old photo

Passin’ Through

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post:  This card would be pretty interesting even if it was just the musicians, but I really love that it was snapped as the cat was tip toeing through.  Everyone is looking sort of like they just stepped out of a band box – oops, pun I guess. But truly, the neat straw hats, her dress – this is their good bib and tucker.  No idea where this was taken and frankly, the background does look a bit down and out.  A photo postcard with no writing on the back. I would like to hear them play. I imagine it was jolly despite the frayed surroundings.

The cat is the same black and white cow print as my very first cat and best friend when I was a tiny tot, the aptly named Snoopy. A very nice cat, a bit heavier in the tum than this fine looking fellow. When I was a little older we acquired several more cats, all fairly territorial, as cats will be about their yard. Our neighbors, meanwhile, had a marmalade tabby tom of medium size – I think his name was Phil. Somehow this rather shy and peace-loving cat had negotiated a treaty with our cats whereby he could enter the yard as long as he kept moving – was allowed to cross it – without being chased. He would pass with a determined, steady and continuous stride at all hours of the day and night. He was renamed and forever known to the Butler clan as Passin’ Through. This cat has that same let me get out of here yet un-hurried look just like Passin’ Through used to have. While I am not sure, maybe there is a cat as diplomat lesson to be learned there.  If not, we still have the great photo.

White Cat and the Art of Motorcycle Riding

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Bought this photo of the cat on the motorcycle recently, and then scooped up the mate, the one with the boy, subsequently so they would stay together.  However, it is the photo of the cat alone on the bike that really appeals and gets the imagination going.  Much to my surprise, these are tiny snap shots, although with lots of information on those negs considering how nicely they blow up.  (I seem to be bad about comprehending the size of photos when I buy them online – I assume the information is there, but for some reason it seldom seems to penetrate my brain – all focused on the image.)  Don’t know much about it, but I really love this old motorcycle – barely more than a bike with an engine.  Perfect for a cat to drive…

felix car

It brought to mind this Felix-y photo which I have already shared here (September 13,  Mysteries of Felix) which, although not a motorcycle seems to be a car of roughly the same period and, of course, another white cat.  Like the motorcycle photos those are also tiny photos – less information though and they start to disintegrate when blown up too much.

Being a non-driver myself, I cannot speak to the affinity of cats and transportation, but I suggest you watch them around your keys.

Strange Hijinxs

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Cag tree...tranquil scene

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: The cat photo is a recent purchase and it made me dig out the other, which I have had for years and was sitting on a shelf.  I guess it is the peering between the trees thing that scratched at my brain.  I love the photo of the cat showing his (or her) tummy in the tree, although it does make you wonder what the heck they were thinking.  I mean, if the cat liked to hang out in the tree like that, that why do you need to hold him up for the photo?  Cat looks concerned – often do in photos I have noticed.  This isn’t a large photo, about 3″x5″ and you can see where it used to fit into an album. Hmmm, wonder what else was on that page.

The other one is a photo postcard and a terrific photo.  Clearly the folks are having some fun, although I suspect the specifics might be somewhat lost to us. I like the way the dog is looking one way and the man in the tree the other. Perfect reflection in the water which adds to it too. I do wonder how I even found this photo (no cat in it to turn up on a search) which brings to mind one of the things I do not like about living in the age of eBay.  Ebay is beyond wonderful for finding things you are looking for, but is somewhat limited to what you are looking for – it is not impossible, but a bit harder to stumble on things you didn’t know about, the way you might at a flea market digging through a dusty box.  I have managed, and this photo is evidence – and I am the first to say that the good outweighs the bad!

A Jolly Tintype

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I have owned this tintype for a number of years – pulled it out of a box at a big photography fair and plunked on the wall at work where it has remained since. I have an ongoing fascination with the happy fantasy of a really splendid photo set like this one. Who wouldn’t be having the time of their life posed here?

