School Girls and Caskets 2

 

I suppose it's something we have to wonder about now a days, but no, the gap in these postings has nothing to do with illness.  I just didn't feel like it.  So, when I see photos taken before a major war, I always wonder how many of the people in the picture survived.  When I see something taken right after a war, and the photos in this small collection are from 1921, I wonder how many of those that they knew didn't make it.  And from a photo from 1921, I wonder how many people did they know who died from the Spanish Flu. 

In the background of the top picture you can see a sign for the Inter State Casket Company.  Considering the year, they must have been very successful.  So it's not really necessary, but click on School Girls and Caskets to see more.

School Girls and Caskets 1

I'm starting another mini collection.  There will only be three posts and I'm putting them without interruption.  Even though it's probably not necessary I am assigning it a tag, obviously, School Girls and Caskets.   And, you'll have to wait for the next post to understand the title.

So, the two class photos are each dated, "Jan. 1921."  I'm assuming the guy in front of the top picture is a teacher.  The third picture is cut out from a bigger image.  The full frame version will be in part three.  It is a good opportunity to really make out the uniform badge.  It looks like either GTV or GTU. 

The Bulgarian School Boy Album 7

I haven't forgotten the Bulgarian school boys, I've just been busy the last couple of days.  In any case, it's Bulgarian school girls today, though the 1944 date on the back of the first print is far enough from the first few pages of this album that these ladies might be Bulgarian school girl graduates.  In any case, I'm not going to try and translate the back.  I can, to a certain extent, read Cyrillic lettering, but it's a bit too much for me to piece everything together.  I think, however, we can conclude that the line above the date is the name of the two girls, and, of course, it's easy to translate Zagora, referring to the city, Stara Zagora in Bulgaria.

And, of course, click on The Bulgarian School Boy Album in labels to see more.

Dana Hall School For Girls 10

Unlike most of the album pages I post, this one is too large to show the whole page for position.  The top photo takes up the entire width of the page, the next three, left to right, easily fit in a second row beneath the girls on parade photo.

So, one of the tings that I find interesting about a lot of these photos is the students at Dana Hall all look so mature.  These are high schoolers, but they all look much older.  To go back to the beginning of the collection and see more, click on Dana Hall School in labels at the bottom of thr post. 

Ranch Girls

Sounds like an Andy Warhol movie.  Well, it's not.  Just three gal pals sitting on a wooded fence, photographers shadow included.

Bobby Socks and Saddle Shoes ?

Alright, how strict is the definition of a bobby sock or a saddle shoe?  I've got to admit, they're both terms I've known most of my life, but I never gave much thought to either style.  So, I looked it up.  According to the often inaccurate Wikipedia,  a bobby sock has to be white, and a saddle shoe is white with a black or brown leather band across the instep.  Neither description matches the the girl on the right.  Still, these two look like they're from the era when that sort of footwear was popular with high school and college girls, and the socks and shoes look close, so variations on a style, or something totally different?

School Days

No, I don't know for sure that this is school photo, but the building has that institutional feel, and there is a bell on the wall that sure looks like the one that made my life miserable at my high school.

What's interesting to me is that this photo includes two black women.  It' true that only the southern states had Jim Crow laws, but it's also true that when this picture was taken, different races didn't hang out a lot, and while things have improved over the years....well, I live in Los Angeles, one of the most diverse cities on the planet, and when I wander around the area, what I see is a world that's still pretty separate.

And for the record, California never had Jim Crow, but it did have restrictive real estate covenants.  In a nut shell, real estate developers had their customers sign agreements that forbade them from selling their new homes to non approved groups.  Blacks, of course, Hispanics, Asians, and Jews were the most frequently targeted groups for exclusion.   Ronald Reagan, when he first ran for governor, had three main issues, lower taxes, ending free higher education, and the preservation of restrictive real estate covenants.  Two successes and one failure.

Girls Goofing Around

The name "Marianne Hoover" is written below that arrow.  I don't know why, but when I include white boarders in the scan it seems to make the image a bit more yellow than it actually is, so I don't scan boarders unless I've no choice.  Anyway, I think the saddle shoes make them look like high schoolers, though I could be wrong.