It's Only Fido

 

A bit of comic relief.  I have no idea how color is added to these old, photo-based postcards.  The photographic elements can be clearly seen, but the added color doesn't seem to be in the right place.  Perhaps some sort of offset printing process. 

So, this card was mailed and there is a message written on the back. "Rec. your card.  Glad to hear you are well.  Take care of yourself.  Love, Betty" It was mailed to "Mr. C. C. Barker, Box 80, Station 6, Toledo, Ohio."  And the postmarks, one from the sending post office, and one from the receiving. "CORRY, PA  5 PM, MAY 6, 1924" "TOLEDO, OHIO STA. 6., 430 PM, MAY 17, 1924."  

Corry is in Erie County, and not all that far from Toledo.  I guess the mails were slower back then. 

May Your Slumbers Be Light

  

I don't quite know what to make of this card.  When I first saw it, I thought that a young man was sneaking by a sleeping father after an assignation with dad's daughter.  After scanning and blowing up the image, I realized that there was an unused pillow and an empty spot in the bed.  What really got me was when I looked at the back of the card. There's no written message, but there is a name. "Harry Yanknow" Is that a hint? The card was published by "Hamforth & Co. Publishers Holmfrith and New York. (Printed in England.)" The postmark, "CLEVELAND, OHIO AUG 20 1:30 AM 1901" and it was mailed to Mr. E.B. Welch, Vermillion, Ohio, R.F.D. 2" I wonder what Harry and E.B. were up to? 

L.A. Family Photos 3

   

I've been calling this the L.A. Family Photo collection because I've got photos from Topanga Canyon and Los Angles itself.  White Oak Lodge, very likely from Tehachapi, a not very long drive from L.A., and now, the top photo in the column labeled "Camp 7 Yosemite."  Again, California, though a lot farther north.  But we also have the bottom photo in the column labeled "Toledo, Ohio."  Interesting two dates, May 1929, and June 1930.  Somewhat between those two dates is September 4, 1929, and the beginning of the great depression.  Were Ralph and Joy visitors to California who lived full time in Toledo, or were they making a visit to see family back home in Ohio?  I bought these photos in an L.A. area antique store, so I'd say that somehow or another, Ralph and Joy ended up as Californians.  

Click on LA Family Collection in labels to see the full and completed collection. 

Bertha Bradish at the Piano

Well, I thought I might be able to find out something about Bertha Bradish, and about all I could find was that there was a Bertha Bradish who was a resident of Huron, Ohio recorded in the 1900 census.  The Norwalk, Ohio exposition (?) and piano contest is a mere 11 miles from Huron, so I'm going out on a limb and saying that the Bertha from Huron, who played in the piano contest are one in the same.  Too, Norwalk is the county seat of Huron County, so yet another link.  This postcard was mailed.  It has an undivided back from the era when people weren't supposed to write messages on the back.  It was mailed to "Jno. Bellamy, Norwalk, O"  It has both a postmark for where it was mailed from and where it was sent.  ""WAKEMAN, OHIO JAN 7, 10-AM"  The other postmark, "NORWALK, OHIO JAN 7, 5-PM  1907"  Wakeman is also in Huron County.  Any guesses on what the full name for Jno. is?

Rosie

Labeled "Rose between 2 Thorns?"  There is also a processors stamp on the back, "WILLARD'S BOX 3535 CLEVELAND, OHIO June 1940."

 I'm always fascinated by photos from just before the American entry into World War 2.  These three must have been aware that the world was spiraling into chaos and it was only a matter of time before the U.S. was pulled in.  Were they accepting that they'd end up in a war and may get killed, or were they in denial and just assumed that some how or another the United States would stay out of the war? 

Dana Hall School For Girls 7

Three Rows, two photos each.

The frustrating thing about this collection is that I have only a small handful of loose album pages.  I have no idea what order they were in or the time span.  Presumably, the owner of this album was at Dana Hall School for more than one year, but was there an album per year, or was it one album covering her entire Dana Hall experience? 

