The Trousers Circuit in Old Mexico

      What did the average Mexican male - at least the Indians or mixed bloods - wear as a lower garment in the early days of the last century? The photos in the October 1919 issue of the National Geographic article on that nation did not appear to me to be very illustrative of the matter. However, page 322 featured a picture entitled, "The Market at Guanajuato: Mexico" which did not appear unusual to me, at least as far as men's fashion was concerned. However, the text below it went as follows:

Note that the men wear trousers instead of the typical pajama-like costume of the Mexican. Formerly a recognized method of getting labor for public works in Mexican towns was to arrest road-builders, carpenters, masons, or whatever class of worker was needed, on some flimsy charge, and sentence them to "hard labor" for a requisite period on municipal projects. Some years ago Guanajuato introduced a variation in this practice and replenished its treasury by fining all natives coming into town in the usual garments. There was also a suspicion that some enterprising trousers-maker had influenced the city government. After their first surprise, the crafty country folk evaded the fine, and also avoided a run on the trousers market by buying one pair per community and arranging schedules by which the busy trousers became ambulant jitneys, making three or four trips a day with different passengers.

A Fair Deal for a Cannibal

      Cannibalism! It occurred as an occasional practice is some societies, such as Iroquois of North America and some of the tribes of north Australia, though in neither case was it a regular event. Among the Aztecs of Mexico it was a wholesale practice associated with human sacrifice. However, the areas where it was widespread, often involving raiding or hunting parties descending on neighbouring communities, was the steamy jungle belt of the tropics: the fringes of the Carribean Sea, Melanesia, and the tropical forests of central and west Africa. The following strange custom relates to what is now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but was then called the Congo Free State - not because there was anything free about it, but because it was not controlled by any European country, but was under the personal rule of King Leopold of Belgium.

Luftwaffe Puking Machines

     Members of some earliest generations -like mine - may remember Jimmy Edwards, an English comedian which a huge handlebar moustache best remembered for his performances in Whack-O! as a drunken, devious, misfit of a headmaster who loved swinging the cane. The fantastic moustache was, in fact, grown to disguise the scars of his injuries in an R.A.F. plane crash during World War II. Nevertheless, he continued in the R.A.F. for its final drive into Germany, during which period the following discovery was made.

The Crime of a Cripple?

     This is a story I couldn't let pass. It was published on Easter Day, 5 April 2026 in the Sunday Mail (Brisbane, Australia) p 33. It was written while the Iran War was in progress.

Forget Iran, amputee cornhole killer's yarn of the week

by Rory Gibson

    One of the casualties of war is non-war news. Because missile barrages tend to hog the headlines, more interesting stuff can get lost in the fog. Consequently you may have missed a ripper yarn involving a bloke called Dayton Webber. One report about Webber carried the most intriguing headline I've seen in years: "US quadruple amputee cornhole pro suspected of murder had a dark side, ex-girlfriend claims."

Of Rugs and Socks

      Things were pretty grim in the occupied Netherlands during the Second World War. One woman needed money, and the only item she had to spare was an old patchwork rug whose wool was still bright and strong. It consisted of twenty-five knitted squares, two of each colour and one spare, so she set about pulling apart the wool of two of the squares, from which she knitted a pair of bed socks. Now, where to find a buyer? Going door to door, she located one woman who was only too eager to purchase them. So she went back, unravelled another couple of squares, and knitted another pair of socks. The woman bought them as well. In fact, she was happy to purchase all the socks she produced, even the single sock knitted from the last square

      After the war, both independently migrated to Australia, and one day they happened to meet in the main street of Hobart, Tasmania, and the sock maker finally learnt what the second woman had done with those socks. She had meticulously pulled them apart, and used the wool to make a patchwork rug!

Source: Dianne J Taylor (2025), Anna's War, Rivetpress Press. This is a novel for teenagers. However, in the notes at the back the author explained that the incident was based on a true story she had heard on a walking holiday in Tasmania thirty years before.