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Moon and Stars

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I am admittedly a sucker for both moon photos and photo collages like this one. Purchased at the most recent card show I grabbed it up for my pile of loot immediately. It is an odd card however and arguably a bit different than my other mooning purchases. (For a few of those past posts you can look here and here!)

As best I can read the foreign cancellation it was sent in 1908 in the Netherlands. The cancellation is faded and hard to read in addition to being foreign. I show the back below. Addressed to Maynheer Charles Moeganck. In very faded pencil, Celestine Van de Velde is written, probably in the same hand, on the left. There is no publication information on the back.

On the front in the lower left corner is the emblem NPG which stands for Neue Photographische Gesellschaft. NPG existed from 1894-1948 and worked this side of the street with creative photo postcards which showcased new techniques – color photography and the use of photo paper in rolls for the printing were among their advances. This would have been the sort of sweet spot for their work at the time. It was the largest producer of cards of this kind for a period of time and eventually branched out across Europe and even New York. (The internet notes that it was a socially responsible company which provided health insurance and paid vacation. The factory housed a library, reading room and a dining hall.)

The main feature of this card is this slightly weird image of a beautiful woman whose head is sort of growing out of the slice of moon. The curls to the back of her head are in black and white and morph somewhat into the moon, while her face is awash in this yellow color. The color also fades out on her neck making it appear a little bit lie she is made of marble but coming to life. Her eyes, when examined closely, have been manually highlighted and gives her a strange look as a result.

This brings to mind a favorite painting at the Met – Pygmalion and Galatea by Jean-Léon Gérôme. I could only find this slightly cropped version below but look at how her flesh warms as she becomes human. Feels a bit the same, right?

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Detail.

Surrounding this woman in the postcard, are stars and in each of the stars is the image of a different woman or girl. Two are very young girls, two are slightly older and the woman in the lower right corner is an adult sporting a hat. There is something very homemade about the way they are collaged in – as opposed to the artfulness of the larger image, yet their yellow stars glow in the shiny black background.

The background is a reflective material which has some sort of oxidized bits, nonetheless, the overall feeling is a rich, shiny black background. I love it!

Comic Expo in Brooklyn today – hope to see you there.

With Best Wishes

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Apologies if I seem to be rushing the season a bit but this fellow has been haunting the top of my desk and I guess I just thought he deserved his day. Such a precise little tabby – I said he but really if I had to guess looking at it, I would say this is actually a girl cat – something about the precision of her. She is sporting some bells, and we will assume that they are in the jingle bells sense, although they could also be worn in service of warning birds of her less than benign intent. For better or worse I am not sure she is catching any mice with it on.

The mousing question is a big one, especially in the context of bird catching and outdoor cat behavior in general. We silly humans would like our cats to draw a line between killing rodents and birds. All this led to mom making her cats indoor ones decades ago – although there were other factors like increase in car traffic, dogs and more. Betty loved birds though and I can only think of one or two occasions when her beloved cats brought her up short with this issue.

Our enormous orange tabby, Pumpkin, was guilty of it once – however the same cat caught water rats as well which seemed like a good thing. There was an almost endless stream of mole, vole and mouse bodies left strewn around as gifts. (My sister Loren had a cat, a tuxie named Milkbone, who left her just the heads and lined them up on the stairs. Their house had a serious mouse issue.)

I think we tried bells briefly, but our cats were Houdini’s in training and always slipped out of them virtually immediately. Subsequently the issue of the collars getting caught on things became a concern and the collar and bell was a brief venture indeed. (And as someone pointed out online recently, kitty doesn’t want bells ringing in their face constantly either.)

Peaches perched on the stairs the other morning.

It is my belief that it is the girl cats who carry on the grand feline tradition of hunting, although boys certainly will – Pumpkin as an example. However as I have said before in a now oft told tale, when my friend Winsome discovered a murdered mouse in the house in New Jersey (silly, silly mouse to visit a house with five cats) without having any way to know, I put my money on Peaches, the feral female as the cat in question. (For a recent post about Peaches great escape into the outdoors and fetching her home go here.) If something unwanted showed up in the apartment I admit it would be Cookie not Blackie that I would fetch to the rescue. (Recent readers know that I encountered a mouse in my building’s gym the other day, mentioned in a post here. Evidently my chatter about it that morning gave my trainer mousie dreams that evening. I am guilty of sort of tossing a cat in the direction of an undesirable visitor such as a water bug and hoping for rescue.)

