I’ve spent the past year or more immersed in the 1920s and vaudeville while working on a historical mystery series. Everyone seems to pick their favorite era in history and for some reason, mine has always been the Roaring Twenties with the flappers, gin joints, and gangsters. What I wouldn’t give to be a gangster’s moll for only a day! It’s fascinating that the Volstead Act, which should have slowed crime, led to an increase of organized crime, gangsters, rum running, and the birth of NASCAR.
When I think about this period in our country’s history, I feel that people were frenetic. There was a sense of party today for tomorrow may not come. The Lost Generation with their aimless abandonment of the strictures of the past generation reeled from the Great War followed on its heels with the Spanish Influenza epidemic. The naked hedonism embraced by the youth who came of age during the war is understandable. I wonder if we, too, will succumb to a sense of “being lost” once the current pandemic is over.
