Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: This photo came to me via the antiques mall in New Jersey, purchased shortly before Christmas this year, among my minor holiday decoration purchases. It is a bit faded and the mat it is attached to is a bit stained and tatty. It caught my eye however and overall it is sort of wonderful.
I brought the photo back to New York where I have been looking at it under a loupe and I have managed to read the very faded and overexposed writing on the side of the truck. I have deduced that this truck was decorated for a company picnic and outing. After cleaning I can just about read the writing on the side of the truck despite it being very over-exposed and faded, Annual Outing and Picnic for Employees Pulaski Trucking Corporation. Sadly, if there was a date I can no longer decode it. (These days I can find a Pulaski Heavy Hauling company in New York – hard to know if this is this company is the ancestor or not.)
This fits neatly into my collection of yard long photos of outings and employee picnics which decorate the walls of the house in New Jersey. (Posts about those can be found here and here.) I will most likely bring it back there to live, although if I could find a spot for it here in New York I would enjoy that too. There is something endlessly appealing about people in their best bib and tucker posing on a special outing. It is in some ways the essence and premise of much of my collection.
These yard long photos are hard to film (but worth it) so you’ll have to go to the post above to really see it!
It is a deeply male enterprise and picnic or not, these fellows mostly dressed for the occasion. (I’ll assume the wives and girlfriends and children are nearby but elsewhere.) Understanding that it is a picnic it is surprising that so many are in suits or wearing ties. Some wear hats and others took their off for the photo. There are two men in dark suits on the end, one holds a newspaper in his hands while the other has a black mourning band on his arm and smokes a cigarette.
The fellow on the very end is the jauntiest, leaning on one arm, straw hat and all attitude. Next to him, almost ghost-like due to movement during the exposure, being over-exposed and fading, is a small child in shorts, lumpy high socks (bad idea!) bunching down his legs. He is the only kid to sneak into this otherwise all adult photo.
The Tydol sign, hanging off the side of the garage, indicates that this photo was probably taken in front of the garage. There’s no way to know where this was taken. The three and four story buildings in the background make the setting at least a bit urban, but could easily be small town urban. Although found in NJ there is of course no guarantee that this was taken there and as these were truckers, we assume the fellows in the photo roamed a bit afield.
The photo is evidently glued into a pressed paper decorative mat. It was super grimy and it appears to have become one with the pressed paper mat. The back is cardboard and some torn brown paper, but with a wire that seems serviceable and ready to hang so I will be looking for exactly the right spot to install it.
Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I found this photo in New Jersey while looking for something else over the holidays. I found a cache of photos there of my father and his cousins when they were very young and spending summers in a tiny, bucolic enclave called Cottekill, in Ulster County, New York where the family had a house. Some of those photos showed my grandfather quite young with my dad as a tiny tot and many of the three children at play.
I don’t know why, but somehow I never saw this particular pile of photos. And I am sorry not to have found them to puzzle over with mom while she was still alive. Photos from Dad’s family somehow didn’t make it into the family rotation. Actually my parents mostly kept pictures of their life together in the house and ones from their past dribbled in over time, but were not always examined it seems. Although a cousin brought mom a pile from her side of the family which we were able to examine during the last years of her life.
Dad’s memory, never good, was sort of a Swiss cheese hit or miss before he died and I don’t know how much help he would have been in identifying anything anyway. As interesting as I find those photos of him as a babe or small child, this is a rare shot of my father as a young man and I can’t think of another from this time in his life so I have brought it back to New York with me.
Frankly, it is not a great photo, bad exposure and poorly printed, messy edges with some bit of another photo bleeding into the left side. The composition is not great – the photographer could have fitted dad into the frame better. Presumably it was taken by one of his friends, perhaps also learning the craft of still photography at the time. Dad appears to be noodling around with a piece of film editing equipment. (On subsequent study – is that a press camera seen from the side?) For me my interest is mostly that I don’t have other photos of him from precisely this time. It is undated and there is nothing written on the back – may I just say, neither side of my family ever made notes on their photos.
A photo of mom from about a decade later.
My father did his undergraduate degree at NYU in history and, after a stint in the army during the war in Korea where he was stationed in the Arctic and learned to film maneuvers. He later used the GI bill to get his masters degree in film at Boston University. I wonder if this shows him, plying his new trade, in an apartment somewhere in Boston, although it doesn’t really have the look of a student apartment – drapes on the window and paintings on the wall.
