Mobility Stupidity

There is a stupidity industry in the United States.  Just look at all the movies about dumb guys making fools of themselves.  Usually they're about stoners, money, or some other obvious thing.  My personal stupidity is mobility.  I don't make a lot of money, I've been trying to be responsible sitting around, not dipping into the bank account, but the boredom got to me, the stir craziness set in, and I headed off on the road.  Now, I knew my front tires were shot, but I told myself, they'll last the trip.  They didn't, and I found myself stranded on a back road with a flat tire, and lug nuts so tight I couldn't get the wheel off.  Sleeping out along the road wasn't too bad.  After all that was the plan, just at a different local.  What wasn't the plan was walking out and having to find road service.  To make a long story short, I got lucky and found a guy who provided a length of steal pipe that, once added to the speed wrench,  give me enough torque to get things loose.

I'll bet these three people were so thrilled to be car owners that they did something similar to what I did this weekend.  Given mobility, it's human nature to wonder what's down the road,  and who cares if the tires are bald?  I didn't.

Note the Minnesota licence plate and Chevy logo.

El Kusto

A bit faded, but overall a nice photograph.  But, it wasn't the ladies in the foreground which drew me in.  It was the building.  A cigar manufacturer in Minnesota, and the very Cuban sounding name, El Kusto.  I tried one of my favorite research sites, eBay and found a number of El Kusto cigar bands for sale, all of which identified El Kusto as a fine Habana Cigar.  Anyway, I  found the name of the distribution company, which may have also been the manufacturer, in an  article from the Wednesday, April 14, 1915 edition of The Duluth Herald

NEW CIGAR ON MARKET, "EL KUSTO" BEING INTRODUCED BY RUST-PARKER COMPANY

Duluth men who have trouble in picking out the brand of cigar they want to smoke will have a new one from which they may choose in the future.  It is the El Kusto, now being introduced by the manufacturers through the Rust-Parker company.

Nate Ellis, the St. Paul representative of the makers was in Duluth today arranging of the new smoke.  Added inducements are offered by the company who will give premiums for the bands.  They will be sold in three sizes.

I'll bet the women were employees of cigar maker.

Sailing In Iowa

I almost never post the backs of postcards.  As this example shows, there's a lot of bad hand writing out there, and if I can make it out, and spare visitors having to suss out what's actually there, I type it out.  But this card has a bit too much info and I can't make it all out so have at it.   I know there's someone at Lake Okoboji, they're hungry, and hoping to fatten up.  How often do you hear that complaint?  The postmark is half gone, but it didn't take a lot of detective work to identify Arnold's Park as the location.  The clue was Lake Okojobi of the Great Lakes of Iowa.  Yes, I found great lakes and Iowa a bit of an oxymoron, too.  In any case, Spirit Lake, East and West Okojobi Lakes in Dickson County are an important resort area in the northern part of the state.  Arnold's Park lies between West and East Okojobi Lake.  The 1910 census, two years before this card was mailed, listed a population of 273.

Baseball, The Travelers Collection

I'm going to make a connection between this photo and the image in the previous post that may or may not be correct.  Stamped on the back, "AMERICAN PHOTO SERVICE, (unreadable), MINN.  SEP 10, 1956"  

I'm sure there a lot of people out there who have heard of someone looking "mid-western."  So, what exactly does that mean?  The mid-west, especially the upper mid-west, was heavily settled by Germans and Scandinavians.  A mid-western look leans toward sandy brown or blond hair, blue eyes, and a lean body type.  Yesterday's post was a family portrait from Sweden.  Today, kids playing baseball in Minnesota, home to plenty of Swedish immigrant families.  Not all of the photos in this collection are travel images.  I'm guessing that these photos were all owned by some Minnesotans of Swedish descent.  And that's how they are connected.

Click on travelers collection in the labels section at the bottom of the post to bring up the lot.

See The USA....

...In Your Chevrolet.  I always liked that ad campaign.  Too bad they don't use it anymore.  Anyway, the license plate is from Minnesota, the photo was purchased in California, so some how or another this image saw a bit of the USA.  I like the idea that it was taken in California, rather than being mailed to some friend.

The New Hotel Rosslyn

I went back and forth about this postcard.  I try and limit things on The New Found Photography to actual photographs or images based on photos.  At first I couldn't make up my mind.  Was this postcard a drawing or was it a hand colored and heavily manipulated photograph converted to a card.  In the end, after looking close with my best magnifying glass, I decided that all the fine detail that can be seen on the building's facades  indicated photo, so here it is.

Finding the history of The Hotel Rosslyn was a bit tougher than I expected.  In separate articles, I found dates of 1911, 1912, and 1913 for the main building's opening.  1913 was the only date that I could find that was mentioned multiple times, so I'm going with '13.  The annex opened in 1923.  (At least there was agreement on that date.)  I also found mention of an addition that burned down in the early 1940's.   Both the main building and the annex were designed by architect John Parkinson.

When the Rosslyn was built, Fifth and Main was the financial center of Los Angeles.   After World War 2, the banking and business hub of downtown L.A. moved west and north and the former banking district slowly went into decline and eventually became a haven for the down and outers, drunks, and drug users, prostitutes, hustlers, and petty criminals.  In 1959, the main hotel closed. It reopened in 1979 with a different name, The Frontier, but the new owners either couldn't afford,or didn't care enough, to change the outside signs.  A good thing, since one of the great things about both buildings are the large roof top neon signs.  Watch enough television, and some cop show will have a fight scene on the roof, with the sign framework in the background.  It must have been confusing having a Frontier Hotel signed Hotel Rosslyn right across the street from the actual Hotel Rosslyn, that was originally the Hotel Rosslyn Annex.

This card was postmarked "LONG BEACH, CALIF, FEB  4, 1:30 PM, 1935"  Judging by the message, the Rosslyn's decline was still in the future.  "Dear Donna, This is where mother and Esther stayed last night.  We have the grandest time here.  Love, Mother."  Addressed to, "Donna Wilson, 2946 Russell Ave. No., Minneapolis, Minn."  And somehow or another it made it's way back to L.A.

And now for my own remembrance of the Rosslyn.  When I was in my mid twenties, and first arrived in Los Angeles, I spent a couple of nights at the hotel.  It was an experience.  I can remember getting out of bed when I heard a lady weeping in the hallway outside my room.  I took a quick look and saw a woman leaning against the wall, shabbily dressed, with a platinum blond wig, crying.  A few hours latter, another woman knocked on my door and asked if I wanted to party.  And she'd only charge me twenty bucks!  The second night of my stay, water started coming through the ceiling.  I found out, the next morning, that my upstairs neighbor had died of a drug overdose while filling the bathtub.  Two nights were enough for me.

Today the main building has been converted into lofts.  Micro lofts starting at $789 per month.  The annex is still a hotel.

Crookston, Minnesota

A small group of family photos from the Crookston, Minnesota area. Stamped on several of the mounts, the photo studio's mark, "BENSON, CROOKSTON, MINN." At fist I thought these might just be random images put together by the dealer, but on closer examination, it became clear that the people in the wedding photo were the same adults in the other images. Except for the picture of the lady with the dog, all photos were mounted. The wedding portrait is a cabinet card, the two of the woman are in the old fashioned, free standing photo folders, and the one with the kids, probably grandchildren, is in a flat mount that was once probably displayed in a frame. Normally, when scanning, I crop off the mounts, but because of the curved top of the younger version of the woman, I've included two scans of that image. Crookston, Minnesota is in the north western part of the state, near the North Dakota border.