Photo postcards of Lindburgh by Underwood.

However, even for me I have digressed greatly. Today on this holiday postcard we have this chipper and fine-looking feline with a nice white bib and bright white feet tucked together. Her striped tail is wrapped around here, and the aforementioned jingle bells are in a string around her neck. She is focused on something off camera and perched on a patterned tablecloth of sorts. There is something subdued about the card – an enthusiastic holiday greeting it is not quite. The focus is sharp on her face and chest but then blurs a bit, bringing that part of her forward. It is an unusually good photograph of kitty.

This card was never mailed however, oddly, on the back someone has written, With love from Marjorie to Mary. This is my little pet cat. However, this is a professional card distributed by the E. A. Underwood, Gold St. Studio, Saffron Walden. Portrait & Landscape Photographer. So our writer is just kidding when she says it is her pet cat – an undemanding one at the very least.

Underwood had several postcards of Yankee Stadium.

Meanwhile, Underwood is a somewhat underwhelming postcard company of the early 20th century devoted primarily to people and places – many seem to be painted pictures of pretty girls (some with men), Yankee Stadium, Charles Lindburgh. The company was, as above, located in Saffron Walden in Essex, England. This card seems a bit different for them as those examples that are not illustrations as above are colored photos of locations.

So Pictorama kicks off the greater holiday cat season today with a soft jingle jangle. Let the cat celebrations begin.

A Basket Full of Baby

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: This little fellow wandered into the house via one of the postcard shows. It seems properly autumnal for today, which for future readers I will note is November 1 and Marathon Day here in New York City. (It looks like a prime day for it at 41 degrees, sunny and less windy than it has been.) It is also the day after Halloween and the day the clocks roll back so a sort of busy weekend here in Manhattan. The yellow fall light is putting us in the harvest moon and speaking of that we have enjoyed a few enormous moons, one which was also a glorious red.

I can’t be absolutely sure, but I believe this little fellow is Rags, aka The Famous Rotography Cat. (An earlier post on him can be read here and another recent post with him here.) Here he looks young and somewhat kittenish, adolescent maybe, and like perhaps he had a long day of posing and is about to put his nose down and do some serious sleeping. So much for hard work that day.

In addition to Rags, I always think that the Rotograph photo studios must have had a constant, roiling pack of kittens churning through the studio for photos, although Rags was a constant star and ruled the roost into adulthood. (I just found that there is a children’s book dedicated to him and using Rotograph photos as illustrations.) I do hope all the little ones found good homes if they were no longer tiny and less useful to the photographers.

The basket here is one that could hold any kind of fruit but this time of year my mind turns to apples. Although our modern world makes apples available to us year-round (in reality they have always stored well in a cool place), there is nothing like the apples of fall here in the New York area.

I worked with someone at Jazz, Wynton’s former assistant Edith, who was a sort of apple expert and connoisseur. Evidently, she had deep knowledge of all the different kinds; we only discussed it once or twice. Although I am somewhat flexible, I have a deep affection and preference for Macintosh apples which sadly have fallen out of favor. For me their level of tartness and texture is just right, however I gather that being slightly softer they are harder to ship and therefore less desirable. Also, being open to certain fungus they are also unlikely to be organic.

I have toyed with planting a Macintosh apple tree in the yard in New Jersey. The winters are a bit hard for them I gather and I have not mastered the burlap wrap for the winter which I would need to. Meanwhile, I would plant in the late spring, hopefully in a sunny spot. Three to five years for first real crop. Worth thinking about.

A particular favorite leaf from Kim this week.

Having said that (and digressed considerably), this basket could just as easily have contained peaches or pears or other things. There is a bit of wire (I would worry about that with the kitty) sticking up which actually gives the card a little more visual interest. The Rotograph copyright is just on the lower left of the basket and in script, A basket full. With the black table on a black background, it is all velvety dark and the surface of the card is mat, contributing further to this effect.

