Pat Brown For Governor

I, of course, knew who Pat Brown was when I bought these photos.  Even though I was still living in Pennsylvania during his two terms as Governor of California,  he was famous enough that even a school boy from a coal mining town on the edge of Appalachia would know his name.  I didn't know what he looked like when I purchased these,  perhaps forgotten or perhaps I never knew, so I had to look it up before starting this post.  I kind of assumed that Brown was the bald guy who's in every picture, but I was wrong.  It's possible that Brown is the glasses wearing man on the center couch in the bottom picture, but it's only a resemblance, and I can't really be sure. As far as the year these pictures were taken, Brown ran for governor three times.  1958, which he won, 1962, also a victory, but he lost a third term bid in 1966 to Ronald Reagan.  So these are either from 1962 or 66.

So about Edmund Gerald "Pat" Brown Sr.  There's a lot on the net about the man, easy to research for anyone wanting detail, so I'm going to limit myself to an overview.  Brown was born in 1905 in San Francisco.  He graduated college and went to law school at San Francisco State.   His first foray into politics was a failed 1928 run for the state assembly as a Republican.   By 1934, at the height of the great depression, having lost faith in the Republican party he re-registered as a Democrat and became active in New Deal politics.  There was another electoral failure when he ran for San Francisco D.A. in 1939 and finally won the office in 1943.  From the beginning Brown was in the liberal camp, breaking with FDR by opposing the internment of Japanese Americans as well as the attempt to deport Harry Bridges.  In 1950, Brown ran for state attorney general, a win made him the only Democrat holding statewide office.  serving from 1950-1958.  In '57 he ran for governor, serving from 1958-1966.  In many ways, Brown invented modern California.  As governor he championed massive infrastructure projects, including massive water projects that made the central valley the most important agricultural region of the United States as well as providing the water needed to fuel the growth of southern California.  Also major highway projects and a major expansion of the UC system and the state college system. In 1960, Brown was the favorite son candidate for president, running  only in  California.  Because of the state's size, technically Brown finished second to Kennedy, but the plan had always been to pledge his delegates to JFK. Brown died in 1996.  Too, his son was Jerry Brown who ended up serving four non consecutive terms as governor as well as making several far more serious runs for the presidency. 

There's a photographers stamp on the back of these photos, "PHOTO BY Bob Crabtree, 8733 E. HOVEY ST., ROSEMEAD, CALIF.,  ATlantic 7-0317."  I couldn't find a thing about Crabtree.  Rosemead is a suburb of Los Angeles.

Air Vietnam

When I first saw this postcard I immediately thought CIA, but quickly realized, no that was Air America.  Anyway, I'm kind of a transportation buff, and I like old airplanes, so what the hell, I bought it.  Air Viet Nam, as it's spelled on the back of the card, was founded in 1951 with a fleet of Cessna 170's.  Not an ambitious start, but then the original purpose of the airline was to connect small, rural villages with cities.  With the beginning of the Vietnam war, the airline had a major expansion.  Lot's of soldiers needed to be moved.  For flights in country, they mostly used prop planes, like the Douglas DC-3, 4, 5, and 6.  For overseas flights, jets. 

So, the captions, "AIR VIET NAM,  Douglass  DC-6, XV-NUD,  MSN 42876, Saigon 1970."  "Photo Courtesy: David C. Goss" 

Jimmie Allen, Air Cadet

This one's another photo from my recent purchase, an envelope of military memorabilia, although, technically, it's not military at all.

Jimmie Allen wasn't in the Army Air Force.  In fact, Jimmie Allen wasn't even real.  He was the title character in the radio serial, The Air Adventures of Jimmie Allen.  The show ran from from 1933 to 1937, and poor Jimmie stayed sixteen years old for the entire four year run.  Two former pilots, air aces from the first world war, Bob Burtt and Bill Moore, both from Kansas City, had an idea for a radio show about a young man who becomes a pilot.  They wrote up a script, shopped it around, and a weekly 15 minute radio series was born.  In the pilot (About an aspiring pilot) young Jimmie was a telegraph operator at an airport in, you guessed it, Kansas City.  Asked to send a coded telegram, he figures out that it's about the hijacking of a plane carrying a million dollars.  He turns to his friend and mentor, Speed Robertson, a pilot,and together they thwart the hijacking and become heroes.   Speed gets made a secret G-Man, and Jimmie,with his friends help, becomes a flying cadet.  And yes, the show was aimed at children.

