More Men In Uniform

For a nation that prides itself on rugged individualism, we sure do love our uniforms.  My first thought was cop, but when I blew it up, I didn't see a badge.  He could still be a policeman, but I think high school ROTC is also a strong possibility.

Children 6

This is it.  The end of this series.  I'm bored, bored, bored, posting kiddie pictures.

No name or date on this one.  The last 101 Dalmatians movie came out in 1996, but that's not a very reliable indicator when dealing with Disney.  Those guys get every last cent from their properties.   My best guess is anywhere from the mid-nineties to, well now.   It makes me wonder how this ended up in the grab bag of photos.

Happy People Before the War

I'm always fascinated by pictures of people taken just before a war.  The top photo is dated 1914, and the second two are dated 1915, and in those years many, perhaps even most, Americans viewed the war in Europe as being an imperial struggle, a battle for power and colonies.  (For the record, I agree.)  President Woodrow Wilson promised to keep us out of war, but between the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 and the Zimmerman telegram of 1917, that promise wouldn't be kept.  In 1917, the United States declared war on the central powers.  The man in the picture looks like he was in the right age range for service.  Who knows if he survived.  But in 1914 and perhaps even in 1915, he was probably blind to the future.

Good Lookin'

No date, no name, no location, no information at all.  I bought these because I thought she was good looking.  My best guess, late forties through early fifties.

On Gault Street 5

And Forrestine makes her final appearance in the last of the Gault Street photos.  In the first photo in the column, Forrestine, on the far right, looks like she did in other photos from the mid thirties, but a printers mark on the front, right border dates the print to "NOV 57"  Eva was looking back on her childhood, her frineds and family from long ago.

Captions from top to bottom, "Marcia, Rita, Joan & Forrestine"  But who is the adult standing on the porch?
"Lucille Willoughby and Florence Willoughby, Taken in 1939"  "Joan Motz, Marie Hanna, July 1940"  "Norman & Trixie"  and finally "Dale"  

On Gault Street 4

In an earlier post, it was determined that it was Eva writing the captions.  Take a close look at the kid on the right in the first photo of the column, and compare him with the little boy in the final picture.  He sure looks like the same to me, perhaps no more than one or two years older.  The print, and the one just above it, however, are far more recent than that.  (Don't ask me how I know, other than twenty plus years of professional experience printing black & white photos.)  Anyway, for those of us old enough to remember life before the digital age, most homes had a box.  Maybe an old shoe box, maybe a large carton, full of old snapshots and negatives.  I think Eva was the one who decided to go through the box, put things in order, get a few new prints made, and write captions before memories faded and the people in the prints were forgotten.  It'll be interesting to see, twenty years from now, if people will go through the old hard drives, looking for images to print, so they can be passed around.

Captions from top to bottom.  "Forrestine, Dale, Norman on Pontiac 1931.  Rear of 1335 Gault St. Cols, O."  "Norman 3 yrs. old on Gault."  "Wertha, Dale, & Norman (on Gault St.)"  "Millie at Thurston"  And finally, a photo without a caption.  Eva, wasn't he worth the memory?

On Gault Street 3

The return of Forrestine!  Weird names, or archaic names, names that were once popular, but have fallen out of favor? Just for the hell of it, I entered Forrestine, Evealie, and Wertha into a search engine.  According  to the white pages website, as of February 2011, there were 115 Forrestines in their listings, 23 in Tennessee, 2 Evealies, both in Oregon, and no Werthas.  I did find an article about an astronomer named Wertha Pendleton Cole, but that Wertha was a man.

