It's a P3.18 Reader Round-up!
It's a P3.18 Reader Round-up!
Our flour bomber circles the globe, you let us know what the Real Thing is, and we (elegantly!) call back to almost every post so far
It’s a surprise Fan of History piece here at the end of “Extra” Mustard Week! Really, we’re just as surprised as you are…
Here is something we belatedly realized about a month before launching this newsletter, having already put in about four months of work:
Starting a writing project that emphasizes community participation without having a preexisting audience is either, in the timeless estimation of Jaws’ sportfishing sociopath Quint, “very smart or very dumb.”
But that was what we wanted to do, Substack seemed like a wonderful place to do it, so we clicked “Publish” and took off swimming, three barrels be damned.
Less than two months later, we have a Project 3.18 community large enough and deep enough and fun enough and brilliant enough to bring added richness and color to the stories we tell here, something we hoped would happen “in the long run,” which has turned out to be more of a short jog.
So, thanks to you, here are a few updates and contributions to wrap up a fantastic week.
A quick update on “Surprise Begonias.” We started our Fan of History project with Ten Cent Beer Night, and once again, this resonated. We’ve connected with TCBN scholars and creative producers whose knowledge exposes us as the dilettantes we are, and we’ve heard some wonderful details from folks at the game.
There is a running joke in Cleveland that approximately half the city’s population once claimed to have been present at Ten Cent Beer Night, while the other half all attended Len Barker’s 1981 perfect game, but most of the folks we heard from seem legit. A trusted source even connected us to one young man (in 1974) who was out on the field that night, and we’ve scored an upcoming interview.
So, lots of good things to come there, and please do keep commenting or emailing us if you are just now coming upon “Surprise Begonias.” We’re putting together some TCBN follow-ups for June, so there’s plenty of time remaining to chip in.
Speaking of 1981, after we published “The Plane,” reader Martin E contributed the next piece of the puzzle: details of another flour-bombing incident, one that occurred while anti-apartheid protesters in New Zealand created chaos at a rugby contest between the famed All Blacks and the visiting South African team. And this time, someone got hit. He was okay, don’t worry; he’s apparently a farmer now.
Against that “surreal backdrop,” the game apparently went on. After All Black “prop” (no idea what that means) Gary Knight was felled by a flour bomb (friendly fire incident), the South African captain asked if New Zealand even had an air force. They sure did, but this was not a government op:
“Two protesters, Marx Jones and Grant Cole, hired a Cessna aircraft and while protesters at the ground fired flares onto the playing field, Jones and Cole peppered Eden Park with flour bombs in an attempt to halt the game.”
Gary Knight’s second act in agribusiness strongly suggests that the “bombs” prepared by Jones and Cole were more like flour bomblets and not ten-pound sacks of murder, but the New Zealand incident does suggest that “flour bombing” was a phenomenon associated with political protest. And there was plenty to protest in America in 1971, a time when many troops remained in Vietnam despite the plans for “Vietnamization,” the ultimate withdrawal of American forces in 1972, to name but one flour-worthy societal concern.
The difference is that in New Zealand, it was overwhelmingly obvious what was being protested. In America, the Plane did not drop so much as one informational pamphlet. Still a mystery, but it feels like we’re making progress.
With “Good Legs and Guts,” reader/creator
remembered Coca Cola Beach Pants (though, full transparency, he’d seen them at a lake). After some persuasion, Mike provided the details and the receipt:“What I would have called "hip huggers" back in the day, red and white of course, flared, draw-string tie, with the damn Coca-Cola logo and "IT'S THE REAL THING" plastered all over (and I mean ALL over) them. For both men (supposedly straight) and women.
They were a thing. But no pockets, so screw that.”
So, two thoughts here:
Lord, those were some ugly, ugly pants, but, glass houses etc. Here are the pants we regularly wore in high school and well into college before some concerned friends made us stop. Plenty of pockets on those bad boys, we will say.
Why were Coca Cola beach pants included in the list of acceptable attire at the minor-league Dallas Spurs’ Hot Pants Night in 1971? They are practically the opposite of hot pants. They cover everything. They look like they would be hot and uncomfortable–why would anyone consider pants as beach wear? What is the connective tissue between these and a pair of teal velveteen shorts?
The latter being what reader Melissa L found in the closet of her memories of 1971, sharing her homecoming dance attire:
“…a very dressy hot pants outfit which I got at Saks Fifth Ave. It had teal velveteen hot pants with a purple and teal ‘popcorn’ material top attached. It actually was very tasteful considering it had hot pants! I did wear pantyhose.”
Somewhere, a retired Chicago Tribune style reporter nods. “Yes, to flatter the leg. Exactly.”
Another reader/creator,
, was able to cite the impact of both hot pants (sorry, “shorts,”) and feminist literature on her own life that year.“In 1971, when I was 15, I saved money from my after school/Saturday job to buy a pair of powder blue corduroy shorts - I hated the term hot pants even then - with pink patch pockets. I also spent my money on a subscription to Ms. Magazine, still quite young in 1971. I hated being whistled at but I wanted to wear what I chose.”
Great job, team!
We’d love to get to the point of doing a follow-up Fan of History post once a week, adding ephemera and personal takes and even new parts of the story as submitted by Project 3.18’s readers. We’re not quite ready for that yet, but we’re so much closer to there than we thought we’d be. Which is amazing.
If you add such comments, or send such emails in the future, know that there is a good chance they’ll reappear in this format. If you’d like to share but want to be anonymous or not have us link to your work, if you are yourself publishing on the platform, you should tell us that, otherwise we’re probably going to try and share the eyeballs.
We are still looking for anyone who witnessed the April 30, 1988 “Shove Heard Round the World,” as outlined in “65 Seconds,” but all this stuff happened decades ago so we can be patient. If someone credibly comes forward as “the mustard thrower,” we’re open to letting them do a guest post.
Strangely, we have not heard from anyone who attended Opening Day in New York in 1907, as recounted in “Pink Tea at the Polo Grounds.” Come on, folks, help us out. We need to know what police commissioner Theodore A. Bingham was really like.
And, since we’ve come this far, did you know that we kicked things off here at Project 3.18 with a three-part story on the New York Mets’ inglorious-to-glorious journey through the 1960s? We’ve got Jimmy Breslin, Ed Sullivan, the ‘69 pennant race as a slasher flick, and a visual gag that we still think is our best work to date.
Oh, and Gary Frownfelter emailed us.1
Two Housekeeping Things
And if you’re following along after this big week, we’d love to have you subscribe!
Subscribing means one story or part of a story in your email inbox at least once a week, and the regulars would probably tell you that just-one-story weeks have not exactly been the norm around here. Regulars—we see you, and you are loved.
Finally, thank you so much to those of you who offer feedback on our stories via likes, Restacks, shares etc. It’s informing (and affirming). As we hope everyone has seen this week, a Project 3.18 story can be about almost anything, so if you want more retrospectives on 1970s fashion or tales from a time when there were only 45 states, or, we suppose, stories about actual baseball games, feedback is how you point us in the right direction.
See you Monday for the regularly-scheduled next episode of Everybody Hates Dave Pallone.
Okay, fine—we emailed him. But he wrote back!
"I missed the flour bomb post!" could have been an actual quote from Woody Woodward.
I missed the flour bomb post! Oh for a Cessna of my own! King Arthur and I would risk arrest. Good that I do not own a Cessna, truly.