So, in my first post of this lot, Helen Zollinger was in her room with an Oberlin banner, almost certainly her home town.  In the final picture from this page there is a car with an Ohio license plate.  Were her parents visiting from Ohio, or was she visiting them? 

Click on Dana Hall School in labels to see more.

Terry's Cafeteria

I love these old advertising postcards.  It reminds me of a time when people didn't eat at McDonald's because the damn things were so hard to find.  I admit it.  I made a huge mistake.  Fast food places were just beginning their strangle hold on fast and cheap meals when I was growing up, and back then, I was all for avoiding the local diners, with all their eccentricities in favor of the predictability of the posted menu.  I have to say, I'd love to find a chicken fried steak, a bowl of chili, or a piece of cream pie, all cooked from the cook's own personal recipe book, all served by a waitress who would have never offered to super size things for me.

So, I did run a search on Terry's Cafeteria, and I did find a Facebook page with that title, though absent pictures of the building, I suspect it's a nostalgia site as opposed to one operated by an existing restaurant.  I found an obituary for Cleo Terry, the owner of the cafeteria.  Born in 1919 in Knoxville, Iowa, died 2008, Delaware, Ohio.  A 1937 graduate of Piqua High School, he was a World War 2 veteran who served in the Normandy campaign.  He was a member of the Disabled Veterans of America, so he didn't come out of the war unscathed.  I couldn't find anything on when Terry's first opened it's doors, but it's a fairly safe bet it was after the war. 

This card was never mailed.  Captioned, "TERRY'S CAFETERIA, 105 E. Greene st., Piqua, Ohio 45356, 1/2 Mile from I-75, West on U.S. 36.  Seating Capacity 350.  Banquet and Party Rooms.  Phone (513) 778-0566   AAA Rated."

Coal Fleets

For those who don't know, Pittsburgh was founded at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela River, forming the Ohio.  The area where they come together is known as either the golden triangle or the point.  From the original photo, it's impossible to tell whether this is an up or down river view.  The coal barges on the three rivers fed the steel mills and iron foundries that made Pittsburgh's air so bad that street lights were needed at mid-day.

This is another divided back card that was used,  It was sent to "Miss Elizabeth L'Hommedieu, Cuyahoga Falls, O."  The rather sad message, "All alone.  Busy all the time. Love to the kid. Geo. S."  And finally, the postmark, "PITTSBURGH, PA JUN 5 11 PM 1912."  There's also a separate mark, EAST LIBERTY STA."  When I lived in Pittsburgh, East Liberty was a downscale area, home to thrift stores and the Giant Eagle supermarket where I shopped for groceries.  I've heard that East Liberty has gentrified and the locals are now more likely to be tech types.

High Level Bridge, Chagrin Falls, Ohio

Well, I still have a few examples from my early days of collecting, but I think, after this one, I'll be moving back to the more recent acquisitions, which means pretty much anything from the last ten years.

Anyway, there are a fair number of bridges over the Chagrin River, so I wasn't able to positively identify the one on this card.  The Chagrin River actually has two branches, the Aurora and the East branch.  The Aurora Branch is a white water rafting destination, which is hard to imagine in flat, northeast Ohio.  Both branches are also fishing favorites.  Chagrin Falls, the town, is a suburb of Cleveland.  The Cleveland, Akron, Canton area of northeastern Ohio is the fifteenth largest statistical area (A designation used by the census bureau .) in the United States.  Nothing to do with Chagrin Falls, or the Chagrin River, but right in the middle of that densely populated area is Cuyahoga Valley National Park.  Yes, the river that was once so polluted that it caught on fire, the river that was the butt of jokes, is now a national park.  At least the parts south of Cleveland and north of Akron.  Kind of gives us all a bit of hope.

