History: March 2020 Archives

Baseball, BBQ, and Dead Ponies--A History of Fat Men's Clubs in Texas

"In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries definitions of and attitudes about fat bodies were remarkably different than they are now. What qualified a man for a fraternal order of fat men in 1890, today, is now a mere four pounds over the average male size in America. But as fat men's clubs were at their peak, people positively associated men of a larger size with wealth and affability....

"A Brownsville paper reported one such road-trip on April 6, 1909: 'A report was brought in this afternoon that one of the horses that were hauling the Fat Men's team to the baseball park dropped dead on the way. How the team finally got to the park is not learned. The price of the horse will be charged to the Fat Men.'"