The Here, There, and Everywhere Collection-Life In Suburbia

In the first post from this collection, I mentioned that I had a few doubts that all the photos might not be what I was told; images from a single source.  This one, like some others that have been posted, are clearly not form the same era as the majority of photos.  So, for what it's worth.

As usual, click on The Here There and Everywhere Collection in labels to see a far more detailed explanation of my doubts about  this collection.  I'm trying to get out of town for a week to ten days, I'll finish posting the collection when I return.

The Here, There and Everywhere Collection-Three on a Porch

And a great bicycle in the background.  Click on The Here There and Everywhere Collection in labels, etc.

The Here, There, and Everywhere Collection-Traveling by Train

Navigate back a few posts and you'll find stuff on the Harvey House restaurant and hotel chain.  The building in the background looks like it could be a rail station in the style that the Harveys favored.  Then again, rather than two women leaning against a rail station platform, they could be two women leaning against a beachfront boardwalk.  In any case they're far from the boring house as seen in the last two posts.

Click on The Here There and Everywhere Collection to see more from the collection.

The Here, There, and Everywhere Collection-The Same Boring House

Yes, it's the same boring house as seen in the last post.   Click on The Here There and Everywhere Collection in labels to see more.

The Here, There and Everywhere Collection-One of the Ones With Two Pictures, Back to Back

A cold warning, high winds, and rain forecast for Christmas Day (Snow over 5,000 feet.) has led me to push back the beginning of my trip to December 26, and since I'm going to be here, rather than there and everywhere, I'm returning to this unfinished collection for at least a few days.  It's a good thing that the top picture is interesting, because the one on the other side is kind of boring.

Click on The Here There and Everywhere collection in labels to see a lot of other stuff and for an explanation as to it's title.

Mrs. M****

This woman reminds me of my second grade teacher, Mrs. M****.  She doesn't look like Mrs. M****, she just has the same contemptuous look.  Mrs. M**** used to box my ears with paddle ball bats.  I've had a ringing in my ears for almost sixty years.

Another Girl and Her Bike

"Damn it, Veronica, Daddy is trying to take a picture of his car.  Get out of the way!"

"If you're such  great photographer why did you put your subject behind a tree?"

A Girl and Her Bike

Do children still yern for a bicycle for Christmas?  I hope so.

Leg Show

This one is labeled "Christmas 1940"  It's nice to know that the holidays had enough room for a chorus line.  If nothing goes wrong, I'll be camping and hiking in the desert on Christmas day, so this one is getting posted a few days early. 

Women Feeding Duck

The duck isn't impressed.  This must have been taken in the spring.  It looks like a full blown snow melt flood in the background. 

Max Terhune

I can remember these postcard sized things from my childhood.  You put a quarter in a machine and out  popped  a random picture.  I patronized the machines that sold dinosaur pictures.  Sometimes baseball players, but mostly dinosaurs.

So, Max Terhune was a Vaudevillian.  He was a magician, juggler, impressionist, whistler, did card tricks, but his specialty was ventriloquism, with his dummy Skully Null.  After appearing on the Gene Autry radio show (Ventriloquism on the radio!) he moved to Hollywood and worked in a number of B movies, almost all westerns.  He was one of The Three Mesquiteers, but after John Wayne left the series, and latter  he was in the Range Busters series.  Strangely enough, after a long career of one bad movie after another,  and equally bad TV shows, he ended his life in the movies with a role in Giant.  Yes, that Giant.  The one with Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean, and Rock Hudson.  Terhune died in 1973. 

Harvey Girls

In 1883, Fred Harvey decided that he wanted an all female waitstaff at his restaurants, so he placed ads in eastern and mid-western newspapers advertising for young women between the ages of 18 and 30, single, attractive, intelligent and of good character.  He offered one year contracts, with a partial forfeiture of wages if they didn't make the whole year.  Also free housing, board, and uniforms.  Also a mandatory curfew of 10 P.M.  Pay $18 a week, throw in the free room, board, and uniforms, that was actually a fairly high wage, not just for women, but for anyone.  Too, I imagine it offered quite an adventure for young women in the 1880's.

Written on the back, "Harvey House girls Mom w/ little girl."  Obviously this photo was taken well after 1883, and is suspect those aren't the original;Fred Harvey uniform, but I'd bet they're  close.

In 1942, muck-raking journalist Samuel Hopkins Adams,  known for his exposes of corruption in government and business wrote a novel,"The Harvey Girls,"which portrayed the Harvey girls as the civilizers of the west.  I have no idea if that's true or not, but it is an interesting idea.  The movie with Judy Garland came out a few years latter, albeit as a musical.

Harvey House, Barstow, California

Think of the Harvey House as the first true chain restaurant.  Fred Harvey opened his first two restaurants along the Kansas Pacific Railroad in 1876 at Wallace, Kansas, and Hugo, Colorado.  Even though they closed within a year, Harvey was convinced that a series of high quality, low priced restaurants next to railroad watering stops would be big money makers.  In 1878 he entered into a non binding agreement to open Harvey House Restaurants along the Acheson, Topeka, & Santa Fe Railroad right of ways.  By the time of his death in 1901 he had built and was operating a number of restaurants and hotels throughout the western United States along multiple  rail roads.  He left his business to his family who ran it until it was sold in 1968 to Amfac, Inc.  At the time it was the 6th largest food retailer in the United States.