The objects on the table are too indistinct to really see. I believe the paper in front of him is likely the booklet of instructions for the device he is using – that may be a roll of film next to it. He is dressed in a rather natty button down shirt and vest and a watch with a leather band which predates the metal Rolex one I inherited (and wear) and remember him best as wearing.
Dad in an undated photo on a motorcycle he rode across country.
Dad always dressed well and he liked clothes and shopping – my mom didn’t so I assume I got my interest in those things from him. (I have written about his mom, Gertrude, before who collected jewelry and was always well dressed. A post devoted to her and my inherited interests can be found here.) The only real surprise is that he never wore a striped shirt in my memory. His closet was a perpetual sea of light blue and white versions of this shirt (pink might occasionally find its way in) which I might inherit to mess around in once the collars and cuffs frayed. It is a bit beyond my imagination to think of him wearing stripes, but evidently they are something he grew out of.
I have a photo I have written about before of dad a few years later, astride a decaying motorcycle he rode across the country. (That popular early post can be found here.) I like this one to help fill in the dots along the timeline of his life and I plan to put it in a frame and bring it to my office. There it will reside next to a much beloved picture of my mom I rescued recently where a young Betty Butler is holding Snoopy, our first cat as a family. Mom and Dad would meet about five or more years after spot on the timeline I assign to this picture.
Unlike some family photos I have unearthed, this one doesn’t really have stand alone quality as a picture to recommend it so thank you for indulging me a bit if you read this to the end.
Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: As I write today, I continue to try to get past this nasty cold (which Kim is now in the early stages of) which has dogged my holiday this year. In addition, we plan to pack up kit (cat) and caboodle on Saturday and head back to New York. In some odd way therefore, a cat house photo postcard seems like an appropriate post for you all to be reading as we are making our way back on Saturday.
This is an oddball card I ran across right before the holidays and which was delivered to New York before we left for Christmas. I purchased it on eBay which is was posted for sale for just a few sheckles so I was pleased to be the first to claim it. Not to say that I think it has very broad appeal – it could be said to be a card that only I (and a few other cat lovers) might find of interest.
Frankly, it is a bit dirty and tatty – the lower left corner has been torn – and was poorly printed as well, a wide white strip along the left side. For all of that, it is a great composition with the cat house dead center and those vertical trees bringing you eye right to it. There is the big house, back porch in evidence, behind it and a small additional shed that is similar to the house, on the right side. A long pipe chimney comes up from that roof which makes me wonder if it was perhaps a smokehouse. A tree runs up the right side of the card, closing the composition on that side.
This man and woman (proprietor and proprietress?) stand proudly on either side, their hands atop the cat house and his other hand pointing to it. Both look rather pleased with themselves and a dog is in evidence, although the proverbial (housed) cat is not. Some farm equipment is in evidence (pails, some sort of cart and a machine I cannot identify) are scattered about the yard. From the leaflessness of the trees and the coat sported by the woman I assume it is late fall or winter.
Back of card.
It was mailed on December 12, 1912 from Neosho, MO to Elizabeth Hitchcock, East Chatham, Colubmbia Co, New York, Route 1. It says, Helloo Sukey, Say this is a picture of Martha’s dog houses and cat house. I’ve been sick aint well yet, had pnemonia. I about coughed my head off. Merry Xmas and Happy New Year to all. from Grandpa.
Where are these dog houses? Do they produce them for sale?
Right up to Grandpa signature I thought it was a woman writing – don’t know why. Well, with the cat house, the coughing cold, Christmas and New Year’s greeting – I think this is spot on for a post-holiday post today. Back to toys tomorrow!
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today’s card was purchased in advance for this pending holiday purpose. When I bought it I had no idea we would celebrate the holiday with snow on the ground as we haven’t had this much in several years. Still, not enough to make our own snowman – or maybe just a mighty tiny one.
This card was mailed in France in 1913. We’ll assume that the snowman this kid perches on the shoulders of is made of sterner stuff than snow. He looks pretty pleased with himself as he, snowball in hand, lords his position over his presumed siblings. Potted fir trees are on either side and there is a painted or photographed scene behind them, snow and ice – perhaps for skating. Everyone is in their holiday best attire.
Back of the card.
Although the fall always brings a certain back-to-school mentality to my perspective, there is no question that putting the end point on one year and starting another is a moment of reflection. To top it off, my birthday is in February so I will remain somewhat on this introspective jag for a bit.