Mom and her two sons I guess – I especially like the American flag and the boating banners waving.  North Beach – San Francisco and the Wharf? This tintype is reproduced at about full size, maybe a smidge larger.  When you take into account the rushed and repetitive process of these little wet plate photos, at a fair or seaside resort, undoubtedly developed in a pail of filthy chemicals that saw dozens or more that day – it amazes me that this photo and so many like it have survived and have such lasting power. Aside from a chemical smudge and a fingerprint or two, nice composition, it’s a solid little photograph. I always think that I would have liked to have been there, and would have been proud to produce it.

Tom the Fire Boat Cat

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post:  I don’t have all that much to say except that I fell in LOVE with this postcard when I saw it a few weeks ago.  I will confess that I paid dearly for it (which just shows that other people saw his charm as well), but the pain of purchase is already fading in my memory  – my pleasure with the card rapidly eclipsing the cost.

September 1910, more than a hundred years ago this month, Tom, The pride of the Fire Boat, Portland, Oregon, posed for this photo. (Yep, another wonderful photo find from the great city of Portland, OR.)  What a nice fellow!  He has a great sense of readiness about him and it is easy to imagine him helping with all the necessary boat tasks.  A very solid little citizen, nicely well-fed, muscular, but not quite fat.  And he just about qualifies as a tuxedo – I have a soft spot for those, as many of you know.  I salute Tom and I hope you enjoy him too.

Mickey Marches In

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post:  Jumping off on our parade theme from earlier this week, Cats on Parade, I offer these two photos I purchased last year on eBay under the theory, where there are cats, mice will surely follow. There is no indication of date, but there is a Philadelphia studio stamp on the back, For Duplicates of this Photograph order by number which appears on face of this print or on Back, Hood-Weintraub, 501 Keith Theatre Bldg. Phila, PA. [sic] Also scrawled in pencil on the back of the top one, “We posed for this before the parade began. Can you find me. don’t we look Cute. see how wet the streets are. it had rained in the early morning” [sic – all and below.]  Same studio stamp on the back of the other and this in the same hand, “you surely ought to find me in this. looks how I am stepping out.  this was taken on Broad St just below Aunt Edith” Does make you wonder who “me” is – I have spent some time looking at these and contemplating which one me might be.

While this may be Philadelphia’s Thanksgiving Day parade – evidently the oldest in the country having started in 1920, I vote instead for the Mummer’s New Year’s Day parade.  Wikipedia tells us that it is 130 years old and believed to be “one of the oldest folks festivals in the country.” Just because it is really great, I offer here this spectacular snippet from New York’s Thanksgiving parade in 1935:

However, when you see this clip from the 1926 Mummer’s Parade, you’ll see where I got the clue that this is where these photos are from!

(The tail end of this shows an equally good Rose Parade clip from the period – as an aside, Kim tells me his dad, Gene, designed a winning float for one for an ice cream company around 1946 or so!)

While my heart will always belong to Felix and those donning Felix costumes, (see Felix on Parade and Felix Mask-o-Rama) who wouldn’t love these folks dressing up in Mickey clothes?  Braving foul weather and sallying cheerfully forward nonetheless. We should all take a page from their book. 

Cats on Parade

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: While clearly not Felix these cats are pretty spectacular in their own right – not to mention the little Shriner-esque fellow driving. This float was honoring the 70th Anniversary, Swiss Settlers Swiss Colony, August 16, 1885-1915, New Glarus, Wis. (I have taken the liberty of checking up on New Glarus  and, sure enough, it is still known as America’s Little Switerzland today.) The stand-out supporters of this float appear to have been Hole-Proof Hosiery and Masurys Paints.  Sadly the other banners do not appear to be legible, even when I blow this up. The support of these fine businesses now lost to the sands of time.

Before taking note of the year, I thought this card was from a somewhat later period, but date notwithstanding, on closer inspection the car is a very early one and the storefront and house in the background are early too.  Seems very much Main Street, USA, circa 1915 except that the cats look like they could be from decades later – with a somewhat alien quality. No joking around on this float – all business I think, driver very serious. And why black cats? I guess we’ll never know.  Still, I send a tip of the hat to Glarus – I do mean to stop by if I’m ever in the neighborhood.

