Karen and I bought the little house next door to us. We know a bit of its history and the history of Ruby, the woman who built it with her husband Harry, a fellow vaudevillian. Ruby was a dancer. Actually, she was a burlesque dancer and more accurately, a stripper during the Depression. We even have a full size theater marquee\u00a0of her we found in the wall of our shack back in 1978 where, it turns out, Ruby lived with her mom Mary and her sister Pearl and her brother Marion back as far as 100 years ago when the shack was built. In the 40\u2019s she and Harry built the little house we just bought.<\/p>\n
I think half the reason we bought it was because Karen is an historian and wanted to bring the two places back together, sort of the way it was originally, all in the family. She\u2019s been searching websites, googling up Ruby and binging Harry and yahooing Pearl. She\u2019s got folks down at the Historical Society sleuthing tidbits on burlesque queens and strippers to the point the FBI may have a sting soon on geriatric porno purveyors, a psychopathology that has received all too little attention in the media. Genealogists have joined the fray and fragment by fragment, some of Ruby\u2019s life has begun to materialize. More than her dance outfit, that\u2019s for sure\u2026.<\/p>\n
But \u2026 you go searching into closets and crevasses, you better be prepared for what you uncover. People\u2019s lives hold secrets and surprises. We don\u2019t all have happy endings, even us South Enders. Maybe particularly us South Enders. This past month we were given an article from the Oct. 18, 1946 Sacramento Bee which reads as follows: \u201cA suave and polite bandit raped burlesque dancer Ruby Reed, 28, at gunpoint yesterday morning while her husband lay in the same bed, tied and gagged. This account leaves altogether too much to the imagination and raises serious questions as to where the plot will take us next. Part of me wishes we\u2019d never delved this deeply. But the other part wants to know how the coming chapter will play out. I\u2019ve always maintained that history is half mystery. I just hope it isn\u2019t a murder mystery. Stay tuned. We are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Karen and I bought the little house next door to us. We know a bit of its history and the history of Ruby, the woman who built it with her husband Harry, a fellow vaudevillian. Ruby was a dancer. Actually, she was a burlesque dancer and more accurately, a stripper during the Depression. We even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[7539,7540,7541],"class_list":["post-19630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-burlesque-stripper-in-our-closet","tag-skeletons-in-the-closet","tag-stripper-for-a-roommate"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19630"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19631,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19630\/revisions\/19631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe gunman, dressed in navy or merchant marine uniform, folded his coat neatly on a chair but did not remove his cap or mask.
\nMiss Reed and her husband, Harry Mayers, a burlesque comedian, woke at 4:30 A.M. to find a man pointing a gun and a flashlight in their room at 324 Hyde Street. He said: \u2018This is a stickup. Never mind the money. Get back into bed.\u2019 He tied Mayer\u2019s hands with clothesline, gagged both of them and then raped Miss Reed.
\nAfterward, he rose, took his coat and left, remarking, \u2018Thank you very much.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n