Jim Kershner’s this day in history

Sat., May 2, 2015

By Jim Kershner jimkershner@comcast.net

From our archives, 100 years ago

Groups of teenage boys in the Union Park neighborhood were going on drunken hard-cider sprees, according to a probation officer.

They were skipping school, gathering at the Interstate Fairgrounds and getting drunk.

In one case, the boys, ages 14 and up, bought hard cider from a neighborhood man. They told him they wanted it for a sick father. Then they went to the fairgrounds and went on drunken “debauches,” the Spokane Daily Chronicle reported.

After police threatened that man with prosecution, the boys thought up another plan. They bought some regular, or soft, cider.

They then “permitted it to ferment, hastening the process by a method they have discovered,” said the officer.

“When it had sufficient ‘kick,’ they pleaded illness at school and gathered at the fairgrounds with older persons, negro and white, and got drunk,” said the probation officer.

Police were considering charges against several residents of the neighborhood.

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