"Look for the Sinking of Caddo City!"
The message on the egg, which the woman would allow anyone to see for the price of a dime, was not written in pen or pencil; but was actually raised letters, literally part of the shell. Below is a recreation of what the egg might have looked like.
Disclaimer: No egg was harmed during production of this blog entry. It may however have been combined with others into a tasty omelet shortly afterward.
This story touches on several themes written about in the past in that:
- The subject of this tale was an immigrant.
- Vice was involved, as there was an apparent attempt to deceive the public.
- There is a humorous aspect regarding the manner in which the attempted deceit was carried out.
Initially shocking, as the news got around some folks started to realize this was the same message saloon keeper and whiskey merchant Lep Wolff had earlier been talking up. Citing the then recent burning gas wells (Producers Oil No.s 2 and 3) and resultant craters, he posited the entire area was in potential danger of collapse.
In actuality, he had himself written the message on the egg using some protective medium, then dipped it in acid so that the surrounding shell was partially eaten away, causing the lettering to appear raised. He slipped it into a hen house near Caddo City where it would be discovered. Property owners around Caddo accused Lep of trying to crash the real estate market where he could then buy up highly valuable land on the cheap. When confronted, he rebutted he was simply seeking to advertise his beer and whiskey.
Leopold "Lep" Wolff (1859-1921) was born in Bavaria and came to America with his parents as a small child. In 1880 he was operating a grocery store at 39 Texas Street in Shreveport.
He became involved with the Travelers Protective Association, a fraternal organization of traveling salesmen, for the purpose of leveraging their collective buying power to obtain special rates from hotels, railroads, and other forms of commercial transportation. It additionally encouraged improved amenities and standards of cleanliness, and provided insurance to their members - essentially an early travel club. Among his contributions to the group, he sat on a T. P. A. committee to promote a "Drummers Day" at the Louisiana State Fair in 1893, and was the local representative to the national convention, held in Omaha, Nebraska in 1898.
The 1900 U.S. Census listed him living in Shreveport with wife Hulda and family, while having the occupation of drummer (salesperson)/
Shreveport Times 16-May-1903, Page 2
Below are advertisements for his liquor and tobacco business.
Shreveport Times 05-Apr-1903, Page 13
Shreveport Times 03-May-1903, Page 20
Lep apparently liked to see his name in print as a search of Shreveport Times archives revealed 308 entries for "Lep Wolff" and another 204 for "Leopold Wolff." When not written about by reporters, his letters on issues of the day (also containing self-promotion) were frequently published.
In 1903, Lep told a Shreveport Times reporter how to stretch one barrel of whiskey into 10 using water, a plug of tobacco, and cayenne pepper. Given the banter he had with the press that often appeared tongue-in-cheek, it's not clear if this revelation was a real practice, a joke, or (likely) fell somewhere in between.
Shreveport Times 15-Nov-1903 Page 8
Morrison has yet to be identified and what became of (presumably) him is not known. However in 1904 Lep chartered a new enterprise, Wolff Liquor Company, Ltd..
The egg caper was apparently not Lep's first attempt at mischief regarding the Caddo gas fields. A couple of months earlier he'd been seen on the Kansas City Southern train headed north wearing a poor disguise, and telling friends and others confronting him that he was actually a capitalist (and presumably a potential investor) from back east. He had intended to get off at Caddo City in order to possibly deal in natural gas, but when outed continued on board in an attempt to preserve his ruse. Later, after friends said he was "off his base," he said it was all a joke. It was reported he was interested in building a gas pipeline to Shreveport.
Shreveport Times 21-May-1905, Page 3
In 1910, Lep got into the insurance business. Given that he was Jewish, the swastikas appearing in this 1912 advertisement were innocuous at the time and likely intended to be simply decorative, or used to convey meanings they symbolized prior to being co-opted later by the nazis- that of good luck and auspiciousness.
An unsuccessful candidate for the state legislature in 1912, he had advocated free textbooks for school children, a cause later taken up by Governor Huey Long..
He died in May 1921 after a brief illness and is buried in Hebrew Rest Cemetery in Shreveport. Among his honorary pallbearers was oilman Ike Muslow of Oil City.
Today 213 Milam Street is a parking lot.
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