100 years ago in Spokane: Country club expands beyond golf

Social change was in the air in wartime Spokane.

The following excerpt comes straight from The Spokesman-Review’s society page:

“The Country Club (presumably the Spokane Country Club) will respond this year to the changes wrought everywhere by the war. Formerly it was a country club pure and simple, a paradise for golfers. Children were admitted only once a year, and that on the Fourth of July, when they were entertained with dinner and fireworks. Now the new house committee is planning to make the club a center for the whole family, especially on week-ends. There has been a corral fitted up for the children, with games and sand piles, where the kiddies can play out of doors. A nurse will be in attendance.”

Also, the Country Club was planning dinner-dances every night, and “no dress suits nor women’s elaborate evening gowns will be permitted, at least during the period of war.”

From the ad file: An ad for Wrigley’s gum, showed a soldier offering a woman a stick of gum, with the caption, “A soldier’s offering to his sweetheart is naturally the sweetmeat that gave him the most refreshment and greatest enjoyment when on duty – keep the boys in the service supplied.”

The ad said that Wrigley’s was “the universal military service gum.”