So, is this a picture of the actor who played young Jimmie?  Sadly, no.  After Burtt and Moore sold their script, professionals were brought in the make the actual show.  The director was a man in his mid forties, John Frank, who cast himself as the much younger Jimmie.  Well, it was radio, where if the voice was right, old could play young, young could play old, men could play women, and women could play men.

There was an attempt to resurrect The Air Adventures of Jimmie Allen after World War 2, but it didn't work out.  Perhaps it was because they used many of the old scripts and substituted things like jet for plane.  

Written on the back, "STOP, LOOK IN HERE. Bring em back alive, Bobby."

FEAF

Believe it or not, when I found this small collection of photos, it was the sign that I wanted.

When I look through my collection of old photos, I'm well aware that the majority of people I see are dead; and I'm never more aware of that fact then when I'm looking at pictures from the World War 2 era.  It's not just the age of the photos, although that is a large part of it.  My father was a veteran, he was born in 1919, and if he were still alive, he would be turning 96 on February 4.  Even those who joined the military at 18, in 1945, are now in their late eighties.   It's the sheer carnage of a war, that killed so many young men, women, and huge numbers of civilians that reminds me of death.  It's fair to say that every person in the United States either had a family member that didn't come back, or they new of a family that suffered a lose of some sort.  And let's be honest, we in the United States actually got off easy.

FEAF stands for Far East Air Force.  It was formed on November 16, 1941, when all Army Air Force units in the Philippines were placed under a single, unified command.   Less than a month latter, on December 8 (Dec 7 on the other side of the international date line.) the Japanese attacked.  To make a long story short, the FEAF was pretty much destroyed on the ground.  In the end, 14 B-17s and their crews, 49 out of 165 fighter pilots,  27 ground officers, and 16 wounded enlisted men were evacuated to Darwin, Australia where they were reorganized as the 5th Air Force.  Those who weren't killed in the initial fighting, and who weren't evacuated, ended up as infantry on Bataan.

I'm not sure anyone who has gone to war can be described as lucky, but the young men in these photos come close.  While the men of the FEAF were stationed in the Philippines,  they were trained in the United States.  The third picture in the column has a processors stamp on the back.  "McCOLLUM'S PHOTO SHOP, ALBANY, GA.  DEC 8 1941."   Who knows whether they survived the war, but they did miss the surprise attacks in the Pacific.

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?

American Airlines Flagship Sleeper

For those complaining about holiday air travel, take heart, you could be flying on a DC-3, sleeper.

I was born into a world were many people could remember the very early days of the air age, and some could remember a world before there were any airplanes at all.  I can still remember a trip to the Pittsburgh airport to see jets.  They were new, and because the tickets were far more expensive than on prop planes, it was predicted that only the rich would ever fly on a jet.  The rest of us would have to settle for good old propellers.  I'm fairly certain that these planes are DC-3's.  I'd love to fly on one as an adventure, but if I could afford a ticket to France, I'd prefer a jet.

The North Texas State Normal College Album 7

More from the North Texas State Normal College photo album.  The airplane, a true symbol of 20th century modernity makes it's return, along side a one room school house, a true symbol of  19th century rural America.  Click on NTSNC in the labels section to see the whole collection.

Aerial Photography

Yet another poorly made, no name stereo card.  This one commemorating aerial photography in World War 1.  Aviation in what was once called the Great war didn't begin with life and death dogfights.  The first military aviators were spotters, gathering information on troop movements.  They were successful enough that shooting them down became a military necessity.  And so was born the dogfight, the synchronized machine gun and eventually the bombing raid.  I always knew that photography could be dangerous.

Flight

I love this image.  It's from a time when powered flight was still a dangerous and mysterious thing.

Very Cool Sun Glasses

In the beginning there were flight goggles. (See yesterday's post.) When airplanes changed form open cockpits to enclosed flight decks, pilots no longer needed goggles, but they did need sun glasses. The first aviators were made from lenses removed from no longer needed goggles, wrapped in wire. I wonder if this young man is looking for airplanes in the sky.

Aviation

I run across these all the time; collections put together by dealers by theme, but otherwise not related. With my post of the flying family just a couple of clicks back, I thought it would be a good time to put up this aviation themed collection. As usual when purchasing a group like this, I'm drawn to some images more than others, and in some cases, I don't really have an interest in some of the pictures at all. But since I would prefer to err on the side of putting up too much rather than too little, I'm posting them all.