The Casa del Desierto in Barstow, California was built in 1911.  The building is still there.  It's the home of two museums, the Barstow Chamber of Commerce, and city government offices.  I've been there, it's well maintained and well worth a stop for anyone driving the I-15 between L.A. and Vegas.

The caption on the back, "Casa del Desierto (House of the Desert), the Fred Harvey Hotel at Barstow, is built after the style of the Spanish renaissance, with walls of tapestry brick and gray stone trimmings, red tile roof and arcade balconies on both stories."   The card, unused, was published by "Fred Harvey HOTELS-SHOPS-RESTAURANTS." 

Fun fact, for anyone old enough to remember the blue plate special.  The phrase comes form The Harvey House restaurants, which served dinners on blue china.

Union Station

I went back and forth on this one.  With very few exceptions, this blog is limited to photographs or images made from photographs.  Anything in  my collection that starts life as a drawing goes to my Fair Use blog.  The thing is, I'm not sure on this one.  In the end, after scanning, I blew it up as large as I could, and the tree leaves looked too detailed for a painting, so I decided to go with the whole hand coloring of a black & white photo explanation. 

So, Union Station, Los Angeles, the largest railroad station in the western United States.  Multiple Amtrak lines, a subway line, trolley, lots of buses, and regional rail lines start, end, or pass through Union Station.  I transferred from the Red Line Subway, to the Gold Line Light Rail just yesterday, and it's still in pretty good shape. 

In 1926 the voters of Los Angeles County passed a referendum consolidating all of the commercial rail lines into one common station.  I don't know why it took so long, but Union Station wasn't completed until 1939.  L.A. is building a lot of off road mass transit right now, and California is building a high speed rail line between L.A. and San Francisco, all of which face major delays as one law suit after another, almost all of which aim to stop any form of transportation other than cars, wend their way through the courts.  As noted, I have no idea why it took so long, but I'd be willing to bet that Californians were as litigious back then a they are now.

The caption on the back, "The Union Station, covering 40 acres and costing 11 million dollars, is a beautiful example of the Spanish architecture of southern California and makes an appropriate entrance into the Southland for visitors, delighting them with its modern facilities and lovely garden setting." 

Union Station was designed by father and son architects John and Donald Parkinson.

Welcome to the Civic Arena

This one brings back memories.   I grew up in  small town fifty or so miles from downtown Pittsburgh, just close enough to make the occasional visit to the big city.  The Civic Arena opened in 1961, the first major venue in the United States with a retractable roof.  I can remember making a visit not long after the building was completed.  We weren't there to see anything in particular, but just to walk around the building and take a look at the newest wonder in the city.  The original tenant was the Civic Light Opera, which despite it's name didn't stage operas so much as musicals.  Sadly, the acoustics were terrible, so seeing My Fair Lady at the Arena wasn't such a big deal.  Still, despite the echos, over the years, there were a lot of rock concerts there.  What the Civic Arena was really famous for was sports.  It started with the Pittsburgh Hornets of the AHL.  (1961-1967)  I saw the Hornets play there a few times.  With the first expansion of the NHL, the Pittsburgh Penguins became the first major league tenant.  I also saw quite a few Penguin games as well.  Dunc McCallum was my favorite from their first season.  In addition to the Penguins,  the Civic Arena was also home to basketball teams like the Pittsburgh Pipers, Condors, and Rens.  World Team Tennis, the Pittsburgh Triangles,  (I saw a few of their matches.)  Indoor soccer, roller derby, wrestling, and boxing.  The building closed and was demolished in 2010. 

The caption on the back, "Public Auditorium-Pittsburgh, PA.  The world's largest movable dome, as seen from the promenade deck atop the Gulf Building.  This all purpose sports arena, convention hall and auditorium-theater, built at a cost of 22-million dollars is one of America's engineering wonders.  The huge stainless steel roof, weighing more than 3,653 tons can be rolled back in two and one-half minutes, for open-air events such as operettas."  The card was never used.

It Never rains in Southern California

Actually it does.  It also snows, which it did today.  Father and daughter, I think, rather than husband and wife.

Going to the Dogs

I've seen horse races on television and once, live.  I've never seen a dog race, and it doesn't look like I ever will.  In the last election Florida voted to ban the sport, and since 11 of the 17 dog racing tracks in the United States were in Florida, I suspect it's a dying sport.  I wonder what will happen to the greyhounds?

The message on the back, "The The weather is fine 78 to-day.  We will bring some sun shine home.  The nites are a little cool.  Saw Mrs. Olson Monday on our way down.  She is failing, but her mind is good.  She asked about every body.  Harry & Edna."  Addressed to, "Mr. & Mrs. Ernest Matson, Washington St, Ligonier, Pa 15658."  I'm always amazed that there was a time when someone could just write a street without a house number, and still have it delivered.  I wonder if the post office still does that?  Oh, and the postmark is dated "2 MAR 1973."  And yes, there are two the's at the beginning of the message.

 Ligonier is a fairly small borough in Pennsylvania, home to Fort Ligonier, or at least a reconstruction from the French and Indian War, and it's also close to Idyllwild, one of the oldest amusement parks in the country.  I can remember a single trip I made there as a child, about fifty years ago.

Don't Touch Me!

Minus the exclamation point, that's what is written on the back.  I'm throwing this one out, and I'm more than willing to admit that I'm wrong, but look at the large hands and short  neck.  I think the woman in this picture is actually a man.