Last year this time I was closing the chapter on my time at Jazz at Lincoln Center after almost seven years and heading into the unknown of a new job. As someone who has only changed jobs a scant three or so times in my life, this caused understandable fretting. (Last year’s post can be found here.) It saw the dawn of my dental woes which have remained with me into the coming year. However, I am more resigned to that mess.
Long cold hallway of our current offices.
So it is with somewhat less trepidation than last year that I commence the New Year. The job is more familiar now as I round the bend of one year in January. However, that is not to say that I in any way have it under my belt. More like I have taken stock over the past year and now I have to map a plan for growth and change – in a sense the work has just begun!
Meanwhile, my office is moving on January 6 and therefore an additional sense of turning over a new leaf. Our current offices, which have the sense of being temporary but where they have been housed for about five years, will not be missed with its leaks, mice and noise. The new offices are nicer – not perfect, a bit squeezed, but cleaner and nicer.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: I stumbled on today’s find although I do search for local photos of my New Jersey area which I will ultimately decorate the house. (See my post on one of my family’s favorite restaurants, Bahr’s Landing here!) However, this one was served up by eBay’s master brain as something I might like and for once they were right.
When I checked it out it also served up several options and I ultimately went for this one which was never used. The one I didn’t purchase was mailed in September of 1904 to 532 West 51st Street here in New York City. That helps us place it in time; its an early photo postcard.
This is the (unnamed?) pond I think is pictured in the postcard.
Those of you who followed my photographic running journal may recognize this. It is a lovely little lake not far from my house. In the way that water does, this one travels around quite a bit and one end is a series of small estuaries that pop up around my neighborhood. One has a terminus (or a beginning?) at the grammar school at the foot of my street where a large pipe issues and takes in a small stream of water. It grows larger as it gets toward River Road, but with fingers that create a series of creeks running through backyards in a few directions. Presumably it flows to and from the river, the Navesank, on the far side of River Road.
When purchasing our house my mother was seeking to get away from the troubles of life on the water. Having endured a lifetime of battling floods while living on the Shrewsbury river, she was done with that. I would say mom managed it as there is no evidence that this wandering water body runs under our house, but it is much closer than I would have thought without the on the ground inspection my runs granted me. (I am grateful for this as I seem to have enough trouble with water incursion which has included but is not limited to needing a new roof and endless tweaking of the pump system in the basement there.)
Another view of it as it creeps further back passed some houses not seen from the main street.
During significant flooding events I would guess that some of these creeks could rise to notable levels. Gratefully this has not happened during my heretofore brief tenor of home ownership.
The pond we call McCarter’s Pond, a few more blocks in the other direction, heading away from Red Bank and on the Rumson border.
They have labeled this Lake on Fair Haven Road near Red Bank, NJ. That would make it a pond we call McCarter’s Pond today. However, I would argue that this is actually the water body where Fair Haven connects to Red Bank on River Road. I offer contemporary photos of both for consideration.
McCarter’s pond was part of an eponymous estate. Mr. McCarter, Thomas, a prominent attorney, lived from 1867-1955 and owned a swath of land which is now developed with pricey homes doting the whole area. It is man made and quite shallow, not exceeding an average 3.5 ft deep. It is used for an annual fishing derby. An article almost a decade old talks about lighting it for ice skating in the winter which I have never seen. I used to skate on a pond near our house in Rumson but never remember going over to McCarter’s pond to skate. Having said that, a shallow pond like that must freeze fairly quickly and solidly.
Looking at these photos gives me a bit of a yen to run again. I fell while running, too tired, early one morning and have shelved it for now. I think with the new job and other things going on it was too much but I would like to get back to it. I miss the outdoor time, although I log a little more than 3 miles walking to and from work daily.
This is a somewhat poorly made card and an image depicting the pond on a wintery, leafless day. The image trails off with a sort of chewed off look at the bottom and has a sort of twig frame at the top. It looks as if a tatty found image was applied to this postcard. In addition to the writing mentioned above there is a photo credit, Photo by C.R.D. Foxwell etched into the corner. Lastly, there is the odd addition of a little campfire drawn in next to the location writing.
Odd little detail from the bottom left corner.
