now that the holiday season is starting here’s a reminder
the jacobs, the delanceys, wiesel, katherine, pulitzer, and i think jack are all jewish
please don’t draw/write them celebrating christmas
thank you
Yes, this, but please if you’re doing any fic rooted in historical canon, while Katherine/Pulitzer are Jewish, Katherine by patrilineal line, Pulitzer made a super big deal about renouncing any connection he had to being Jewish So he celebrated Christmas, kept a Christian calendar, it’s all because the antisemitism he would’ve faced was worse than not celebrating his holidays if that makes sense? Religion was seen differently, and there even were lots of records of immigrated Jews celebrating Christmas once they arrived in the states because it was just considered the American thing to do, and assimilation was better than preserving a pure culture
A ticket to a movie would have cost anywhere from a Nickle to a dime for a viewing. Films would be running 5 to 8 minutes long; and they were called “one reelers” earlier in the period. A short list of films released in 1899 with their run times. Keep in mind each viewing would be a Nickle.
It’s February and I’ve got GOALS baby! I’m gonna try to do a chapter a week to get caught up on all my old shit, including my old multi chapter that was started in 2018 (yikes!). But for now, here’s 859 words for @klaineharmony‘s 300x3 challenge! Enjoy!
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“So lemme get this straight- This guy says he’s willing to tutor you, for as long as you like, with absolutely no strings attached?” Jack gave David an incredulous look as he dodged a thick patch of snow that had congealed onto the pavement. He swung his bag over one shoulder and leaned slightly backwards so Crutchie could grip onto the other. There was some slight maneuvering, then they were all in the clear. Until the next patch, at least.
“Well, not exactly.” David kept several paces behind them, cautiously keeping his left boot away from the snow mound. “He says he wants The World for free. Which, you know, is pretty easy for me to do. And it’s only until I can get back to school full time. I just don’t know when that would be right now.”
“You sure you can trust him?” Crutchie had let go of Jack, and was now warming his free hand on the side of his neck.
David looked up from the sidewalk. ”Trust him? I mean, shouldn’t I? He’s Kath’s friend, right? And he helped with the strike.”
Crutchie gave a deep sigh. David noticed he had been doing that frequently since the beginning of winter. “All I’m saying is that sometimes people are nice for the right reasons, and sometimes they’re nice the wrong ones.”
“The wrong ones? What are the wrong-?”
“Excuse me young man.”
A middle aged woman stood in front of them, blocking their way to the other side of the street. She was primly dressed all in black, with a wide brimmed, billowy bonnet framing her face. Clutched tightly in her hand was a small pocket bible. It took David a moment to realise she was staring intently at Crutchie.
“Excuse me, young man. I was wondering if I could pray for you.” This was more of a statement than a question.
Crutchie’s eyes widened, and his jaw slacked a bit. “What? Why of course you can pray for me, ma’m. Gee, it would be an honor.”
David shot Jack a nervous look. Jack met his gaze and and mouthed ‘wait for it’.
Crutchie’s face had taken a sickly, saccharine look to it as the woman put a silk gloved hand on his shoulder and started speaking in trembling, off-kilter voice. Her face seized up as she closed her eyes and soon a small crowd began to form around them, in no small part to the fact that they were blocking others from going past them. David could feel his cheeks go hot from the embarrassment of it all.
When the woman had finished, her face recoiled and her tense mouth turned into a beam. “Well, that was just lovely. Thank you so much young man. You’ve truly helped me bring in the right mindset this Christmas season. I hope Christ finds you and finds it in His heart to heal you.”
David felt like he was about to blow a gasket. But Crutchie remained calm. “Wow. Thanks ma'am, that’s really something. I’ll be sure to take that to heart.” He made a motion to go forward, then paused. “Gee, I’d love to go back and tell the other fellas at the boarding house all about what happened today, but it’s so awfully hard to get there, with me lugging around these papes an’ all.”
The woman raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”
Crutchie nodded earnestly. “Oh yes ma’m. Especially with the weather an’ all. It can be so hard, trying to balance it all on this ice. And well, with my crutch…”
Crutchie made a big display of looking forlornly down at his crutch. He gave one last dramatic sigh. “I guess that’s the way things go sometimes. Well, I better be on my way ma’m. I’ll never forget this.”
“Wait!” The woman was now fishing around in her coin purse. “How much for the whole stack?”
The edges on Crutchie’s lips turned upwards. “A dollar ten.”
Jack gave a barking laugh. The woman looked over and he tried to turn it into a cough.
