Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: As I recently explained in my post Borrowed Photo (which can be found here) bunker days have lead to the loosening of a primary posting rule – that I own all that I post about. It was a rule rarely bent in the past, but in these days of both reduced circumstances and getting out rarely, the powers that be at Pictorama are loosening the rules a bit. So today we are considering this postcard which was for sale on eBay which quickly ran up alarmingly high and well beyond my purse. Leaving me to think that someone actually did want it more than me which was saying a lot, but true nevertheless. Sigh.

Black cats and Felix were irresistible decorations for early parade floats and these could form a sub-genre of my photography cards. Examples of the Felix floats can be found here and here, but black cats can also be found here  and here. Another one, Spirit of the Golden West is shown below.

This postcard depicts a Lansing, Michigan parade – that hint from a truck boasting, Ingham County Commission behind our car. It is undated and evidently was unused. Judging from the cars in the background, parked roadside under some nice old store awning I would put this in the 1920’s, although it could be a bit earlier. Someone smarter about cars feel free to chime in.

The clowns occupying this car frankly terrify me and I am sort of glad we cannot see them more clearly. All white faces, their wizard peaked caps, and eyes blacked out. Yikes. I bet some kids went away with nightmares after an eye full of these guys.

Most wonderfully though, this garlanded clown car is largely decorated largely with the black cats of Black Cat Hosiery advertising fame. (So was it their float or did they just borrow the image?) A small cardboard version of this advertising graces the wall near where I am currently camped out for work, my drawing table acting as a desk, is shown above. I wrote about it back in April of 2015, in Time Out for Our Sponsor (it can be found here (and again, here) and that grinning black advertising cat has long been a favorite of mine. These commercial kits are interspersed with black cat witches on brooms, Halloween kitties, some sort of winged critters and a black cat and jack-o-lantern garland wrapped all around it. The huge tiger (if you look at him right royal is spelled out in his stripes) gives the whole production some teeth. However, lastly and best is that big white kitty is smiling at the front of the car, leading the way.