It was 1920, and the coming decade would abound in fads, firsts, and larger-than-life personalities. New words--bootleg, bathtub gin, moonshine, screaming meemies, jazz, and talkies--would enrich the American vocabulary. The flapper, with uninhibited youth, exuberance, and extroversion bordering on exhibitionism, would symbolize the twenties.

Tradition, from music to women’s roles, was being challenged. The Beaumont Journal humorously advised its readers that "If you want your old phonograph records brought up to the minute, let the baby work on them with a pin and give them the modern jazz effects." A Journal columnist wrote that "there is no longer ‘a weaker sex,’ and if there is, it is not the sex that was once denoted by the phrase."

The decade was actually a relatively calm one for the McFaddin family, with Ida and W.P.H. and Mamie and Carroll Ward at home at 1906 McFaddin. Caroll managed his father-in-law’s muskrat business and raised rice and cattle. An aging W.P.H., assisted by his oldest son Perry Jr., still oversaw the family’s Jefferson County and Knox County ranches. Younger son Caldwell, a graduate of Rice Institute and Harvard Law School, was in private law practice in Beaumont. While both sons began the decade in the family home, each later married and built a home in the neighborhood.

Although neither would have been considered a flapper, Ida McFaddin and Mamie Ward kept up with fashion. Women’s clothing changed greatly in the twenties, from long skirts and corsets to knee-length garments and a "hipless," "bosomless" appearance.

Change notwithstanding, most women remained homemakers, reading Emily Post’s Etiquette along with the latest Life magazine. Ida continued social and civic work, especially with the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Beaumont Day Nursery. Mamie became active in the Colonial Dames organization, entertained, and supervised household cleaning. She also helped Carroll keep his business books.

Prohibition, the "noble experiment," was faltering. Breweries manufactured nonalcoholic beverages, but Americans actually drank more than ever. The new "speakeasies" provided a place to drink and to hear the new music--jazz. Classical musicians might consign jazz to the "basement" of music, but consumers thought differently, purchasing records of Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, and Paul Whiteman in record numbers.

America became a nation on wheels, the number of automobiles increasing from 10 million in 1920 to 26 million in 1929. With automobiles came the need for better highways and traffic laws. In 1927, the city of Beaumont installed traffic signals that had bells as well as lights but removed the bells amid complaints about the noise. All three McFaddin children and their spouses drove, but Ida and W.P.H. McFaddin continued to employ chauffeurs Andrew Molo and Tom Parker. Like many others during this decade, the family increased auto travel, taking the train less often.

Some saw the social upheaval of the decade as dangerous. The Pittsburgh Observer begged its readers to recognize the "serious ethical consequences of immodesty in girls’ dress." The Beaumont Enterprise deplored the sight of a father trying to control "a flapper daughter or...a slick-haired son with a penchant for fast roadsters and a hip flask complex." The Ku Klux Klan, a secret vigilante organization formed to preserve conservative, nativist, and white supremacist values, represented extreme reaction, controlling politics in the South and even some northern states in the early 1920s.

For the most part, however, prosperity begat optimism. Beaumont’s thriving economy, bolstered by Magnolia Refinery, shipbuilding, and a deepwater port, received another boost when a new oil field was discovered in 1925 on the flanks of Spindletop Hill. The discovery greatly benefited the McFaddins, as they were landowners at Spindletop.

During the 1920s more than 80 new suburban additions opened, and the downtown skyline added three hotels, two office buildings, a city hall and auditorium, hospital, and public library. The population grew from 40,000 in 1920 to nearly 58,000 in 1930.

Prosperity and technology brought money and increased leisure time. Movies became the country’s favorite entertainment, and after 1927 Beaumonters had a new movie house--the elegantly appointed Jefferson Theatre. Mamie and Carroll Ward enjoyed movies and in 1922 saw two in one day: Pola Negri in Gypsy Blood and Norma Talmadge in The Wonderful Thing.

Americans also loved spectator sports and followed their heroes as Babe Ruth drove in home runs, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse helped Notre Dame upset Army to win college football’s national championship, and Jack Dempsey pushed boxing gate receipts to one record after another.

Mamie and Carroll Ward enjoyed watching Beaumont’s minor league baseball team, the Exporters.

After KDKA Radio in Pittsburgh made its first commercial broadcast in 1920, stations sprang up all over the country.

In February 1923, Mamie and Carroll Ward heard a "radio concert." On October 21, 1924, Beaumont’s first station, KFDM, broadcast from the Magnolia Refinery. The Wards soon bought a radio; and on November 4, Mamie noted in her diary, "stayed home listened to Radio."

The stock market crash in October 1929 signaled the beginning of the end of the Roaring Twenties. But during that decade, the modern age had arrived, bringing permanent change to America and the world.