Unfortunately, this attractive effect also makes the written note at the bottom near to impossible to make out. It appears to say, From, baby Sleep (?) To Baby Bartes. It was mailed from Schenectady, New York on April 26, 1907 at 9 AM. It was sent to Carrie Bartes, West Berne, alt bo (?) NY. At the bottom it also says, c/o Mrs. Bartes. It was received in West Berne on April 27 with no time stamp. I don’t know what the alt bo referred to and instead of Miss it reads Mip – which a bit of research shows was either the way a double “s” could be written in script or, perhaps as a result, a title occasionally recognized as Mip replacing Miss on early marriage certificates etc. (This is really my fact for the day – I had no idea.)

In my postcard posts I feel like people often select an image of a cat and assign it to a pet they were visiting. Occasionally it is an actual picture of said real cat (obviously usually sent by the owner), but sometimes like this it is just a reference and you wonder if Baby actually looked like this or is it just generically cat. Also, the practice of sending postcards to children is very sweet and was a thing. I always imagine how much they must have enjoyed getting them and perhaps that is why they were preserved, tucked away over time. (Although there are clues that perhaps our Miss Carrie Bartes is still too tiny a tot to appreciate this when recieved.) Meanwhile, yes, postcards were sort of the cat videos of their day, being shared with friends and family.

The beginning of November marks the race to the end of the year – always a busy time for fundraisers. However, I have some excellent bits to share over the coming weeks so let the season begin.

Felix in a Crowd…Again

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I misplaced the card I wanted for today and I am doing a rare reexamination of this card from an earlier post back in 2022 (so new to some of you) which resurfaced in the search today. (The original post can be found here.) In the first post I looked at this card as documenting a performance but today have had another look at it and am now seriously reconsidering it as a Halloween party. I believe I purchased it online, maybe on eBay or maybe on Instagram, I do not remember. It is a photo postcard that was never sent but shows evidence of having been glued into a photo album, black paper sticking to its back. There is no writing on the back and so no indication of when it was taken.

More crossdressing, nuns, arabs and a better look at these small kids. The more I look, I feel like there are adults mixed in here.

The sheer size and variety of costumes makes me consider that this is indeed a Halloween party of sorts. It is from the period of ambitious homemade costumes. We have a row of clowns and crossed legged young men wearing ghutrah (the headdress of Arab countries – had to look that up), many more clowns are sprinkled throughout the crowd, some boys in drag, a nun, some gypsies. A careful look reveals a woman in the upper right corner holding something with a sword sticking out of it – a corpse perhaps? (What was I thinking the theme of a show with this variety of entries could be?)

Detail of Felix and friends. The costume looks more homemade when we see it closer up.

Clearly the stand-out for me is the small person (child?) in the center wearing a splendid Felix the Cat costume. He or she might be the only one in a full mask in this large group, identity completely hidden. Surrounded by Arabs at his feet, a man in a dress holding some unidentifiable bottles nefarious accessories on one side, a crossdressing nun behind him, a man in a tuxedo (very little imagination showing here) and a woman who appears to be dressed like an American flag (I want to say these sorts of stars and stripes costumes were a thing). Tucked almost entirely out of sight is a small woman with her face almost entirely hidden by a hajib with a star on it. Another sand out for me is the woman in the black and white checked ballooning trousers wearing the big witch hat – she has a sort of gypsy-pirate looking girl next to her.

This woman with weapons and some sort of dead creature attached to her clearly had an ambitious vision. Detail, top right.
Woman in checked trousers is a real stand out. I love the collar too!
Above the woman in the checked trousers to the right of the card, interesting men in these costumes which also seem to have a reference to the Arab world.

While this group seems to mostly represent older teenagers and maybe adults, kids are lined up at the bottom so it was a very mixed group. They have gathered somewhere in front of this sizeable stage and we can assume that the folks at the top are on the stage and maybe even risers to get so many people nicely in the photo. On either side are these enormous mirrors which give us a glimpse of the room – coffered ceiling and large decorative columns on one side. (One of those columns is in front of the mirror on the right as well.) The other side gives a tiny glimpse of balcony seating or catwalk of some kind. Curtains are pulled back on the stage and a single bare bulb hangs as well as perhaps some old scenery. The floor is a shiny parquet in front of the group.

A santa (!) and one of many inevitably caught with their eyes closed.

Without knowing for certain I would say Felix helps us place this photo as taken in the mid-to-late 1920’s. A rather grand gathering, although notably without any specifically Halloween decorations so perhaps the original take remains valid. Either way, I think we can assume a good time was had by all and a happy Halloween to those celebrating or participating today.

