The Great Outdoors

I found these very faded prints in the same box in the same store as yesterday's post.  Considering the similarities in theme it's about 99.99% certain they were taken by the same person at the same location, or some place very close.  The black dot is a light leak in the camera. 

There's Snow On the Ground

It's incredibly hot, so I'm reminding myself that sooner or latter there will be snow on the ground.  I live in L.A., so I might have to drive to the mountains above the city or the high Sierra to find it, but it will be there. 

Trikes and Walls

I have no idea when this photo was taken, but it makes me think of post war America with it's baby and building booms.  My English born mother (The marriage didn't work out and she was a very bitter woman.) hated the United States.  She was quite critical of a country that she thought didn't take things seriously.  My father lived through the great depression, had been a homeless teen, and while as a cryptographer was held out of combat, had also spent six years in the army.  He thought, after all people had been through, they deserved to have a good life.  Suburban single family homes, new cars, and too many kids, most Americans agreed with my father.

Biking Along The Russian River

Two women, two bikes, but only one camera?  So what's a lady to do?  Why hand off the camera, of course.  But why did each woman pose on the same bike?  I am puzzled.

What's really puzzling is how I knew  these photos were taken along the Russian River in Guerneville,  Sonoma County, California, when theirs nothing written on the prints.  Well, that took some figuring.  I started with the building in the background.  It didn't take too much to figure out that the sign was for the Henry Hess Co., Lumber and Building Material.  I was pretty surprised when a Google search brought up some info.  And not just info, but a photograph of the same building, damaged by a 1937 flood of the Russian River.  The building was located on Ca. Route 116, at the intersection of River Road and Gravenstein Highway North.

Good old Henry was a bit of a local tycoon, owning the lumber yard, some logging interests and a shipping company.  I couldn't find out what kind of shipping, but my guess would be either cartage, or local ferries, or maybe even some coastal steamers.  In any case, he was successful enough that he could build a summer lodge near the Hacienda Bridge, overlooking the Russian River in the 1920s.  At some point Henry lost control of his business.  How, I couldn't determine.  I do know that Giuseppe "Joseph" Bacci got a job there after World War 2.  He stayed with the lumber yard through several ownership changes, and along with two partners, bought it in the 1970s.  All that from Giuseppe's obituary.

Anyway, going by the hair does, I'm guessing sometime in the late thirties through early forties.  If anyone out there knows when the roads were paved, that could narrow things down a bit.