“A dollar ten, really? Isn’t that a bit too-”
“Inflation.” Crutchie nodded solemnly. “A real big issue, especially this time of year. But I understand if you can’t help-”
“No, wait!” The woman shoved a two single bills into his chapped hand. “I’ll take the whole stack!”
“Well gee, thanks.” Crutchie swiftly took his diminishing stack from his bag and abruptly handed it to her. He started away as quickly as he could, with David and Jack at his heels. He called over his shoulder. “And Merry Christmas to you too!”
David looked back at the well dressed woman, who was still standing in the middle of the sidewalk, forlornly clutching the stack of newspapers next to her bible. Crutchie pausd and watched with him.
“You see Davey? Sometimes people are nice for the wrong reasons. And when that happens, the best thing you can do is take what you need and go. Any man who stays for a minute longer is just a sucker.”
He held out the two dollars in front of his friends. “Now, who wants lunch?”
I recently found a copy of a Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog from the early 1900s, and I decided to use it to look into roughly how much basic art supplies would have cost Jack in 1899.
For reference- 1 dollar in 1900 is equal to about $30.46 in 2018, and if a newsie were to sell 100 papers in a day he would make about $0.50 (not counting what he would, of course, spend on food and lodgings, and any tips he may have received).
Sheets of drawing paper ranged in price from $0.18 per quire (a quire is equal to 24 sheets) to $4.65 per quire, depending on the size and type of paper.
Sketchbooks also ranged in price depending on the size, from $0.22 each to $0.60 each.
Drawing pencils cost $0.08 each for regular ones and $0.19 each for ones with “movable leads” (I’m guessing an early form of mechanical pencils). Individual refills for the pencil leads cost $0.48 for a box of 6.
Colored pencils cost $0.09 each, or $0.54 for a case of 6 colors.
French Charcoal cost $0.15 for a box of 50 6-inch long sticks and $0.35 for a box of 50 8-inch long sticks.
Paintbrushes cost anywhere from $0.05 to $0.35 each depending on the specifics of that particular brush.
Oil paints in a single tube cost $0.05 each and $0.55 for a dozen, and oil paints in a double tube cost $0.08 each and $0.90 for a dozen. They came in a wide array of colors, including “Burnt Roman Ochre”, “Mummy”, “Prussian Blue”, and “Scarlet Lake”.
Bottles of India Ink ranged in price from $0.10 to $0.25 each based on the size of the bottle.
Assuming Race is able to push 150 papes in the morning and 100 in the evening, he would sell 1600 papes a week. This means he’d make $16 dollars a week give or take. But, he’d need to spend $9.60 just to *buy* those papers. He’d make $6.40 in profit a week
Santa Fe Dance Break (1992) for jlinternational (who has me blocked, so if someone could let them know I filled their prompt that would be great) for the anniversary @newsiesgiftexchange:-)
Also btw I’m not bashing on anyone’s newsies farm AU it is just that livesies jack is DEFINITELY a farmer as they took away him being a cowboy so what else is there in Santa Fe?? Farmers. Livesies jack kelly is a farmer.
lmao i know all i talk about is mexican jack kelly but jack would be one of those annoying bitches to sing the whole mariachi de las mañanitas on birthdays instead of the shortened version
i think part of the irony in this edit is that the lyrics say “i don’t want the world to see me” while the entire premise of the movie is about letting “the world” see them. but i also kinda think that’s how jack felt after he scabbed. i think that even though he knew he was doing it to protect the others, there was a part of him that felt ashamed he ever did it at all or that he wasn’t “strong enough” to defy pulitzer, and he was just trying to close up on himself. especially after having to face all of the newsies and listen to them call him traitor and say they’re “not like him”. anyway i have a habit of overanalyzing things so take that with a grain of salt.
Newsies arrived in movie theaters April 10th, 1992. Though it originally flopped at the box office, it found a generation of “Fansies” on the Disney Channel and inspired the Tony Award winning Broadway musical. Soon a new production of the musical will open in London’s West End!
And Christian Bale as Jack Kelly was my first celebrity crush as a kid.
This is just here so I can have it linked and ready for next time, so if you guys already want to save it or whatever you do with masterlists then be my guest.
Updated: 5/2/20
Fandoms on this list: Newsies, Supernatural, Falsettos
A/N: the amount of times I almost accidentally write who Red actually is, is very frustrating haha
Summary: Davey never understood why he wouldn’t come out to his friends. Half of them were just like him, yet he was still scared to admit it outloud. That’s where Red came in, he was scared too.
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Davey and Oscar stood in the secluded part of the library, both of them arguing back and forth for the majority of the morning. Davey couldn’t believe he was in this situation. A few weeks ago he’d never even talked to Oscar, and now they were both arguing over his secret identity that no one else knew about except for Red.