Falling: A New Leaf

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I am taking some liberty today in sharing this New Year’s card. However, autumn has always been my mental New Year in many ways. I am one of those people who never left the back-to-school mentality and as the leaves change and the chill comes, I start to think of starting anew rather than of a year dying.

Fall this year has been spent at many work related events and I share a portrait of Cookie and Blackie below from an event we held this week. The artist, Andrea Cáceres (@andrecaceresg or hello@andreacaceres.com), was employed for a full evening of pet portraits which she mostly did from photos, although the live pooches in the room were many too.

Pet portrait by Andrea Cáceres.

And across the room was a pet psychic, Phoebe Hoffman (info@phoevehoffman.com or PhoebeHoffman.com). I spent about 10 minutes with her talking about NJ cat resident, Stormy. I have always wondered about her past – she is a gentle but extremely fearful stray who was still very young when Mom found her. She seemed to know what a house and people were all about however.

Phoebe said that Stormy had indeed had a home, but she was largely neglected, was either left or lost. Stormy is a sweet little thing, gray tabby, but even over several years will not quite let you touch her.

She also told me that Stormy is living a very happy life (no surprise there), but while she appreciates her cat family, they annoy her sometimes – the other four of the Jersey Five, three are bro’s. (I am afraid they do pick on her a bit.) Stormy seeks alone time and finds corners of the house to be left in peace. Evidently, she “needs to be herself and has some sass in her” and will likely come around to being petted in her own time, but she likes that we don’t push her. She was fond of my mother, who was not mobile at the end of her life (we would joke that Stormy liked that she could never go after her) and Stormy would come and visit Mom in the middle of the night sometimes.

Our Miss Stormy. She does love to eat but she is scaredy cat.

Meanwhile, I’m not entirely sure that I rise entirely to the celebration (albeit gentle) of this card, however I am considering how best to renew myself for the coming year and live my best life. Of course, it is the black cat that does it for me on this card. He looks like he might just start drinking the champagne if these two are heading out of the room – which perhaps they are. It is his interest and annoyed cat urgency (pay attention to me) that makes the card fun.

It is a photo-collage, with the couple dropped into a drawing of a room and New Year’s celebration. (I wonder if the drawing is also somehow from a photo but I can’t quite figure that out.) There are interesting patterns on the tablecloth – streamers fallen from above for this private midnight celebration? Looking up that seems to be the case. The pattern on the woman’s dress picks up the green of the streamers, the pattern on the champagne bucket, some pears and a few paintings on the wall. Our lady is looking out at the viewer while the gentleman’s attention is entirely on her. A private party launch into the new year – home alone with kitty and champagne.

The card was never used and so I have no precise information about a date. It says, Bonne Annee at the bottom so we know it is French. The maker appears to be REX and there is a serial number. All I can find is that they were, not surprisingly, makers of this type of card in the early 20th century and presumably French.

Pictorama readers may remember that October is our anniversary which rings in later this week at 26 years. I love that our anniversary is this time of the year. While the actual day was unseasonably warm, the crisp fall brings it to mind. Kim and I have never been much on celebrating our anniversary, however I wouldn’t be surprised if my gift for him shows up in a future post. It is small but interesting. Not saying any more about it for now. But I will let this card be our celebration placeholder for now.

One of my dahlias last week when I was in NJ – no reason, just because I can share!

In the real world Kim is escorting me to the postcard show in Greenwich Village today and that and lunch out will likely count for our annual observance of the anniversary. More to come in future posts.

However, a shot across the bow and know that change is coming to the denizens of Deitch Studio and Pictorama. I am not exactly sure of our precise course, but we seem to be headed on the path. I generally find change abhorrent (I am indeed cat-like in this way, love my routine), but deep down I know that all will be even better when the dust settles. Stay tuned.

A Charming Trio

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: It struck me this morning, looking at and reading this card, that the vast majority of the time people used these postcards for quick communication and never acknowledged the card. There are exceptions of course. On the other hand, someone liked the card enough to have kept it, right? It is an interesting sort of thing really.

I do not know the date this card was sent on, only 8:45 survives on the stamp cancellation. The note is to a Milly R. Jones, 64 Angus Street, Roath Park, Cardiff. The message is crammed and a bit urgent, Blaenavon, Monday, Received card shall expect you tomorrow by 8:30 train. Have lost this evenings post so if you do not get this in time come Wednesday same train. Love to all, Mildred. Then crammed at the top, Will send Ada to train. And around the side, tomorrow? Wednesday?