Van Bueren’s Aesop Fables – the Toys!

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Pam’s Pictorama Toy Extravaganza Post:  Hold onto your hats, this is a huge post! I started this morning with the photo of Jane Withers holding her wonderful Aesop Fable doll, the Princess, shown in a photo grab off the internet rather than a ham-handed photo of my own also rather pristine example – the first to enter my collection several years ago. Jane evidently had an enormous collection which she sold off in recent times.  (See http://collectdolls.about.com/od/auctions/a/janewithers.htm for more info.)  One can only imagine what toys a child star had the chance to indulge herself in! I like this photo and it is one of the ones in more or less permanent rotation in our tiny home.

But onto the cartoons – and the toys! I never got to see these cartoons as a child. I have to assume that I would simply be a better person if I had been raised on them. I am convinced that their influence is one of the things that made my husband the extraordinary human being he is today. Certainly, they helped lure me over to him. I am including a photograph of his book Boulevard of Broken Dreams, although it wasn’t the first of his work I ever saw (his book Beyond the Pale was so I knew I liked him and it) the original comic books that ultimately made up Boulevard transformed me into a real fan.  jpeg

So, when I first heard about these dolls I was in love!  The only problem – they are about as rare as hen’s teeth and I only ever saw them in old ad photos such as the one above which is a Google image grab. As a collector there are somethings that make your pulse race and blind you to all thoughts except, “I must have it!”  These are among them. An expensive habit though. After several years I acquired the Princess through Hake’s auction, paying top dollar. Just in the past year I snatched up the other two – actually both were gifts from Kim.  One for my birthday (see me in black dress) and the other, in admittedly poor shape but much beloved, as part of a big art for toys trade he did as a surprise for me in San Francisco last year.

Finally, for good measure, I am throwing in a link to Making ‘Em Move, the Van Bueren cartoon I gather helped inform some of Boulevard and one of my very favorites. Enjoy!

Jes Call Me Bill

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: A few years ago I hit a streak on eBay where someone was selling a film still archive and I just bought and bought and bought some more – Kim jumped in with me. With the exception of my still from Lazy Bones (which was how I fell into the whole wonderful thing) we just bought photos that were appealing, followed our noses – all photos from films we had never seen, many lost.  This one was identified on the back as Jes Call Me Bill, a Will Rogers film from 1920. This is just simply one of the most beautiful stills I have ever seen – hard to imagine the movie could live up to it. The film seems to exist but I haven’t seen it – Kim says he caught a bit of it on the tail end of a bootleg tape years ago.  This photo hangs where we can see it everyday and I often spend a few minutes dreaming in front of it.  Hope you like it as much as I do.

Photo-weight

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post:  The first time I remember seeing a photo paperweight was at my paternal grandparent’s house when I was a very small child – and I was fascinated by it! Those just had boring old people in them – it hadn’t occurred to my grandparents to put anything as cool as a cat or a dog photo in I guess. I just loved them – the heft, the frozen in time quality – I knew I needed to own some of these when I grew up. Then I forgot about them, for decades – until eBay!

Above, the solo cat is one of my prized possesions of an everyday kind and sits on my desk in my office. (For those of  you who are ongoing readers, are you starting to get the idea that my office has some pretty cool stuff? You’d be right. More to come.)  On a tough day he is always there to cheer me up. I recently rediscovered the dog and cats one on a shelf – love that! – and am thinking I should probably bring it to the office too. The street scene just evokes a slice of everyday life from the past – sometimes that’s all I’m looking for in a photo.

For a while I was buying these as gifts – a particularly nice Niagra Falls (I was obsessed with Niagra Falls photos in paperweights for a brief time) went to my friend Eileen, and my friend Betsy received an especially good one with a dog in it, I think. I just don’t have the space to collect them in large numbers, but would snap up a really good one if spotted. That probably doesn’t surprise you, right?