“Maybe if you were a nicer guy she’d say yes.” Davey explained, earning a glare from Oscar. A gasp left Davey’s mouth when his back hit one of the bookshelves, Oscar’s face only inches away from his.
“You have two days Jacobs. Two days, or everyone will know.” Oscar spat in his face before shoving him back against the shelf, leaving Davey standing there in shock.
There was no way Davey would be able to convince Sarah to go out with Oscar in two days. Davey pushed himself off the shelves, grabbing his backpack off the floor and he started to make his way to class with his thoughts spinning around in his head. He didn’t have to think much longer, a commotion in the hall drawing his attention away from his class when he saw a group of kids gathered around with some cheering.
Davey pushed his way to the front, freezing in place when he saw what was happening. There his friend laid limp on the floor as a few guys were kicking the life out of him, a pool of blood already on the floor. Davey stared in shock and horror, the fight only being ended when the school’s security came to pull everyone apart, Davey’s friend being rolled out in a stretcher. The whole rest of his day Davey was stuck with the image in his head, and he was filling with fear with each passing second.
It hadn’t been until dinner that Davey actually started acting normal, feeling safer, but not fully safe, in his own home. He picked at his food, not paying attention to any of the conversations. No one noticed he was quiet, usually he’d stay that way during dinner, only wanting to listen to everyone’s day, but once Sarah started talking about that morning, he couldn’t help but give his full attention.
“A fight happened at school today.” She explained making everyone look at her. “Some guys were beating on Race for being gay, he had to be carried out of the school.” She continued and Davey’s dad shook his head.
“That Anthony never learns. His parents have talked to him about the clothes he wears. He brought it upon himself.” Mr. Jacobs explained making Davey’s blood boil. “If a boy is going to go around dressing in girls clothes, then he should expect it to turn a few heads.” He continued, pushing Davey over the edge.
“Just because Race likes to wear girls clothes doesn’t give anybody the right to touch him, and you have no right to judge him if you weren’t there!” Davey exclaimed.
“David.” Mrs. Jacobs warned but Davey shook his head.
“He’s my friend! He didn’t deserve to be treated that way no matter what he was wearing. If no one came to get him they would have killed him. You didn’t see how he looked, but I did, there was nothing okay with that. He doesn’t deserve to die because you think people who dress like him deserve to be treated like crap.” Davey explained, his voice shaking as he stood up, leaving his untouched food on the table and his chair left pushed out while he made his way to his room, ignoring his father’s calls after him.
A few days had passed and Davey still couldn’t get the picture of Race out of his head. There was a school assembly on what had happened, and Davey couldn’t help but think of it. Half way through the assembly it hit Davey that he hadn’t been messaging Red, and he pulled out his phone, quickly typing a message.
Hey, Red I have to apologize for not talking in the past few days. Did you see what happened Monday morning? I hope you didn’t, I think it’s the worst thing I’ve seen in my entire life. To make things worse my dad heard about it and actually blamed it on what the guy was wearing. I really don’t think I’m coming out to them now. - SomebodyNobody
Davey shuddered at the memory, placing his phone back on his lap until it buzzed again.
I heard about it, but I can’t imagine even seeing it, I hope it wasn’t as bad as everyone made it out to be. I hope you’re feeling better, Nobody. - Red
Before Davey could get a response his attention was pulled back to the stage, his eyes bugging out at what was on the screen. He’d been too busy with his own things he forgot the two days were up the day before, his worst nightmare staring him in the face.
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Tag List: Let me know if you’d like to be tagged in this series :)
Race: All zoos are petting zoos if you aren’t a bitch.
Davey: All zoos are petting zoos if you can walk through reinforced glass, jump over a sizeable moat and can handle jumping down a distance of upwards of two meters, avoiding strategically placed barbed wire. But yeah, totally.
The grass crumpled beneath his boots. His shadow left a broad dent in the shade
(his body was still a marvel- when had Jack Kelly become so strong? When did Jack Kelly grow into his wimpy shoulders and snivelling ankles? When did Jack Kelly ditch his dreams of a boy to become a man?)
that towered over a lean man who was casually basking in the weak October daylight. He frowned at the sudden loss of warmth, but his eyes danced with mirth as he gazed over his former selling partner, current best friend, and long-time confidant. “Why, Jack Kelly. I thought you stood me up.”
“I’d neva, Dave,” Jack bent down in the mellow grass next to David. “They caugh’ me onna big shipment just as I was ‘bout to leave for lunch. Tell Esther that the market’ll have a good deal on trout tomorrow.”