Well, on one hand we know that Mildred or someone in her household had the good taste to acquire this card which would ultimately contain this timely travel note, but of course no thought to it while writing this and getting it off to the post. A thank you to Milly (and her descendants?) for saving it though.

Back of card.

Of course it these three cats that made me buy it, the fluffy white Persian, the handsome all black kit and this little sort of tabby tuxie in the middle. It is a bit hard to tell but I feel like the middle cat is younger than the other two. Someone is off camera doing something which has caught there attention and they stare more or less in unison. They are perched on what appears to be a bit of carpet covering the table. The background is completely indistinct. Virtually invisible unless the light hits it right, at the top it declares, A Charming Trio. (I only saw it after I photographed it!) There is an equally indistinct Rotograph detail at the bottom.

At first I wondered if this was a photo of Mildred’s cats, but now that I see the title and details, clearly not. Meanwhile, I always wonder about the store of postcards people must have kept at the time, reaching randomly into a drawer and pulling one out when needed. Stocking up at the local newsagent with some Louis Wains or getting some photo postcards made for an occasion or just of the pets or farm animals.

The all black cat reminds me of Beauregard and the cat in the middle looks like my Peaches. I have posted about this little girl before – you can find that post here. She’s a pretty little thing and seems utterly content in her abode with four other cats. However, having had a very hard start at the beginning of her life (found in a basement alone where she had been howling for days before someone called Animal Control), she does not trust people at all and you cannot touch her or pick her up. Having said that, she will come to be fed and I find her coming in with the family when we are there and stretching and rolling in the middle of the room – content. But she will hiss at you if you get too close and run off in a huff. She is a cats only cat.

Peaches’s favorite spot is the front window in the living room and one of my neighbors commented on always seeing her there when she walks by. It is her command post and she can see outside and most of the house from there. Deep down, I always knew that the fact that we cannot catch her would be a problem and that arose this week.

Peaches took advantage of a few moments of the open screen door unobserved and hopped out into the yard. Luckily the yard is fenced and, although if she had gotten spooked enough, she could easily have climbed it, it kept her corralled there. It was however a stand-off between humans and cats. Other cats were secured in bedrooms and the door left open hoping she would stroll back in. However, skittish already and disoriented we couldn’t make it happen. We tried luring her with food, which she ate, but couldn’t get her inside.

Peaches this summer. This was the photo I posted.

I joined the local Facebook page and posted her photo in case she wandered out of the yard. I must say there were so many nice responses and some sound advice. It was very nice to see. She became a Fair Haven Facebook celebrity with many likes and reactions.

Day turned to evening and when we didn’t grab her at dinner time it was clear she was likely spending the night outside. I, who was in Manhattan for meetings at work I could not miss, prepared to head down to Fair Haven in the morning. Just as I was leaving the house I got the news that she was inside. A local man had come with a trap but before he could set it up she scampered inside – the desire for breakfast won out.

As this storm batters both New York City and the Jersey shore, I am so relieved she is inside! I guess my feelings about potentially losing her were complicated by the fact that she is a cat my mother left in my care. Although I try to do right by those kitties, juggling two houses and seven cats can be a big responsibility. Hopefully no one else there will test me further in the near future.

Vacation in the Air

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Today is the first day of vacation. First thing this moring I wandered outside in my pj’s, admired the dahlias and some just emerging zinnias and popped a few ripe strawberries in my mouth while the coffee finished perking in the kitchen. I have fortified myself with one of my friend’s popover, provided earlier this week, and now I sit with my second cup of coffee (coffee so good this morning I texted a friend that I felt like I was swilling it) and share this new favorite card with you.

Strawberry plants offer a few nibbles every morning.

I purchased this postcard just before we left New York and it has just made its way here from Britain. I haven’t acquired one of these big kitty chair photos in a very long time. This cat chair is a bit smaller than some and sitting sidesaddle on him seems quite easy. My very favorite part is the way she is holding onto his (her?) little round cat ears!

The woman is wearing a white dress and sandals and she is dressed a bit differently than the general sort of togs we see in these holiday photos. (Early examples from my collection can be found in posts here, here and here for comparison.) The woman is smiling sort of placidly – a good sport but not embracing it quite as much as I think I might have given the opportunity. (I would have been bouncing with excitement!)