Another Ohio Courthouse

When I was younger, I spent 10 plus years living in a camper, wandering around the country.  I always preferred back roads and small towns, and the ones I visited in the mid-west were full of buildings like this.  Not just courthouses, but schools, libraries, hospitals and every other type of substantial public building.  I guess Henry Hobson Richardson had a huge influence, even if his many imitators never earned the same fame and recognition.  This courthouse was designed by the firm of LaBelle & French of Marion, Indiana.

Never mailed, published by "The Griswold Co., Warren, O."  I'm always amazed by how many American postcards, like this one, were printed in Germany.

Another From Springfield

This one didn't get posted with the other Springfield postcards because I couldn't find out who designed the building.  In my roaming around the internet, I did find tinted versions of this photo, without the clouds. .  Too, a photo of this church with ivy covered walls.  And, this church is still there and still in use.

Springfield

Obviously, these are all lumped together because there all from Springfield, Ohio.  They're also all in one post because all three buildings were designed by the same architect, local Springfieldian Charles Creager.    I did my due diligence and ran the standard computer searches.  I found his name listed with buildings he designed, but no real data on his life other than he was a Springfield native.  Let's just say he wasn't the Louis Sullivan of central Ohio. So, he left some buildings behind, but he's the kind of  guy who's famous for being a good imitator, but nothing beyond that.  So, who was he imitating?

Creager built in the Richardsonian Romanesque style.   Richardsonian comes from Henry Hobson Richardson, an American architect who found his main inspiration from the Romanesque architecture of southern France.  When I was at Penn State, I took an American Art History course, and one of the buildings we studied was The Allegheny County Court House and Jail.  I can't remember the professors name, but he was really taken by the building.  I grew up in a small town about fifty miles from downtown Pittsburgh, as in the Allegheny County seat.  Over the years, I had been by the building, but had never been in.   Inspired, I drove to Pittsburgh, and wandered around the place.  (Remember the good old days when you could  walk into a government building and just wander around?)  Got to say, I'm more of a modernist.  To me, it just seemed heavy and oppressive.

So, interesting story.  When I started my research, I started by typing in Springfield Ohio Courthouse, and what popped up on the images page?  Springfield Courthouse from The Simpsons.   No, that's not the interesting part.  When I was younger, there was a fifteen year span where I didn't own a television.  So there I was, sitting in the Burger King, and I overheard a bunch of kids talking about Homer Simpson.  I was impressed, so I told them I was an admirer of The Day of the Locust too.  It was one of my favorite novels.  I didn't know that  Homer Simpson from the Nathaniel West novel, was not the subject of their conversation.  They looked at me like I was some sort of idiot.

One last thing, the middle card was addressed to "Mr. F. H. Mattes, Newton Falls, Ohio."  It was never mailed.  For those interested, I just posted a couple of illustrated, novelty postcards addressed to Mr. Mattes on my Fair Use blog.

The Car Hop

Hmmmm....and I thought the car hop was an invention of 1950s California car culture.  Guess not, since the car on the right has an Ohio license plate.  Here's the question, when this photo was taken, did the state of Ohio issue a new plate to every car, every year?  If so, the plate's from 1949, so we have an actual date for this photo.  What really drew me to this image was the waitress's uniform.  Love the airplane design and aviator sun glasses.  So, did her boss love airplanes, or was their a tie-in of some kind?  Was this joint next to an airport or an air base?  Or, was this picture taken in Dayton, Ohio, the home town of the Wright brothers?

Frontier Day, Cheyenne, Wyoming, and the Bunch

I almost forgot I had this one.  It's been sitting in my files for at least six months, probably longer.  The fact is I put up lots of postcards, printed in ink and clearly not photographs, on this blog.  But, I do try and limit them to ones that I have a reasonable belief were originally photographs.  To make a long story short, I've gone  back and forth on this one.  Did this image start life as a photograph, or is it pure illustration.  In the end, the detail in the viewing stands, the clear separation of people in the crowd, an unnecessary bit of work that most commercial illustrators wouldn't have bothered with, tipped me towards photograph.

