El Salamnu Aleikum! Alelkum Es Salem! See? “Most soltenly” as Happy Hooligan would say. It’s only the Murat temple of Indianapolis, making the points of interest between that benighted country and Minneapolis. It’s the noise they make in transit. Murat temple decided to have a good time between times. Therefore, the members arranged a charming itinerary, including all the beauty spots to be found en route.
Starting out in solem array, Murat temple decided on making it a pilgrimage not too solem. After making all points of interest on the journey west, they thought it would be jolly fun to “do” Minneapolis and Saint Paul to the full and then continue the journey over the “burning sands” to the wild and wooly” absorbing the beauties and awesome wonders of the Yellowstone region.
Therefore, be it known that none of the members of the Mystic Murats will again appear inside the quiet, inoffensive Indiana village until every member has landed on an Indian or a buffalo, as the case may be. As this may take some time, they are anxious not to have relatives and friends report them to the police as missing and offer rewards for their recovery.
The streets of Minneapolis seldom before held so many people as jammed into the line of march last night. If there were not at least 200,000 persons in the downtown district during the parade it’s up to somebody to “eat his shirt”.
Things opened rather lively long before the parade was scheduled and it looked for a long time as though the march would not be the star attraction for the evening. Shortly after 7 o’clock, a small fire broke out on Nicollet Avenue near 6th Street, when the people were beginning to come downtown. Then just as the crowds were comfortably collected near that fire, flames started from a glass factory down on Washington Avenue and soon this fire, proved to be the biggest ring in the whole circus.
For a long time Nicollet Avenue was deserted while the crowds got in the way of the firemen on Washington Avenue and gave the police a chance to get a little exercise in preparation for managing the greater numbers later on.
But the Shriners won out long before the fire fighters did. A fire is not the rarest thing in , but a chance to get all the latest styles from Cairo, Morocco, Aden, Mecca and the like without stirring from ones own door step, as it were, proved to be so great an attraction, and so, after a little while, the people decided to let the firemen handle the blaze without a gallery.
-Excerpted fro the Minneapolis Tribune July 16th, 1908