Captions from top to bottom.  "Lucille, friend, Laura, & Otis"  "Otis & Clarence"  "Clarence, Otis, Jud  & the boy who drove Jud's car"  "Forrestine & Dale, Shelter house Lancaster, O, Rising Park, 1931"  Lancaster is a small city in Ohio, and Rising Park is it's main park.  And finally,  "Eva Anthony, Marie Fisher, Elsie Anthony, & Forrestine Kristol in George's ice wagon"  Another quick note on names.  Eva's handwriting isn't the best in the world.  Forrestine's last name sometimes appears to be  Kristol, sometinmes Krostol, or Krostel.  I've chosen Kristol as the most likely for no other reason that I've run across the name before.

On Gault Street 1

I've picked up a small collection of photos that I'll be putting up in five separate posts.  Most look to have been printed when the pictures were taken, though there are also a couple of reprints in the group.  Some have captions that reference Gault Street and Columbus, Ohio, though some were printed in Texas.  All of the captions are written in the same hand.

Written on the prints, top to bottom.  "1924  X Grandma Kristol X Forrestine, 3 yrs."  "Laura Shaheen taken on Gault St. in early thirties"  There is also a stamp on the back of this one, "THIS IS A SKILLTONE PRINT  SKILEEN'S SEP. 20, 1937  FINISHED IN OUR MODERN LAB" The first of the reprints.  "Elsie Sharp & Forrestine, Gault St."  "Werthe & Oscar Berry pickers"  "Dalton on porch of his home.  Jud, Evealie & Marion on the side."

What a great bunch of names.

Standing In Snow

Yes, I know.  It's summer.  That doesn't mean I can't post a photo of a guy standing in snow.  Now, give this man a pair of those round, horn rimmed glasses, and a pipe and tell me he wouldn't look like Jean-Paul Sartre. Hey, I read.

More Riding Horses

This is a companion piece to yesterday's post.  Awhile back I bought a grab bag of photos, a sealed envelope of at least 100 pictures for a set price.  These two horse riding photos were part of the package, but, they're a different format, in other words, two different cameras, yesterday's post had writing on the back, this one was pulled from a photo album, and it's not the same rider.  Nevertheless, I'm going with the same source explanation until someone can offer something other than coincidence.

Riding Horses

Written on the back, "This is how I spent Thanksgiving Day morning.  1926.  This was taken after a hard run and we're all out of breath."  

1926 was an interesting time to live in the United States.  One world war was over and the next off in the future.  The economy was booming and prosperity was wide spread.  Of course, the economic strength was fueled by speculation, and in just a few years it would all go bust with the great depression.  

Children in Dresses

I may be wrong, but I think the taller of the two children is a boy. His mother must have had a unique sense of humor. His little sister seems shocked and confused.

Goofing Off In Nebraska

There's that unfortunate salute again. If I weren't so lazy, I'd go back and do some revisions on the first two posts of this Nebraska series. In the first, I speculated that these photos could be related. In the second, I thought that the linkage might be the photographer. Anyway, I was in such a hurry to get things up, I didn't take a close enough look at things. Now I realize that they all must have come from the same source.

All of these photos have the same stamp on the back. "KODAK PRINT MADE BY THAT MAN GALE APR 18. 1929 YORK, NEBR-AUROROA, NEBR" Robert G. Gale was born in Beatrice, NB on Nov. 17, 1871. He had a photo studio and processing shop in York as early as 1916. I've found references to his business from 1927, as well. At another blog, http://www.forgottenoldphotos.blogspot.com/ I found a studio photo dated to 1951 or 52, but I suspect that someone had either bought the studio or a family member had inherited by then. It's possible that Robert Gale was still active in his early eighties, but I have my doubts.

