Paris of the Plains by John Simonson

Author:John Simonson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2012-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Each man received a coat that fit and was out the door. Courtesy of http://criticalpast.com.

It was the morning after opening night of the Kansas City Philharmonic’s third season, its last at the old Convention Hall at Thirteenth and Central.

The concert ended at 10:00 p.m., and the city’s black-tie finest—in top hats, furs and imported topcoats—milled about in the chilly night air, admiring the lights on the new Municipal Auditorium that was nearing completion across the street. The arena’s three marquees were switched on just for the concertgoers.

No doubt the brilliant lights and the music of Sibelius, Strauss and Brahms helped soothe any disdain for President Roosevelt’s extravagant spending: $4 billion to put millions of unemployed to work. Some of that money was in this new arena.

As the crowd drifted home, a lone figure just beyond the glow of lights made his way toward the corner of Fourteenth and Main, then another and then a third. Thinly dressed, they huddled outside a locked storefront. At 11:00 p.m., the temperature was thirty-four degrees.

At 3:00 a.m. it was thirty-two degrees. Fifty men waited outside the store. By 8:00 a.m., the line stretched up Main to Thirteenth, west a block to Baltimore and back south toward the Hotel President. It was twenty-six degrees. Those in line wore light jackets or overalls and several shirts. They were old men and young boys. Some carried a classified ad torn from a newspaper: “OVERCOATS—700 free to men unemployed. Apply 8 a.m. Friday. Gateway Loan and Sporting Goods. 1330 Main.”

What had started years earlier as a way for proprietor Louis Cumonow to get rid of fifty extra second-hand coats had become an annual event. He bought coats from a man in Philadelphia, who got them from military recruits who had no further use for them. Then he published an ad, and he gave them away—first come, first served.

That morning, because of the cold, he and his clerks fitted the hundreds of men inside the store, four at a time, and quickly, under a minute each. Each man received a coat that fit and was out the door, and another came right behind him. Then the cops arrived with their riot guns and demanded to know what was going on.

No burglary, said Louis Cumonow. He was just giving away coats. Someone must have dropped one on the alarm button.

The seven hundred coats were gone by 10:00 a.m. But customers remained, and Louis Cumonow kept giving away coats, no questions asked.

“I picked out about thirty old men, cripples and little boys and gave them coats out of my regular stock,” he said later.

“Of course some don’t deserve them. But most do. Today three men came back with their new coats and wanted to do some work. That pleases me enough.”

Elsewhere in town that day, men were buying overcoats at Jack Henry, Rothschild’s and Woolf Brothers. “Imported from England—Soft, luxurious, wrinkle proof—Alpaca and Angora yarns—Generous lines that are slightly fitted, giving that smart English Drape—$28.50 to $65.”

And the next morning, Louis Cumonow ran a new classified ad: “TOPCOATS, overcoats, jackets; left in pawn; $3 up.

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