Meanwhile, Kitty is a bit bowlegged which gives him an especially cheerful look. He has a ribbon around his neck and a Steiff-y sewn on nose and mouth. We can barely see it, but kitty has a big fluffy tail up behind her. There is some vegetation in the background and what appears to be ivy climbing up a stone wall. This doesn’t have the seashore feel that some of these have and as I said before, this appears to be a somewhat smaller cat so likely a different location although obviously it is a resort area of sorts. This card was never mailed so we don’t have any sense of date or precise location. Oddly it has a narrow fold at the very top like maybe it was kept in a book and sticking out just the slightest bit.

not
The dahlias in the garden have either gone plumb wild or not come up. It’s an odd year.

I am savoring the delicious moment of my entire vacation stretching ahead of me. All things are possible at the beginning, and it is a cool morning here in New Jersey which beckons us outside. My dahlias are blooming and the red ones in particular are attracting my favorites, the hummingbirds. (I have not captured them in a photo and am unlikely to as they are so mercurial.) Evenings under the fairy lights are ahead as well as good food and friends visiting, cats to be fed and petted. More to come but enjoy this grand kitty chair for now.

Summer Day

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Pam’s Picotrama Photo Post: As I write I have the pleasure of being on an immobile NJ transit train, having sacrificed breakfast to hop on it and now am just sitting. They have informed us that we are held for an indefinite period. There is a young man who has taken off his shoes and is playing loud music on his phone – he thoughtfully turns it off for the overhead announcements about not know how long we will be here. For some reason he also keeps yanking his trouser leg up to obsessively scratch his calves.

I stayed in New York last night to have dinner with a friend who is sick and it was a rare chance to see her so I cannot regret it. Dinner, after a rather biblical rain last night, ran too late for a train back to New Jersey but now I am regretting not trying for it.

Friday commute into NYC. A better day.

All that being said I have whipped out my laptop to share this recently acquired treat with you. This family was having a far superior summer morning in England some time about 100 years ago. This card was never mailed and nothing has been written on it.

Shortly after writing that it became clear that no trains were leaving Penn Station for the foreseeable future and the lack of internet on the train, making further decisions difficult at best, meant that I packed myself up again and went back upstairs. What followed was a series of mishaps, breakfast with a friend who lives nearby and a hot more or less five-hour journey on a very hot day to our house in New Jersey, less than an hour and a half away under normal circumstances. Not sure if it was breakfast, dinner the night before or the heat, but my tummy started to scream in protest. All this ended in bed and a book for the remainder of the day after getting home and sadly, no Pictorama Post for you all. My sincere apologies!

This photo postcard deserves our full attention, however. It has been long time since I bought a Felix photo card and this is a worthy entry.

Dahlias this morning.

Our featured family is in clear focus while the rest of the scene is a soft blur. The sun is pretty high in the sky it seems – a rare sunny day on a British holiday we’ll assume. Dad looks a tad uncomfortable dressed in a full suit and tie, complete with dark socks and heavy shoes, sitting in the sand nonetheless. Somehow mom looks more comfortable in her layers of dress and hat despite the many layers which we would never sport at the beach, although it does keep sun exposure to a safe minimum. The smaller of the two children has got Felix by the ear and may even be holding him up. This Felix, while very jaunty, he is even tinier than the kid.

The older boy, who I assume was the primary architect of this magnificent sand structure, is also in a jacket along with his short pants, high socks and cap. He looks very pleased with himself.

Popped one strawberry in my mouth but several others ready soon if I can beat the birds and animals to them.

The sandcastle is more pyramid than castle, aside from its decorative topper which I somehow assume was a sand mold or toy with a sort of castle scene on it when you look very carefully. The tunnel under the structure makes me think of cars passing through.

Mom perches on a beach chair, other chairs are scattered about. There is a sort of mysterious stack of planks (?) behind here, other beach goers are behind them (also in hats and British layers) off into the distance – I see a little girl digging to the far left. All the way to the back is a high wall.

A banana peppers a brought in this morning. Animals appeared to attempt to eat them but found them too hot.

The registration number is would have been tracked by is both in the upper left and lower left corners – presumably how the family’s card found its way to them. The card has been sloppily placed to the right side of the card with a fat margin on the left but very little on the right.