Written on the backs of the photos in descending order, "Denzel Smith" (Note that Denzell is holding a pistol to his head. It might be necessary to click on the image and bring it up in a bigger window to make it out.) "Mark Meteer" of the unfortunate salute, "Raymond Ronne, Margaret Smith" side by side, and "Denzel Smith, Helen Burgess" in the dominating pose. Well, I thought I had hit the jackpot finding out about that man Gale, but when I took a flyer and fed Denzel Smith into Google, well now, that was something else again. Denzel "Denny" Smith was born in rural Nebraska in 1912. So he would have been about 17 when these pictures were printed, probably a high school junior or senior. He would get a B.A. from York College and go on to teach high school in Wymore, NB from 1931-1935. Not bad, but it gets better. An M.A. would follow in 1937, and a PhD. in educational psychology and measurements in 1941. Both from the University of Nebraska. From 1942-1946 he was in the navy, developing selection processes for pilots, as well as working on cockpit designs. He would retire as a Lt. Commander. But it doesn't stop there. He would go on to teach at the University of Maryland and work for the National Science Foundation. During the Korean War, he would be sent to Korea to visit prisoner of war camps as an expert in psychological warfare with a temporary rank of Lt. General in the army. As an NSF staffer, he would consult and contribute to Lyndon Johnson's 1965 State of the Union Address. And, there is a whole lot more. If I knew enough about computers to cut and paste his obituary into this post, I'd do it, but instead I'll just put a link to it. www.legacy.com/obituaries/tcpalm/obituary.aspx?n=denzel-dale-smith-denny&pid=93283579

The German American Collection, The Album 3

The idea of English as a national language is only about 100 years old. Much of the upper mid-west was pioneered by immigrants from Germany and the Nordic countries. Many of the small farming communities, not only had German, Swedish or Norwegian as primary languages, but sometimes, the only language. In one town, civic documents might be in German, in another, the schools taught in Swedish, and the street signs could be in Norwegian in a third. So what changed? America's entry into World War 1, viewed by many as an unjustified intrusion into a European war of empire, had to be sold to the general public. Propaganda campaigns that pictured German soldiers as blood crazed animals, who willingly bayoneted woman and children, who raped nuns and burnt churches, helped sell American entry into the conflict, while also bringing into question the patriotism of those who continued to speak languages other than English.

So, how can we tell that a photograph is from Europe when all we have to go on are signs in the background, or written labels that may not be in English? In the case of this album, take a close look at the team photo. There is a badge on the athletes jerseys from Aurich. Aurich is a region and town in Lower Saxony, in Germany. (Click on the image to bring it up in a larger window, to see it better.) Throw in some of the building styles, and a non American military uniform that will be in a future post from this album, and Germany, not Minnesota, is the more probable location.

Ouch

I feel for this woman. A couple of days ago I was sprinting across the subway platform trying to catch the train when I tore something in my calf. I didn't work enough last year to qualify for health insurance through my union, so I'm sitting around wondering how long it's going to take to heal. If my Internet diagnosis is right, and it probably isn't, I could be hobbling around for the next couple of weeks. Ouch.

The German American Collection, A Single Roll of Film

I hope Kodak survives bankruptcy and comes back better than ever. I really hope that Kodak continues to make film, paper, and chemistry. Anyway, this post is a bit of Kodak history. There was a time when the company made automatic film printing machines for the local film lab. Press a button, and focus would set for whatever film format was being used. Then, it was time to set exposure. Unfortunately, the earlier automatic printers could only do one exposure setting per roll. A mythical average setting which sometimes didn't work for a single frame. (Without seeing the negatives, there is no way I can tell if good prints can be made from some of the darker images.) And finally, the photos made on a pre-perforated sheet of paper and then loaded in a Kodak supplied folder, printed by Kodak, with the local photo finishers name and address, and a nifty Kodak advertisement on the back cover. As usual, click on German-American in the labels section to bring up the whole collection.

Mystery Locale

Time to throw out a bit of a mystery. Where was this photograph taken? It could be Cuba, a fairly popular vacation spot for Americans before Castro and our ongoing tiff with Havana. Maybe Panama. This image goes back to a time when people took ships to get from point A to point B, rather than as a floating version of Vegas, and the canal was a pretty common trip. Mexico, maybe Manila. Hey, I'm not lazy. I spent a couple of hours looking through Google images and couldn't find a match.