Nonetheless, I am pleased to have stumbled on this very local early image of Fair Haven and it will find a nice spot, framed on the wall, in the house there.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Just coming off the Louis Wain Catland bio (I posted about that last week and it can be found here) I am self-consciously thoughtful suddenly about how the public sentiment about cats has shifted over the past 100+ years since humans just started finding their sea legs with them as domestic beloveds.
It wasn’t long after the Victorian period that cats were taken up in popular advertising at the dawn of the 20th century. This grinning black kit with the yellow bow was the longstanding spokes-cat for the Black Cat Hosiery company and was so popular for decades that the advertising items from it remain in high demand and often is quite pricey today. (This bit of an ad with thanks to Sandi Outland, via @curiositiesantique who sent it several months back – the the sea, my desk has spit it up from the depths for today’s consideration and helped inspire this post.)
I have written about the company on other occasions so if you want more info on the company you can find it in a post here – and more here. The above ad is from a July, 1907 McCalls magazine and other ads on the page are for, most fascinatingly, H&H Pneumatic Bust Forms (yes, like stuffing your bra – no one will know) and Modene hair removal for face, neck and arms – it cannot fail! Our black cat was in good company.
Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.
So in a mere few decades cats began to morph into the area they would command for many decades to come. However, I think it is fair to say that with the part of our lives that are now lived online some of us have taken our interest in cats to a much more highly developed level.
A photo of a young Betty Butler, holding our cat Snoopy back in the 1960’s from a Mother’s Day post this year.
Speaking for myself, my interest in cats began as a small child. Pictorama readers know that I have written numerous times about my childhood cat friends, Snoopy, a white cat with black cow spots with whom I shared many important childish conversations. But there was also Pumpkin who came to me as a tiny kitten ball of orange fluff and grew into an enormous faded-orange tabby who followed me around with dog-like devotion. As I got older my cat Winkie, a tiny tortie polydactyl with huge toed front paws like mitts, was my particular confidant. As a young adult Otto Dix (Miss Otto Dix), a tuxie from a corn farm in New Jersey, became my constant companion and closest friend, a very special cat especially smart cat who I still miss to this day.
However, until relatively recent years, my love and interest in cats (other than what I collect of course) was limited largely to those I knew – mostly my own or those of my mother. I suppose it started even before the pandemic, but certainly during those long days and nights that following cats online became a habit. First there was Maru the Japanese cat (to be precise, a Scottish Straight cat who lives in Japan) who can’t resist box and likes to get into boxes, some that are way too small for him. There was the somewhat neurotic French cat, Henri, a long haired tuxie who has Existential angst. The French also brought us cats playing Paddy Cake which never fails to make me laugh and for some reason is only funny to me in the French – there is an English version.
Still, those were occasional and one-off entertainment. I believe for me that cats as a form of online entertainment and escapism was born of the darkest period of the pandemic, fueled by late nights of waking up and worrying about work. Unable to sleep, I would read Judy Bolton novels (the first in a lot of early series books I read and I wrote about Judy Bolton here) and take a spin through Instagram, sometimes buying the odd item, but also entering the world of cats online and sometimes following even their most daily routines.
I’m probably skipping ahead a bit but Sadie and Dottie (@sadieanddottie), a tuxie and a white kit with cow spots, and who appear to live in Queens, brightened many a dark day when I realized a new post or story had been posted. These largely consist of these two cats growing up, but mostly doing cat stuff like watching birds and napping. Yes, I can watch my own cats do that (although Deitch Studio is situated a little high for birds out the window) and I do, but it turns out I like to watch other cats do it too.
A screen grab of this little video of Sadie.
With almost 14,000 viewers cat mom Lauren Grummel and cat dad Chas Reynolds, Jr. appear to have their hands full supplying frequent doses of their kitties going through their daily paces. A favorite post is an imaginative one of Sadie (the tux) sailing away on a boat at night in search of parents who will give her more treats instead of telling her she’s had enough. (Find it here.)
There is @Fatfink (aka Devlin Thompson) who I first got to know on Facebook, but now is an Instagram constant. His record of the comings and goings of his small menagerie of four cats, (these days Clawford, Kookie, Mr. Biscuits and Miss Rupert), which includes some recent rescues and things like his daily fight over his dinner with them or other such tidbits, are interspersed with an aligned interest in comics – but it is really over the kits that we bond. He sends me great cat videos too which I often find first thing in the morning and cheer my day.
Newly acquired Clawford.Clawford recently introduced to this rather rarified Deitch portfolio!