This card was mailed.  It was addressed to "Frank A. Brewer, 165 Nebraska St., Painesville, O."  The message, "3-22-13  Bro. Frank, We are having a fine trip.  Spent about 2 hrs in Cheyenne yesterday and went to the state capitol.  Saw a cowboy.  Will be in Ogden in a few minutes.  The Bunch"  The postmark is too faded to read.

Printed by The H. H. Tammen and Curio Company of Denver, Colorado.  They were in business from 1896 to 1953.

For more postcards from the well traveled Brewer family, click Brewer in the labels section.

More From the Brewers

More from the Brewers of Ohio.  This is the third postcard I've found from this traveling family.  This one is addressed to "F.A. Brewer, 623 N. St. Clair, Painsville, Ohio"  I've managed to confirm that F.A. Brewer is Frank A. Brewer, born in Painsville, Ohio on May 30, 1891.  There were quite a few Brewers born at about the same time.  But who sent this postcard?  The message, "Feeling fine.  Had good milk. Children good, not tired, getting in Chicago.  Will write soon.  C.B."  And added latter, "10 P.M. getting on train in Chicago."  Not exactly florid prose.  C.B. could be Frank's sister Carrie  or perhaps Frank's wife.  Impossible to tell.  The card was postmarked "CHICAGO ILL OCT 9 1928"  If C.B. and the kids were on their way to Painsville, did they beat the postcard?

Click on Brewer in the labels section to bring up the other cards.

Little Gerhard In New York

As a rule I don't like to publish the backs of postcards, but my German is just too week to try and translate this message myself.  Limited to one term in college, almost forty years ago, I can make out Dear Mother and Dear Father, something left behind in Hamburg(?), the Zeppelin seen flying over New York.  If any actual German speakers would like to leave a reliable translation in the comments section, have at it.

I was able to find Gerhard Hansen's obituary in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.  He was born September 30, 1921 in Flensburg, Germany.  His parents were Hans and Frieda Hansen.  He arrived in the United States when he was five years old, so 1926 or 1927.   He would have been fourteen when he sent this postcard to his parents in Wickliffe, Ohio.  After his military service, presumably in World War 2, he became a math teacher, married and fathered several children.  He died on May 10, 2011.

Scant information on a life that lasted 89 years.  I'd love to know why Hans and Frieda took their young son to the United States in the mid twenties.  After World War 1, Germany went through a period of economic disruption, including a period of hyper-inflation.  And of course,  that led to the rise of a number of fringe political parties including the Nazi party.  Were Hans and Frieda just looking for a better life, or were they political and saw the hand writing on the wall, and got out while it was still possible?  Perhaps they were right wingers who flirted with the German American Bund.  I'd love to know.  And what about Gerhard himself?  Had he made a visit back to Germany? Was he returning through New York?  If so, was he happy to be back in the USA, or did he long for the Germany of his early childhood?  And what about his military service? As a German speaker, he could have been in military intelligence, translating documents and interrogating prisoners, or he could have been just another grunt.  I'd love to know.

The RMS Queen Mary made her first voyage in 1936, the year this post card was mailed.  She was built at the John Brown & Company ship yard in Clydebank, Scotland.  Her first captain was Edgar Britten, seen on the  card.  Her owners were The Cunard White Star Line.  In 1940, The Queen Mary was requisitioned by the British government for use as a troop transport.  She was returned to her owners in 1946, and resumed the north Atlantic run in 1947.  By the late 1950s, few people were using ocean liners to cross the Atlantic. Jet airliners had become the favored means of travel between the United States and Europe.  The Queen Mary's last voyage was in 1967.  Put up for sale, the city of Long Beach, California outbid a scrap yard.  The ship has been used as a floating hotel and tourist attraction ever since.  In her final few years of service, the crew would often out number the passengers.

Interesting story about how the Queen Mary got it's name.  The ship's owners wanted to name it the Victoria.  As a courtesy, they approached King George V to ask his permission.  "Your majesty, we'd like your permission to name our newest liner after England's greatest queen."  "My wife," he replied, "would be delighted."   I have no idea whether the story is true or not, but it's a good one.