Their heads nearly touched at the temple, and if Jack had the nerve or the gall, he could move a miniscule inch and connect their homely skin. It would only take a second- and what is a second, honestly? A moment in time? In the everlasting universe? And Jack Kelly wasn’t a very smart man, but he knew that humans only took up a small part of the whole existence of the world and a single second of humanity could manage to be wasted on the shifting of a cold, lonely wrist to lay on the freckled arm of another-
David rolled onto his side, more interested in a patch of dandelions than the market predictions for the next day. “Besides,” scrunching his nose, as if that would clear his irreverent musings on the universe, “not all o’ us are fancy medical men with all the break time they could ask fa’. I’m the big man pullin’ the weight ‘round here.”
(And it was true, to some aspects. Jack brought home honest-to-goodness bakery bread on Fridays so they could practice Shabbat without travelling, as Mayer so liked to do. He gave Les nickels to spend at the fair and bought Sarah hair ribbons for no particular reason. There was the gas bill he had paid one particularly difficult December, and the endless hours of doing various handiwork around the house when David was studying and Mayer’s old aches came to haunt him. The Jacobs’ home was also Jack’s, not because he needed it, but because they needed him.)
(He needed it too, he supposed.)
A yellow dandelion hovered over his nose, gently twirling with the teasing hum of David leaning in so close. Jack’s teeth snapped at it.
“You can drink the milk of these, I read,” David mused.
Jack wrinkled his nose. “Dandelion salad‘s only good tha first five times. Plus, it’d turn Crutchie’s tongue yellow.”
Dropping the little flower altogether, David rolled flat on his back and turned to gently nudge Jack on his shoulder with his premature wrinkling forehead. “Jackie,” he whispered.
(“I love you,” he would go on, later in Jack’s dreams. “I’ve loved you since I met you, I love you like a wildfire, I love you so much I cannot bear it, I love you like every character in all of my books, I love you.”)
“I’ve met a girl.” There was a hint of mischief in David’s tone- and Jack didn’t recognize it. There was suddenly a gated city wrapped around David’s heart and Jack was frantically scrambling for the key; For the first time, he was locked out of David’s life. He was an onlookerupon territory he had memorized by touch, by heart, by memory.
“Yeah?” If David had been paying attention, the word would have pinged around his Tin Man heart- hollow, empty, overused. “The Walking Mouth finally has someone to use it on?”
He relished in the feel of David’s uncalloused palms shoving playfully at his tanned, muscled arm. “Don’t be crass,” the boy chided. “Her name is April.”
(Jack was born on a misty-eyed April morning, with the clouds swabbed over the sun and an ominous wind blowing throughout the emptied streets. His mother had called it a bad omen. His father couldn’t fathom why.)
The crook of Jack’s elbow was full of David’s lingering fingertips; A question he didn’t dare ask left a sour taste on his tongue. He smiled at David’s far away face, his gaze belonging to a girl,
(agirl,a rotten girl,a girl that wasn’t even Katherine because that would have hurt much less, understandable even. She was an unimportant girl and she would never be enough for Davey, hisDavey)
(A girl.)
and his smile was full of thorns.
—
“I can’t believe-” the words were practically ripped from his throat. “We’s goin’ so fast!”
David couldn’t drive in the technical sense, but he was captaining a true automobile as the Earth did spin. Jack sat in the passenger seat to crow at any poor little commoners that walked along the beaten path, none of them good enough to ride in the electrical engine Mr. Ford had handcrafted himself.
It had been a graduation present from a fellow doctorate student (one with a wealthy father and ill-meaning connections), a spin in his brand-new electric carriage for his reliable old pal, David Jacobs. Jack’s eyes widened to the size of half-dollars as the man passed over the keys to David- David, who had once put the wrong shoe on the wrong foot and walked around crooked all day, too proud to admit he had made a mistake- and they tried to conceal their excitement as the engine turned over for the first time.
He was going to do it. Right here, right now, in this strange man’s car, with clunky work boots on his feet and David’s spectacles sliding down the bridge of his nose.
“I love you!” Jack roared over the engine.
“I’m going to ask April to marry me!” David practically sang into the wind.
Jack’s throat closed up, his skin was set on fire, and he suddenly wanted to see what happened when you jumped from a gadget that was moving so fast.
“Wait, what? Did you hear me?” David’s hair was beginning to grow long enough that it was wild in the gust of the automobile. “I’m going to ask her to marry me!”