A friend on the west coast started supplying me with both funny and moving video snippets of cats during the difficult period of caring for my mother although she continues to send them since I like them so much. These videos, many from The Dodo are chock-a-block full of cats paired with a myriad of other odd animals as friends (deer, dogs, cows) or doing un-catlike activities like motorcycle riding or boating. It is especially lovely and a real kindness as she herself isn’t especially fond of cats so she seeks them out just for me.
Most recently I have fallen hard for team Penny and Felix on Instagram. Penny (@pennythegingercat) is a somewhat sardonic and absolutely adorable orange tabby female (yes, a rarity) and Felix (@felixthepalegingercat) her younger brother, a lean and lanky light orange fellow. (Penny alone has upwards of 650,000 followers!)
The antics of these two (two accounts means twice the fun) include but are not limited to: Felix’s impatience over getting his breakfast in the morning, Penny’s preference of Dad over Mom, Penny sleeping as a face down loaf and the like. These have cheered me endlessly over the past year. Highlights have included Penny entering the Olympics this year as a gold medal winning cat loaf champion and I credit the duo for having invented the term skippity pap (or at least made it enter my personal lexicon) – which is accompanied by a sort of whoosh-smack sound effect that is especially satisfying. It is among the few accounts I turn my sound on for routinely.
The dynamic cat duo’s mom and dad (mom is the voice over for the most part) do a brilliant job of editing, voice over – they are top pros at it and I bless them daily for these inventive missives that come over my transom, brightening all days. Quite simply I cannot recommend them enough for a cat dopamine daily dose.
Four out of the NJ Five here – Gus missing.Blackie and Cookie peevishly sharing the bed with each other and of course Kim recently.
I have written before about social media and my belief that if content is carefully chosen and tended it can be a rabbit hole of blissful escapism. During the brutal hustle and full-on assault of our shifting political world I have found myself diving deeply into this somewhat alternate universe of cats. As the mother of the NYC duo Cookie and Blackie, and the Jersey Five (Beau, Milty, Gus, Peaches and Stormy) and the head of fundraising for a major emergency animal hospital – you’d think I would get enough daily dose of the kitty world, but simply, no – quite simply, I prefer even more.
I started subscribing to a daily newspaper in high school and have more or less read one daily every since, butI lately find my ability to read above the fold reduced to a nervous skittering across headlines as I head down the page to stories about things like a research study on puppy kindergarten – the super socializing of puppies to see if they make better service animals (NYT and can be found here). So today I pay tribute to those folks online who may not inform my politics, nor deliver my news, but who are vital community which cheers my daily existence.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: A friend and colleague who began her life in Finland (she lives in Ohio today and works remotely for me a few hours a week), told me the other day that when she was little parents were so invested in the idea of the Christmas holiday that it was common to hire a Santa to come to the house. She said that when she realized that Santa wasn’t real, she felt she could not say anything because it would hurt her parents.
I love that story, and I have great affection for this card I just bought which shows the other side of Nordic holiday spirit. I am unsure what country this originally hailed from, although I purchased it from someone in the Netherlands who also did not know the origin of the card. There is a tiny NTG in the lower left corner and writing in another language and incredibly small that I cannot decipher. The internet was not much help on this front although another seller of postcards thought NTG was German. I have not found evidence of other cards like it, but perhaps a series of them lurks somewhere yet.
Gnomes are evidently thought to deliver Christmas presents in Scandinavia in the 18th and 19th centuries, helpers to Father Christmas. (Families left bowls of porridge for them – perhaps a bit less appealing than our cookies and milk!) I would suspect this is where the idea of our elves as Santa’s helpers come from.
I will say that I purchased this card on eBay for very little and utterly uncontested! I gather that I am the only one who was looking who saw its charm, but I am pleased to add it to the Pictorama collection.
Of course it turned up for me because of the weird tabby cat. If you look very closely he appears to have a tiny antler, possibly drawn on. Puss seems to be pouncing on him while this gnome protects Santa with this long stick. Santa and the gnome are small children in costume and the cat is, well a cat, probably one that hung around the photo studio catching mice and playing bit parts. His tail is curled upward and we can see his nice white tummy and white feet. I think we can assume if left to his own devices he would have liked to knead biscuits on the Santa suit and take a cat nap.
