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Basement box yields memories of magazines past
What will your children find when they clean out your attic, closets and basement?
Virginia Mead Savage, BA’40, MS’60, saved everything. Her family has been discovering treasure and trash since she died in September 2008, in the East First Street home where she lived for more than 50 years.
Her husband, Chris Savage, an IU journalism professor, died in 1964. Among all the memorabilia in the Savage house’s basement was a big box filled with copies of the Crimson Bull, the humor magazine published by Sigma Delta Chi, the men’s journalism honorary organization. Chris Savage was the faculty adviser for the magazine in the 1950s. I inherited that big box.
I blew off the dust and inhaled the mustiness of the years. The memories rolled as I looked at staff names and bylines. I had trouble finding humor in the jokes and cartoons. They were mostly about chasing girls. I was surprised at how much was borrowed from other humor magazines of the era, such as the Minnesota Ski-U-Mah, the Harvard Lampoon, Colorado Dodo, Ohio State Sundial and the Daily Worker. Some of the magazines in my box were from these “exchanges.” I dumped them except for one copy of the Lampoon edited by George Plimpton.
In the February 1950 issue I found an interview with Lawrence Wheeler, BA’21, who taught in the journalism program and for many years was the first head of the IU Foundation. Wheeler said that he had founded the Crimson Bull in 1919.
He said humor magazines hadn’t changed much over the years, and “I noticed one of my jokes I wrote 30 years ago in the last issue (of the Bull) under a different name of course.”
Buried among the magazines from the 1950s, I found a real treasure, the Crimson Bull of November 1920, Volume One, No. Two. Its editor was Elmer W. Sherwood. On its seven-member editorial board was Lawrence Wheeler.
That 1920 Crimson Bull had a very classic design with a five-color ad for Arrow collars. Other ads in black and white touted the Book Nook for food and drinks, and Mrs. C. R. Pleasants, who sold up-to-date millinery, hairnets and veils.
The Crimson Bull seemed to publish by fits and starts over the years. In the 1930s, there was a campus humor magazine called the Bored Walk. Two copies were among the Savage collection, one from 1936, the other from 1938.
Then in the late 1940s there was a magazine called the Date. A couple of copies were in the Savage box. Reading the masthead for May 1947 is a trip through my past with friends from our IU journalism heyday: Doan Helms, BA’49; Bill Brooks, BA’47; Carl Foster, BA’49, MA’50; Don Campbell, BA’48; Jack Pressley, BA’48; and Irwin (Pancho) Boretz, BA’49.
There was one copy of a magazine called the View from the late 1950s. It tried to be a bit more sedate and was published by both Sigma Delta Chi and Alpha Delta Sigma, an honorary organization of the business school. Larry Adler, BS’60, was its editor for Volume One. I don’t think it lasted long.
So these magazines went from Virginia’s basement to the School of Journalism and IU Archives. There have been dozens of student magazines since these of the 1950s: some funny, some alternative, some journalistic, some from students who think they want to start a magazine — must be fun!
Well, it was fun in the days of the Crimson Bull and that magazine is fondly remembered. There were so many laughs along the way — not always from the girl-chasing jokes!
So we say -30- to the Crimson Bull, and thanks to Virginia and Chris for the magazines!
