Dead Foxes Ripped Her Flesh

Sorry, I couldn't resist the Frank Zappa reference.  Doesn't the lady in the center look like she's about to add another pelt to her shoulder.  It also looks like she doesn't care whether it's animal or human.  A very mean looking lady, indeed.

Ladies Like Hats

They also like fur.

Fox Dreams

What a faraway look. Some would say dreamy, others, vacant. With the strange, distorted reflections in the window glass, perhaps hallucinatory. I don't like to crop the photos I scan. Silly perhaps, but I like to leave things as the photographer found them. But if I had the original negative and I printed it, I'd crop it so that only her face and the window would show.

Danger

So what's dangerous about this woman? Well, nothing actually. When I logged onto Blogger this morning I made the mistake of clicking on the tab to try the new interface. Got a notice that my current browser didn't support the new interface. I followed their advice and downloaded Google Chrome, and still got the same notice. Had to go to the library, wait for a computer to open up, go to blogger to hit the tab to go back to the old interface. Oh how I hate computers!

Rural Glamour

I was born in 1955 in a small coal mining town in western Pennsylvania and when I was a child there were still a lot of these old metal framework bridges with wooden decks still standing. On back roads, many unpaved, the wood planking starting to rot, we still used them and so did a lot of coal trucks. I'm still amazed that they didn't collapse killing the poor guy who just happened to be heading into town that day. In 1921, when this picture was taken, this bridge was probably only a few years old. A year or so after Prohibition went into a effect, I like to think that this young lady was headed off to a roadhouse, thumbing her nose at all the moralists who tried to solve the real problem of alcohol abuse with legislation that had no chance of working. When I was in my early twenties, I worked at a mine in West Virginia. The older residents had a saying, "Coal mine, moonshine, or movin' on down the line."

12/2/44

From Pearl Harbor to V-J Day more than 16 million Americans, mostly men, served in the military. Many of them, about to be shipped overseas, rushed into marriage and left behind pregnant wives. (And a few pregnant girlfriends as well.) In for the duration, not given passes home, a photograph was all they would see of their young children until the end of the war. Those who didn't come back would never see anything other than photos. This picture is dated "12/2/44" The Battle of the Bulge was only two weeks away. The invasion of Okinawa was only four months in the future.

Gloves and Fur

These three little 4x4 prints are some of the most interesting in the collection. As a collector I understand a reverence for objects. It's fashionable to criticize materialism, but let's be honest, what we own, what we treasure, helps to define us as a person. Perhaps the woman who owned the fur coat and leather gloves had been poor at one time, and the luxury of a mink coat, alligator purse, and leather gloves was a symbol of a hard past and comforted her when she remembered being without. Then again, perhaps she had been rich her entire life and taking these pictures was a way of saying, "Look at me. I've got more than you do, so there!" No date.

Dead Animals On My Neck

Those who know that I'm an avid hiker, backpacker, and all around lover of the great outdoors find it difficult to believe that I have nothing against hunting or the wearing of fur. When I was a child some of the older ladies in my home town still wore the old style fox wraps with the fox biting it own tail, somewhat like the one in this photo. Were they designed to to unbite? Stamped on the back, "From WHITING'S STUDIO JUNCTION CITY, KANSAS." Thinking of Frank Zappa?