Santa plays his role with some drama – oh no, the antlered cat attack – his cottony beard, brows and hair contributing to his look. The gnome goes at it with great gusto as well. Also beard and with curling hair coming out of his pointy cap (his own?) he grins with gnome-ish fervor as he saves Santa. I like his pointy shoes.
One can imagine that the day shooting this was pretty much a good time for all. The set certainly is stark with a few large stones to the left and in front and this sort of nest of twigs behind the gnome. In addition to that odd little antler being drawn in, a very careful examination shows a very small smattering of white dots down the middle of the card which I assume are meant to be snowflakes. Otherwise this is a rather barren set making it feel a bit like Santa on the Moon.
Back of the card – no evidence of being mailed despite being addressed.
I share the back of this card which I cannot decipher although omitie appears to be Romanian and means to omit – I assume that this was meant to say – I didn’t forget Edmund! While fully addressed there is no evidence of it being mailed with a stamp or cancellation. The writing in pencil seems to be earlier seller’s marks. So was it just dropped by a mailbox perhaps?
So here we go, kicking off this holiday season here at Pictorama. This photo postcard embodies both some humor, but also a tiny bit of historic grit and well, a pleasant sort of meanness. Just what we need as we sally forth into the season ahead.
Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: It’s a crisp fall weekend here in New York City. Tomorrow will, in part, be devoted to a Halloween Howl dog parade over at Carl Schurz park. I will stop by the animal hospital’s table and visit my colleagues handing out animal care info. Costumed cuties will likely abound so keep a weather eye out for pics on Instagram.
Meanwhile, today’s photo is one of those odd one off purchases for me. Saw it, liked it and followed my nose to purchasing it. I can imagine this being a much loved family photo of this proud family business owner of yore.
It came to me via the Midwest (dealer of all things vintage @missmollystlantiques), but there are no identifiers as to location. Emanelo Fine Cigars are boasted and Camels proudly in large letters below it. The sign that reads Pharmacy is decidedly less prominent, at least for the purposes of this photo.
Clearly the pharmacy was also where you went for your cigars and cigarettes and there is a sign for something called Penetro, which a quick bit of research tells me was a medicated rub. Sort of like Vicks I assume. (That from my childhood – does it still exist? I haven’t heard of anyone using it for years.) There is a tiny advertisement for Kodak also on the far left.
Our fellow, I assume proprietor, stands proudly in front of the establishment and with this splendid popcorn machine which is labeled Hot Popcorn. This is not a photo postcard, but a photo and it shows evidence of having been glued into an album at one point. The Deco border dates it back to the early years of the 20th century, but for decade it is a bit timeless and hard to nail down.
Pictorama readers know that I have restaurants on one side of my family tree and a dry goods store on the other. I would love to have a photo like this of either establishment, but in some ways especially Butler Dry Goods which I retain a very dim memory of having been in. It is more a memory of light and smell and space than of the specifics of the interior.
I inherited a large number of photos which I am going through in New Jersey. I don’t know where they all were because there are many I never saw before. Of course now with mom gone I have largely lost my ability to have the family members identified.
Many of these photos are from my dad’s family and I’m not sure how many she would have known as these were long before her time too. Dad never knew. He seemed to remain somewhat willfully ignorant about his family history and passed almost no stories on. Mom held what tales we had, as told to her by Dad’s mother. I have a few cousins who might find them of interest and I should scan some for them. I imagine I will share the best of the pictures with you all too as future posts.
Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Today’s photo was a photo postcard and it was cut down at some point into this more or less perfect square. Man, the mind boggles a bit at what the rest of it looked like and why it was ultimately cropped – to fit in a frame perhaps?
It comes to me via @marsh.and.meadow on Instagram. While my usual gig with them is jewelry (see one of those posts here), I find that Heather (Hagens) has expanded over time and other tidbits come over the transom. Of course some of them catch the interest of Pictorama. She has expanded her footprint to @marsh.and.meadow.overflow for most of these non-jewelry items. Even for what I don’t buy, I admit to enjoying the passing parade of eyeball kicks.
There is writing on the back and it was mailed. The cancellation survives and it was mailed from Detroit on July 28, 1912 at 8:00 PM. It was mailed to, Hildie Cullen (the name cuts off here), in Nellie, Ohio. A few words exist down the side but not enough to string together, it was a dense note of sorts.
Back of the card. Looks as if there was a whole story being told on the left side.
