The Howsers of Missouri

I've still got plenty of postcards left, but after this post, I'm going to move on to other things for awhile.  Top to bottom, "Ula Howser"  "From Myrtle Howser to Zilia Howard, Mrs Zelia Howard, Bagnell, Mo"  and "Elston Howser"   Bagnell, Missouri is a very small town that had a population of 93 as of the 2010 census.

Little Pauline

Another real photo postcard.  Labeled "Pauline Fay Buckner."  My mother would go crazy when I sat on a chair like this.

Four Chums

I'm going to do postcards for awhile.  Sooner or latter I'll get tired of it and move on to snapshots, or photo albums, or something else.  But for the time being, it's all postcards all the time.  Just a bit on dating early postcards.  Up until 1898, the U.S. Post Office, in the United States, had a monopoly on the printing of postcards.  After 1898, private publishers and individuals were allowed to make cards, but the post office retained control over the term postcard so privately produced cards were referred to as private mailing cards.  After 1901, the post office ceded it's exclusive use of the word postcard.  Up until 1907, it was against postal regulations to write anything on the back of a card, except the address.  Cards had undivided backs, lacking the line that divided the address from the area allowed for messages.  So, this is a privately produced card, labeled postcard, with an undivided back, so it should have been made between 1901 and 1907.  That is if the person who printed this card hadn't saved a box of card stock for a decade or two.

Written on the back, "Ruby"

Merry Christmas 1952

I have a confession to make.  I don't really like Christmas all that much.  My parents split up when I was young, and Christmas day was when they made their one effort of the year to be civil to each other.  It lasted about five minutes.  But for those whole love Christmas, a couple of cute kids standing in the snow, dated "Dec 1952"

The North Texas State Normal College Album 9

Time for a few more pages from The North Texas State Normal College Album.  The studio portrait of the two kids was taped in while the other photos are glued on the page, so I'm guessing that it was added after the other ones.  But how long after?  They look unhappy to be at the photographers.  As always, click on NTSNC in the labels section to bring up the whole album.

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.

Children 5

Similar pose, and same subject as the last post, but a different person.  All the images in this sequence are from the grab bag of photos, so this one could be from the same family.  Or then again, it could be a coincidence.

Children 3

I wanna play in the mud!  Me too!

Children 2

Did she grow up a proper young lady, or did she grow up wild?  I'd love to now.

Children 1

I'm not real big on pictures of children, but I do end up with some in the collection.  A few months ago I bought the grab bag of pictures, 100+ photos in an sealed envelope, purchased blind.  So, I'm going to put up some of the kid images from the envelope in the next few days.  Hard to tell when this one was taken.  Originally black & white, hand colored by the studio.

The German American Collection, The Album 9

Every time I see a photograph of a German child from between the wars, I can't help but wonder what happened to them. And by that, I don't just wonder about whether they survived, or not. If this picture was taken in the early twenties, then this little boy would have been the right age for Hitler Youth and then the army. He would have also been the right age to have made choices, rather than being a blind follower, unaware of any reality beyond National Socialism. Was he enthusiastic? Was he a doubter? Did he resist? Of course, this album was purchased from a dealer in the United States. With any luck, he spent most of his childhood in New York, voted for Franklin Roosevelt, helped liberate Europe, and spent the post war years in a suburb, living a nice middle class life.

The German American Collection, The Album 7

I think they must be bird watchers. Click on German-American in the labels section at the bottom of the post to bring up the whole collection. Too, click on album to bring up a number of other photo albums.

The German American Collection, The Broken Ones

It's my preferred practice, when scanning mounted prints, to crop out everything but the actual photograph. Too, I prefer not to impose a symbolic meaning to old, family photos. But in this case, where a dealer went to an estate sale and bought up boxes of old photos that no one was willing to save from the prying eyes of strangers, it only seems right that there should be some damage to things. Take a good look at the child on the left in the final print. I'm convinced that's a little boy in the dress. What were they playing? Peter Pan? Click on German American in the labels section to bring up the rest of the collection.

The Epworth League Album 6, Ethnic Dress or Strange Fashion?

Are the ladies in the second image wearing some sort of ethnic dress or did they have similar tastes in fashion? I've been looking through Google images searching for a match, and so far no luck. Click on Epworth League in the labels section to bring up the lot.

Shooting Up Like Weeds

Now I know the origin of the phrase. I wonder if these two just stood around all day looking ominous and scaring the passers by? Printed on postcard stock.

A Hand Comes Into the Frame

In the past I've noted that I don't really care for pictures of babies. The truth is they all look alike to me. And while we're on the subject of infants; Moms, if you're kid is too young to walk, talk, and too young to stop slobbering, please don't plop him on my lap and ask me to admire his chubby cheeks. Anyway, I can imagine the photographer crying out, "If you want a picture of the damn kid stop him from bouncing around all the time." And so the mother's hand creeps into the frame and holds the swing steady. Taken with a view camera.

Two Girls, One Boy

My best guess is that this picture was taken in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century and what a future these children would face. Let's assume that these three kids are children of an American middle class. All children of the poor and working classes were raised to eventually make a living, but for the middle class and the wealthy, girls were raised to make a marriage. They would have been given an education that would have given them a certain amount of charm, wit, and grace. Perhaps it would have included a women's college, perhaps not. Boys would have been raised to their father's business, a true career, and membership in an appropriate club. But things change. These three would have faced World War 1, a flu pandemic that may have killed as many as 100,000,000 people in eighteen months. Then the roaring twenties, probably the period of greatest social change in the last 100 years. Then the great depression, 30 % unemployment at a time when most women didn't work which probably would translate into 50 % unemployment by today's standards. Then World War 2, and if these three kids were born no earlier than the 1890s, there was a decent chance that, at the least, they lived to see Korea and the beginning of Vietnam. May you live in interesting times.

Marie and Malcolm Carskadden

An albumen print, mounted on a card, "Marie and Malcolm Carskadden" written on the back. I did a search on both Marie and Malcolm Carskadden and couldn't find a thing.

Strange Girls Get Strange Borders

What's up with Blogger? I'm redoing this post because the service was down for a couple of days and when it came back up, my last effort had been deleted. Too, I've only got 16 of 'em, but the followers section has vanished into the ether. Anyway, as I wrote a couple of days ago, these three girls probably appeared quite ordinary when this photo was taken, but to my eye, they remind me of three young stars of a slasher movie. The girl on the left is the dupe, the one on the right is the psycho killer and the center girl is the manipulator who gets the other two to do her evil bidding. And those weird borders make it even more spooky. When I worked in the photo lab, I had cut out a number of masks from black construction paper to give prints uneven borders, something that a couple of our clients liked. Printed on postcard stock. Early twentieth century, I'd bet.

Cabinet Card-Two Children

Two little girls? Very likely, but not a sure thing. There was a custom among the upper classes of the nineteenth century of keeping little boys in dresses and long hair until they were three or four years old. Then it was knee pants, and not until a certain age, long trousers.