she told her it was okay, since I’d read the first half when I was visiting my sister in Lake County.

If it hadn’t been for the little library in a Quonset hut, I probably wouldn’t have been able to read all those books, far too many to mention. Libraries, how I love them.

CELEBRATE LIBRARY WEEK!

A Calculated Risk, A Deena Powers Mystery

There’s such a great sense of elation and relief when a book you’ve been working on for two years is finally finished and published. On the other hand, it’s like saying goodbye to your neighbor. The people I’ve created are as real to me as the people next door. In most cases, I know the characters better. And I like them, even those with serious flaws.

A Calculated Risk is available on Amazon right now, but will soon be available as an e-book.

Marriage and motherhood aren’t enough for Deena Powers. Anxious to re-establish herself as a capable professional investigator, she opens an agency in Four Creeks where she now lives with her husband, Avis “Buzz” Walker.

One of her first cases is for the Grimes Corporation, a property line dispute, simple enough, but when the CEO is killed in a plane crash, she soon learns that farming is not a tame business. While juggling life as a working mother, she finds herself drawn into the turmoil within the grieving family.

To complicate matters, a shadow from her past reemerges, posing a threat to her and her family, and she is forced to summon the courage to do the unthinkable.

Murder in Visalia

One October morning in 1979, a stamp and coin dealer was gunned down in his Visalia shop. There were no witnesses. Persistent police efforts connected it to another death two months earlier when the body of a Fresno coin dealer was found locked in the trunk of his car. This true crime story, recounted by Ronn M. Couillard, Assistant District Attorney at the time, and now, retired judge, lays out the twists and turns of the investigation, the court proceedings, and a conclusion that almost didn’t happen.

This book will be available at Taste of the Arts in Visalia on Oct. 14, 2017

A PI Caper Worth Reading

When Mystery Readers of Visalia picked the theme of foreign intrigue for the month of September, I went to my book shelf thinking I must have a book that would fit the category. We could pick a story that had taken place in a foreign country or written was by an author from another country. Sure enough, I found Dying Day by James Mitchell. Written in 1988, it’s one of his older mysteries. This author wrote some 36 other mystery/suspense novels under several pseudonyms, including James Munro.

The main character in Dying Day is Ron Hoggart, a London based private investigator who specialized in finding things for people. In this case he was hired to find a lost airplane, one that had been lost 40 years earlier, a daunting task. But with the help of his friend and sidekick, Dave, he digs into finding information about the plane and the former RAF pilots involved.

As he pursues a trail that leads all the way back to World War II and the Berlin Airlift, it’s evident that something very valuable was on the lost plane, and someone is willing to kill to keep Hoggart from finding it. Within a few weeks, the bodies pile up. Each time he interviews someone with information he needs, they end up dead. Before long, he finds himself a target.

At the center of the puzzle is the pilot, Bill Day. The question that surfaces is whether or not this Royal Air Force hero had turned smuggler and thief before landing at the bottom of the ocean off Scotland. Hoggart stalks the ghosts of wartime England from Italy, Scotland and southern France to uncover the reason behind the murders, a fortune in gold.

I enjoyed this book. It’s a fast-paced caper designed to keep the reader turning pages. I liked the puzzle, the action, and the humor. The first-person style was fresh and lively. I’ll put James Mitchell on my list of writers I want to read again.