(When he was seven, another newsboy- only a handful of months older than him- had asked him if his momma had ever taught him about love. No,Jack had replied, both sour about being outsmarted by a kid who picked his nose and not ever having a momma in the first place. “It’s this great big tree that grows on the inside of our tummies,” the boy went on. “And one day, someone ‘s gonna come along and pick all ‘f th’ fruit on our branches, one by one, until all you have are pretty green leaves. That’slove.”)
(That same boy would kiss him in a dirty alleyway seven years later, and Jack would crack a joke about all of his apples still being intact. The boy would stare back with blank, unrecognizable eyes.)
Jack couldn’t even be angry- he wasn’t strong enough to be furious anymore, not when his days were long and the nights were spent clutching at empty bedsheets. He couldn’t be angry at his good, unselfish Davey, the boy who rubbed at his mother’s aching feet when she spent too long at the factory lines and clumsily darned socks when his sister couldn’t feel her slender fingers. There was no resentment for the beautiful, dark-haired girl who had accidentally collided with David at the grocer’s market when they reached for the same can of something-or-other. She had been nothing but kind to the gentle giant who lurked in the shadows of David’s life, telling inappropriate jokes and interrupting their dates. April always made a place for him at their table.
“That’s the best idea you’ve had all year,” Jack called out, and watched his words dance away in the wind.
—
Katherine had struck him, hard, when he asked her to marry him.
He cradled his jaw with a shock that reverberated around his skull. “Kathy, what did I-”
“You are the most selfish, careless man I know, Jack Kelly.” Her skirts whirled around her ankles- the candy-pink cotton matching other bridesmaids’ dresses to contrast the delicate white lace of April’s wedding dress. David Jacobs was now a married man, and Jack Kelly a desperate one. “We all see how you look at him. There’s not a single person who hasn’t noticed. Get it through your thick, unfeeling skull.”
(“They say,” David’s vows were memorized. His voice never wavered. “That only someone in love would truly understand the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice: a man walks through the Underworld to save his begotten bride, to only turn around and lose her at the very last second. I’ve spent years pouring over that story, wondering why Orpheus would be such a fool, such an irresponsible, lovesick fool, if he truly loved her. But now, standing before my own darling little bride, I understand. I’d turn around for one last look at you. I’d turn every. Single. Time. I’m your fool, April. And I’d choose our fate a million times over.”)
“He doesn’t love you,”Katherine’s voice was heavy with disgust. “And I’m beginning to understand why.”
—
The train ticket was heavy in his palm. “I just don’t see why you have to go,” David whispered. “Who is my son going to learn his bad habits from? Who’s going to teach him how to hawk a headline for extra change? How to poke fun at his papa?”
“He has Les.” Jack’s voice was a barely audible rumble, rusty with misuse. He didn’t talk much these days, Jack Kelly now preferred to linger in the background of conversations, the memory of a bright young man he used to be. Those days had come and gone without much complaint, even if Jack secretly yearned to be so terribly free that he believed in a future for a gangly, fresh-faced boy and a hardened boy with the silver-tongued lies.
(There were rumors, you know. About horrible men and horrible things, about broken ribs and jail time even the Mayor would disapprove of. Jack didn’t do much to dispel the irrational stories people told about him.)
(To prove a lie is false, you must present the truth.)
(Jack didn’t have a truthful bone left in his body.)
A carefully measured silence stretched between them. “Is this about…” David’s hand instinctively reached for Jack’s rough palm- a second of contact, the flash in the pan, their moment in the universe.
He withdrew from his gentle touch, and taking a bullet to his leg
(Jack was twenty-three and alarmingly brave. David was twenty-two and studying to become a doctor. They both cried as David’s unsure hand stitched an unclean wound back together- David, tears of worry; Jack, hopelessly lovesick and falling apart at the seams.)
had been less painful. “It’s about Santa Fe, Dave. Kiss Esther goodbye for me, won’t you?”
The platform to the train was busy, flowing with New Yorkers that had somewhere to be, a place to go, or a person to meet. Jack was the lone soul that took his time to feel the cobblestone under his worn-down boots, the ragged laces dragging against the streets that raised him as their own. His suitcase, a single-handled brown leather
(the only item inside was a bundle of letters, all addressed to David Jacobs)
thing, had never seen a polish rag or repairman’s case, and he felt as if he had the weight of the world to carry with him all the way to New Mexico, where the cattle roam free and Jack Kelly wouldn’t have a broken heart to board up behind slats of wood. The train whistle blew, sharp and piercing, and Jack couldn’t resist his own dreadful hubris; He turned.
And David Jacobs had already disappeared into the swarm of faceless people with their endless inventory of needs to be met, so Jack Kelly got on a train to Santa Fe.