I am better this morning and it is a pretty day here in New Jersey – making up for the journey yesterday! My pepper plants (green peppers, jalapenos and banana peppers) are full of peppers, the tomatoes are trying their best and the dahlias are blooming. The recent hard rain damaged some of the nascent blooms but they are coming back! Here’s to a quiet summer day at the Jersey shore and in the garden.

Fish Daily

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: A quick post as we head to the Jersey shore later this morning. I purchased this from a vendor who had it in a pile of Monmouth County postcards and I purchased a few. It was mailed to and from locally, so it seems like a fair assumption although there is nothing identifying it really on the front. It has the right feel though – pure Jersey shore. Sadly this card is damaged, folded along the bottom but that did not stop me from paying up a bit for it.

A hand-painted sign advertises Sale and Retail Fish-Daily and we have this group piled together in various stages of beach wear and summer dress – and undress.The fellow in the middle appears to have googles on (I’m thinking driving not swimming) with his swimsuit. He has women, one in a dress and the other possibly in a swimsuit, on the other side. On the far ends, a woman in a pretty flowered dress and hat and on the other side it is hard to see the fellow with the white hat and what I assume is a swim suit.

The back row is four people, a combination of men (hat and even bowtie on one and collared shirts on the others) and all the way in the front a kid in a sort of sailor shirt, looking annoying. I can’t figure out what that little wooden structure is – it looks like the cabin of a boat which maybe it could be if they are actually on a pier.

The big news is a really careful look reveals that they are actually all perched on and around an absolutely enormous fish! It took a long time looking at this card before I realized that there is a huge fish tail hanging out the bottom. The kid in the sailor shirt is holding out a fin and below the man in the white hat is the gaping mouth.

Back of the card. No room wherever they were staying!

A tiny bit of the ocean can be seen in the upper right, a wooden shack near that and two cars help date the period of the picture. However, this card was mailed and therefore we have a postal cancellation. This card was mailed from Farmingdale, NJ on August 28 1930 at 5 PM. It was mailed to, Harold & Floyd Woolly, Box #1, Toms River, N.J. It says, We set up our own camp. The didn’t have room to hold us all so they scoured the country and got us cots & tents and gave us the dryest, finest place of all under the Elms. I have a little private tent of my own up here. Adolph. No mention of the big fish!

This photo scratches at the back of my brain for looking like family photos from the same period and place. I think it is going up on a wall in the house this summer, returning more or less to its place of origin for a few more decades of Jersey summers to come. More next week from the other side!

Impish?

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: As we ease our way out of the month of July this summer, I thought I’d share this card made in July of 1918 – as noted and underlined in the white handwriting (probably) of the photographer when printing in the lower left.

At first I thought these were a dozen devils, but not quite. These kids are each in pointed cap hood but (most) grasp lanterns and not pitchforks. Just as I thought Imps! I saw it written in white next to the date in the lower left as above. Some of the kids look pretty happy about the situation and others less so. I’m going to assume that it was less hot and humid there than it would have been here which would have made them all quite miserable.

They are posed on a small, covered riser or stage and in their midst, behind the child standing out in front, is some sort of stuffed dummy, clad in a hat and scarf – a bit overdressed for the time of the year. they are posed in front of these open French doors and in front of a brick facade with some climbing plants on either side (ivy on one?) of the doors. I wonder what kind of presentation they were preparing for or just completed.

I believe that this is not an Owers photo but shows us Southsea, clearly a shore resort town.

In the lower right corner, fairly hard to read in drop out white, it says Owers Southsea. Thanks to the always amazing internet, I found that Oscar Owers was a Southsea (England) photographer of photo postcards at the dawn of the 20th century. He did local scenes, sporting events, weddings and the like and evidently things like whatever was being gotten up to in this image. He’s captured this nicely in how they are grouped and their variety of expressions and positions. This postcard was never mailed and I think we can assume that it was either one of a kind or a limited few printed for those who hired him.

I found this one is by Owers and I guess was the sort of meat and potatoes of his local work.

I am keeping things a bit brief today – we are packing up for our New Jersey bivouac tomorrow. Cats have been put on notice with their carriers out and there is a flurry of art supplies and books being packed by Kim and a fridge that needs to be emptied and other household bits for me. Wish me luck and more in the morning before we depart!