Moe, Larry - the cheese!

Whenever the subject of time travel comes up, I always say that I’d like to go back to America in the early part of the 20th Century. I’d like to watch guys like Walter Johnson and Ty Cobb play baseball, partly for the historical significance, but mostly to see how good they were – really.

In a lot of ways, it was a screwy time in our history, and I’d have to be careful not to come back too close to Prohibition or the Great Depression. I figure anyplace between 1905 and 1925 or the mid 1930s, unless I went back with a lot of money, in which case it wouldn’t matter.

I’m not sure where my fascination for that period of time comes from. Maybe it’s my childhood memories of watching The Three Stooges after school? Some of the early shorts with Curly are little snapshots of life in America in those days, and not all of it is good. What I always found fascinating was that, no matter how poor “the boys” were, they always wore suits. Sometimes they were making soup out of their own shoes or eating half an egg and a ham bone – but they were the best dressed paupers in town.

One of my favorites that I don’t see all that much is Cash and Carry (1937), where they find a coffee can full of change in a pile at a junk yard - where they live. They take it, thinking that they have found money, but in fact, it belongs to a kid and his sister who are saving it for a leg operation. Later, after they mistakenly break into a Federal bank, they meet Franklin Roosevelt who empathizes with the kid’s condition and gets him his operation. It ends with the Stooges saluting and saying, “Thanks Mister President. You’re a swell guy!” If a similar thing happened today, you’d be saluting Bush from the inside of a Federal Penitentiary – with one finger.

In Half Shot Shooters (1936) they think they’re standing in a bread line and instead are in line to be inducted into the military. They wind up with a manic depressive staff sergeant who is continually outwitted by Curly. Their half-assed Manual of Arms results them shooting three geese. War was fun in those days. At least we knew who we were fighting.

In Dizzy Doctors (1937) they roam the streets selling Brighto. They think it’s auto polish, but it is actually medicine (snake oil, really). You could try selling medicine on the streets now, but I’d bet that your career would be shorter than a Stooges film.

In The Sitter-Downers (1937) they go on strike because their prospective father-in-law will not consent to their marriage to Florabell, Corabell and Dorabell. Does anybody even ask the in-laws anymore?

In A Pain in the Pullman (1937) they take a monkey on a train and he wreaks havoc with the passengers and the train itself. Think you could get a monkey on a train today? Do you know what a Pullman is? Who travels by train anyway? You’d have to be a monkey to want to travel by train.

Then, there's False Alarms (1936) where they play firemen in a horse-drawn fire "truck". A lot of houses must have burned down in the 30s. Especially after Curly rolls the hoses out into the street and they are cut in pieces by a passing streetcar. A streetcar?

In No Census, No Feeling (1940) they are door-to-door census takers for the government. “To the census!” is their battle cry, as they peruse the neighborhood for four cents a head. Frustrated, they wind up at a football game, figuring that a stadium full of people is a gold mine. Curly calculates that a hundred thousand times four cents is “a dollar and a half - that's without the tax." Typical government workers.

Speaking of football, in Three Little Pigskins (1934) they play three professionals hired to play for a college by some gangsters who want to make money betting on the game. Of course, they aren’t football players at all, and wind up throwing the game to the opposition. Sports gambling, organized crime and rigging games. Finally, something we can relate to!

I get like this every time I start to think that life is just too complicated. America has changed a lot in 70 years, and not all of it for the better. The 1930s might not have been the most progressive environment - what with the general lack of civil rights or women’s rights, no air conditioning or other modern conveniences - but you’d have a nice suit and life would be a lot simpler, even if you had to sleep under your car and be woken up by the street cleaner.

It soitenly could be worse.