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To be born in 1955 is to be interested in airplanes. World War 2 had only ended a decade earlier and movies of fighter pilots and bombing raids were still an entertainment staple. Jets had come along, but prop planes were still common commercial air carriers. When I was 14 in 1969 man walked on the moon. A 75 year old person in 1969 would have been nine when the Wright Brothers made their first flight at Kitty Hawk, and would have been old enough to have clear memories of the announcement that man had flown a powered craft for the first time. A fast progression of technology. And too, it didn't hurt that my mother was from England and built Minerva engines for Spitfires during the war.

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The long shot of the control tower and terminal with the factory smoke stack to the right is labeled, "11/4/39 Broward Field Hartford, Conn." The two color photos are stamped, "THIS IS A KODACOLOR PRINT MADE BY EASTMAN KODAK EASTMAN KODAK COMPANY T. M. REGIS. U. S. PAT. OFF. Aug 20, 1948." Still flying prop planes out of a small airport. Note the cars parked on the edge of the tarmac. There is a date stamped on the picture of the two girls in the helicopter, MAY 1984" but that has to be when it was printed rather than taken. The hair is all wrong for the 80s. The picture that shows a few small planes lined up on a runway is stamped "AMERICAN PHOTO SERVICE NOV 9 1948." The photographer was clearly drawn to the sky since it's the main part of the composition. Written on the back of the Aviation Mechanics School with it's Army Air Force insignia, "Hanger 1510B we use it for school-we work inside, it's a pretty big place." The TWA wing tip, again a prop passenger plane, "Geneva." I suspect that the group picture wasn't taken at an airport but the plane in the background just barely qualifies it as an aviation themed photo, written in the margin, "Lorasine Schleminns, Bill Donlin, Gabriel Pea, Beth Donlin and Becky-Wash, D.C." The old lady with the leis, "Oct 9, 1950." This may have been her first flight. The group of people standing in front of the control tower, "Our group at the Lourdes, France airport before we left for Paris." And the plane on the grass field, "July 12, 1939 Bendix Airport. U. S. Army Bomber." I'm fascinated that so many of these people dressed up to fly. The last time I flew, I wore jeans and an old, comfortable shirt.

The Flying Family and One Really Creepy Doll

When I was growing up in the sixties and seventies, magazines from Life, and Look to Popular Mechanics predicted that one day the United States would be a country where it would be common for people to own small planes, personal helicopters, and one day the flying car, capable of rolling down the highway and bypassing traffic with the quick flip of a switch that would deploy the wings. Well, I'm still waiting for my flying car. The horizontal format photo with all the people standing in front of a plane is dated "1932." The picture with the "GULF" logo is labeled, "David & Arla, Nogales, AZ 1939." Gulf oil was once one of the largest oil companies in the United States before it was bought out by ARCO. The four adults with the child on the wing, "Shirley, Wesley, Nogales, AZ 1939 Alice, Helen, Emory." Possible it's mislabeled, but there was a time when Shirley, was a far more common man's name than a woman's, so if Shirley is one of the men, the sex balance is restored. The little boy has a toy airplane as would be expected with this flying family. Labeled, "Aug 7, 1937. Robert-3 years. Rafer ranch." Please tell me that the baby carriage picture is a very creepy doll. If not, that's one very weird looking kid. Labeled, "May 1935 Nogales, Ariz." Nothing written on the trio of people, the man in the flying helmet and goggles the old lady and the other man, but stamped on the back, "GUARANTEED FOR LIFE THIS IS A GENUINE BORDER Fox Tone PICTURE. MADE BY FOX COMPANY, SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS. COPYRIGHTED 1927 BY CARL P. NEWTON." Nogales is on the U.S./ Mexico border and before the interstate highway was built it would have been one hell of a drive over dirt roads, impassable during the summer monsoon rains. Flying might have been the only real mobility these people knew.

Blackie at the Airport

I've been scrolling through pictures of biplanes, and have found a lot of images that are close, but none that I thought were close enough to write, without doubt, that this plane is whatever. Written on the back, "Blackie at airport."

Hell Divers

Lloyd Adkins, sky writer, hell diver. My guess is that this photo was taken during the 1930's. This young lady is wearing pants, daring in those days. After World War 1, lots of surplus airplanes supplied an air show circuit.