It wasn’t for the man in drag I purchased this photo, but for the very large, marvelous teddy bear, who stands on his haunches and bears arms! He comes up to the man’s elbow.
If teddies came into being in 1902 (famously Roosevelt declined to shoot a small cornered black bear and the toy was invent and dubbed in his honor) this is how Teddy has grown in a decade. He could be a Steiff made bear and they had plenty of time to grow them this large. He reminds me of my beloved enormous Felix toys which people will pose with across the ocean in another decade or so.
(I can’t say much for the visuals on this, but I thought I’d share Bing singing The Teddy Bear’s picnic for the heck of it below.)
Meanwhile, I wonder if the gun the bear holds is a sort of salute to the Roosevelt story which certainly was likely still in popular memory at that time. It appears that somehow Teddy has an empty Coke bottle balanced on his head as well. Could he be both shooter and target practice here?
The man, carrying a parasol, is in a long flowered print skirt which would have been an old one even for the time. (I’m saying he is not fashionably attired!) He maintains his man’s shirt and a tie, but sports, upon very close inspection, some greenery (leaves) stuffed in his shirt and some sort of ribbon pinned to it. His basket is loaded with some posies and more of the same leafy greens.
I thought he was an older man, but the same close inspection shows that he is young. (Perhaps that shouldn’t surprise me.) His man’s boots just about make it into the photo of the cropped edge, peaking out under the long skirt.
Behind him we see a barnyard scene of doors open and closed. It may have been sent in July, but it looks as if the ground is littered in leaves making me wonder if it wasn’t take in the fall and maybe for Halloween. The quality of the photo isn’t great, a bit over-exposed so it is hard to say. Whoever cut it down had a good eye for composition and it works well in this square format.
It is of course the teddy that earned this photo a place in the Pictorama archive, but it is a well cared for picture and I am glad that it has come to rest in a place where we can enjoy it.
Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: At first I wondered, as you may be right now, why this card ended up in my feed, until I realized that the woman perched on the back of this motorcycle is holding a tiny kitten in her lap. He or she, a cute little tabby, is snuggled in on the lap of that nice white dress. Although it may not seem so at first, it is indeed a cat photo.
After a bit of consideration, I realized that this seems to be a celebratory photo. Perhaps it was the purchase of this nice new Indian motorcycle, shiny chrome on the handlebars. (Am I wrong in saying it does not yet have its front light?) The fellow is in a suit and tie with a straw hat, perky but not really motorcycle riding ready. The woman, in her white dress, sporting a pretty locket and kitten perched on the back, is the real point of this though. Her feet off the ground, she is jaunty! Her black stockings and shoes – we can just about see them swinging around the kickstand. They are both grinning. Or could they have just gotten hitched?
This is a photo postcard and like so many, it was never sent, but instead kept in mostly pristine condition.
For all of their jollity, the landscape where they are posed is a bit bereft of charm. There is some sort of industrial tower in the background with a few low wooden buildings and trees off in the distance. Closer in is what appears to be a whet stone on a foot activated stand, some indistinct farm equipment near it, further obscured by what appears to be a thumb print in the chemicals used to print this. On the other side there appears to be a chicken or maybe a goose in the background and a field planted with rows of something.
Somewhere there exists (or did) an early snippet of home movies of my mother’s mom and dad, newlyweds, on an early motorcycle. I think they were either on their honeymoon or it was their honeymoon although I have trouble imagining that they rode that motorcycle from New Jersey to St. Louis where his family lived, which is what I believe they did shortly after being married. (I must try to find someone who knows that story.) Anyway, that would have been a couple of decades after this, although not all that many. My grandfather was an engineer and all things mechanical and in motion were his thing. He repaired outboard motors for extra cash, but just seemed to always be tinkering successfully with things. Frank Wheeling, he died young but I do have adoring memories of him from when I was a tiny tot. My guess is he would have liked this motorcycle. (To find a post about my dad as a young man on his jalopy of a bike go here.)
I myself have only been on a motorcycle a few times as a passenger and I did find it sort of thrilling. This motorcycle seems almost closer to the electric bikes we see today. Kim and I have eyed them with a bit of interest, but I am not sure I see a way that we will end up getting to enjoy one unless someone offers us a ride – I don’t think either of us really has any business trying to drive one solo. But I confess, they are tempting and I although I am ambivalent about driving a car these and various scooters (a neighbor in the city has a pink Vespa!) do appeal.
Pam's Pictorama 