On Gault Street 5

And Forrestine makes her final appearance in the last of the Gault Street photos.  In the first photo in the column, Forrestine, on the far right, looks like she did in other photos from the mid thirties, but a printers mark on the front, right border dates the print to "NOV 57"  Eva was looking back on her childhood, her frineds and family from long ago.

Captions from top to bottom, "Marcia, Rita, Joan & Forrestine"  But who is the adult standing on the porch?
"Lucille Willoughby and Florence Willoughby, Taken in 1939"  "Joan Motz, Marie Hanna, July 1940"  "Norman & Trixie"  and finally "Dale"  

On Gault Street 4

In an earlier post, it was determined that it was Eva writing the captions.  Take a close look at the kid on the right in the first photo of the column, and compare him with the little boy in the final picture.  He sure looks like the same to me, perhaps no more than one or two years older.  The print, and the one just above it, however, are far more recent than that.  (Don't ask me how I know, other than twenty plus years of professional experience printing black & white photos.)  Anyway, for those of us old enough to remember life before the digital age, most homes had a box.  Maybe an old shoe box, maybe a large carton, full of old snapshots and negatives.  I think Eva was the one who decided to go through the box, put things in order, get a few new prints made, and write captions before memories faded and the people in the prints were forgotten.  It'll be interesting to see, twenty years from now, if people will go through the old hard drives, looking for images to print, so they can be passed around.

Captions from top to bottom.  "Forrestine, Dale, Norman on Pontiac 1931.  Rear of 1335 Gault St. Cols, O."  "Norman 3 yrs. old on Gault."  "Wertha, Dale, & Norman (on Gault St.)"  "Millie at Thurston"  And finally, a photo without a caption.  Eva, wasn't he worth the memory?

On Gault Street 3

The return of Forrestine!  Weird names, or archaic names, names that were once popular, but have fallen out of favor? Just for the hell of it, I entered Forrestine, Evealie, and Wertha into a search engine.  According  to the white pages website, as of February 2011, there were 115 Forrestines in their listings, 23 in Tennessee, 2 Evealies, both in Oregon, and no Werthas.  I did find an article about an astronomer named Wertha Pendleton Cole, but that Wertha was a man.

Captions from top to bottom.  "Lucille, friend, Laura, & Otis"  "Otis & Clarence"  "Clarence, Otis, Jud  & the boy who drove Jud's car"  "Forrestine & Dale, Shelter house Lancaster, O, Rising Park, 1931"  Lancaster is a small city in Ohio, and Rising Park is it's main park.  And finally,  "Eva Anthony, Marie Fisher, Elsie Anthony, & Forrestine Kristol in George's ice wagon"  Another quick note on names.  Eva's handwriting isn't the best in the world.  Forrestine's last name sometimes appears to be  Kristol, sometinmes Krostol, or Krostel.  I've chosen Kristol as the most likely for no other reason that I've run across the name before.

On Gault Street 2

Take a look at the second picture in the column.  This is something I've seen before.  A girl who isn't yet a full grown adult, but is also well beyond small child, wearing ringlets or the big hair bows, most often associated with little girls.  Is it me, or do others find it a bit perverse.  It doesn't help, that she looks like she might be pregnant.

Alright then, captions from top to bottom.  "Oscar's Mother second from right and her 3 cousins (sisters and brother) from Ada, Ohio."   A bit of confusion?  Siblings or cousins?  "Steve, Marion, Breece, Marie, Eva, J.J., Dalton & Otis (rear)"  More strange names.  "Millie's side door.  Snow on ground."  Well, every collection has a few dull photos.  "Forrestine, Mrs. Moehl, Billy Moehl, Arlene Moehl, & their cousin."
 "(Eva wrote this) Eva, Dalton, Laura, and Evealie with the youngest of all who is Mamma."  As I noted in the last post, all the captions are written in the same hand, and now we know it's Eva.  "Oscar's Mother, Columbus."