Rewriting the Novel: Research

So, you know Jerry’s novel is set in an oil boom town in Oklahoma in 1930. He’s got all the details you would want regarding a 1930 oil derrick, but that’s about all. Even though it’s not a historical novel, I want the other details to be right. 

Initially, all I wanted to know was if they had poker chips in 1930. I started looking a week ago. I don’t know the answer, because then I began reading about the money in 1930, and that was amazing, because 1929 was the year they decided to carve an inch off the money. In 1928 the standard currency was an inch bigger all around. I say standard - there was a lot of non-standard currency issued by regional national banks. Before that, if you were a bank, evidently you could just make up your own currency, and it was very pretty, and before that you could have square bills if you like, like Confederate money, and thirty percent of the currency was counterfeit. I tell you this because I have to tell someone, because that week’s worth of research is going to be boiled down to one descriptive phrase.

For more research I also watched a pretty poor Clark Gable movie named Boom Town — and I was frightened every moment that Jerry might have watched it and I would see an example of subconscious plagiarism unfolding on the screen — but I was relieved to see a) it was about wildcatters and was b) actually pretty inaccurate.

(The money in the movie was entirely wrong for the time period. ASK ME HOW I KNOW.)

Also, they would have us believe that you name an oil well after your girlfriend, as you would a bomber jet, when anyone knows you name it after whoever’s name is first on the land lease. Please. 

[Spoilers, if you can spoil a movie from 1940.] There was one very unrealistic plot hole — Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert meet and spend a pleasant evening at a rodeo. (That was a scary moment - there was a rodeo in Jerry’s book.) The next morning, Claudette’s boyfriend Spencer Tracy shows up and she says, sorry, met and married Clark Gable here yesterday. They weren’t in Vegas, no one was drunk, just somewhere between 12 midnight when they were winding up their date and seven the next morning they fell in love, and, “got married.” I know, 1940’s movie, set in 1918-1940, but for God’s sake. 

Of course, it was actually pretty entertaining to see their interpretation of a boom town and compare it to Jerry’s. The movie has an oil well gusher and it’s a marvelous event — compared to Jerry’s book preaching about how gushers are a scandalous waste of money, they catch fire, burning oil rains down on people, it’s not fun. I suppose it’s some gritty realism. Accuracy over drama.

We’ll have to see what’s next, if I can ever get out of this research rabbit hole.

Comments

[KC]

I assume you found out that yes, they had poker chips in 1930? (although I don't know about oil towns, they had them in Monte Carlo and similar locations before 1925)

(but YES all the fascinating historical tidbits that have nowhere to go except a blog! But at least there is a blog! :-) )

[KC]

(also, depending on state law, you could either:
1. just declare yourselves married (via specific processes, usually related to local cultural/religious customs - see Quaker weddings way back when)(Quakers need a wedding license to get signed now, just like everyone else, as far as I know?) or
2. roust a pastor or judge out of bed and make them sign something or
3. have to wait two weeks or so before you could even get a license to get married.
So there is that. There are all sorts of things in Project Gutenberg books, including people eloping across state lines because eloping isn't legally possible where they are.)

[KC]

(oh! Also! If you can find an archive with archivists/librarians to it that touches this time period/geography, then odds are decent that you can email them with weird questions and they will write you back! With footnotes!)(A friend of mine is an archivist [in an area that would be basically 100% useless to your novel]. But she and colleagues answer allll sorts of questions, and it sounds like the fun ones tend to be mostly on the "weird historical detail" side.)

[TheQueen]

KC - I dated a research librarian for a while. I can see how they’d be happy to get an interesting detail to research. I’m fully against poker chips now at my poker game. Did you know cowboys hated paper money because it would get wet?

[KC]

To be honest, unless you're dealing with rich enough people (see: Monte Carlo), it would seem like in the era of silver dollars and gold coins being semi-normal, that you'd just use those instead? But I know very little about cowboys and their money/poker/etc. preferences...

(if they *did* want poker chips to even up all their money, it wouldn't be that hard to do. People made checkers out of slices of corn cob, or out of rounds of wood. But corn cob poker chips seem vaguely undignified...)

Yeah, there are brains that Really Like Puzzles out there! And it is so nice when the Brains That Really Like Puzzles get matched up with the sort of puzzles they delight in. :-) (also, when they get matched up with the people who can put up with the people who have brains that really like puzzles. :-) Not everyone is structured to enjoy that, even if the research-y, puzzle-y person is really nice rather than arrogant, and... some of them/us are arrogant and that is no fun for anyone, as far as I can tell?)

[TheQueen]

KC - the problem is that I also really like puzzles, and the puzzles are taking up too much time given their Small benefit. Then again, I don’t have a deadline for this thing, it’s been in a box for decades. Why not enjoy the process?

[KC]

One of my husband's (rarely posted in) blogs is literally a repository for random details/weirdnesses discovered on the way to somewhere else, that won't actually make it into an article or even a footnote, but that someone else might be interested in or find useful for something. So you could maybe do a weekly Weird Stuff Learned This Week For The Novel entry, and I would not be sad (provided you enjoyed it; I'd enjoy reading it, but you enjoying the process is also important!). :-)

[TheQueen]

KC - well, now I need to know your husband’s blog.