Snow Happens… and other stuff gets shared

 I've managed to process a few more of my Real Photo Postcards for viewing – these were in better condition than some, but there was still some work to be done in Photoshop before some could be distinguished from mud. It is this visual puzzle-solving work which, currently, encourages me to get up out of bed in the morning. I can imagine how challenging it would have been for these people be rise and face the day, knowing they'd have to move great heaping masses of white stuff…

Trosky (MN) 1909

Message: "Troskey Minn March 19 19/09
Dear Sister 
We received your letter was glad to hear
from you how is the children
we are well and yesterday
and today is extry fine
and isnt snowing to the beat the
band we haves some banks
around our house on the
[sideways] East west north that
[upside down] was 20 feet high but are 12 I bet
you think I tell a yarn but I (?)
This is the worst winter in
Minn for over 20 years it was
a frite we had 3 offel blizzards
Good by from Sarah + Theo
write soon"

and then turn around and do it again in seven years...

"This is the way it looked around here the winter
of 1916 snow banks 15 feet high had to dig a tunnel
through to get the word you can see the tracks
going over the snow bank to get word before 
I dug the tunnel"

Meanwhile, people still sent postcards of things not peculiarly Minnesota-winter-like:

"June – 1912 –
there is one small rose
bush at the corner of
the side walk. the other
is all one vine It has
pink blossoms. only blooms
heavy once a season. but there
is some roses in bloom most
of the summer and fall months
Minnie
There is a lily and a plant
called baby breath next
the steps and pansies
at the foot of the bush."

fishing or just punting? 

click any image to embiggen. please copy/share if you like what you see

The more things change...

So, at auction on Sunday, I spent wildly on postcards (I know, I know -- you are shocked!), and also bought a flat of paper goods having nothing to do with postage, but irresistible to pass by. This is why:

front

back

approximately the same size as a certain standard Government-issued paper article upon which we are heavily dependent, these were published in 1936.

Here they are, cleaned up & converted to B&W images.

(Click on any image to embiggen.)

I think these require no comment. Unless you want to add your $0.02.

SPOOOOOOOOOON!

I bought a spoon at auction, yesterday. I don't ordinarily do flatware. I just saw it and decided I wanted it. It cost me a dollar -- as long as I took something else with it (a Victorian glass locket for a lock of a loved one's hair).

The thing was, the ship looked interesting, and the spoon looked as though it hadn't been through hell and high water, the way so many of these things at auction get. So I brought it home, and this is what I found out about the ship, the RMS Majestic: it only floated under that name from 1922 until 1934, and it was a bone of contention between the German workers who built it and the British cruise line which, after WWI, received it as spoils of war. Hmmmph.

Over the years, the great vessel received the nickname "Magic Stick," and was, for a while out of New York Harbor, reputed to be a "booze cruise" during the years of prohibition, running three-day cruises for the sole purpose of allowing Americans to drink themselves silly without breaking the law.

So here is my magic spoon from the "Magic Stick."


(with regards, to the writers of The Tick, who not only had the best battle cry, but the coolest theme song. And the grossest episode in the history of kids' stuff.)

How to please my father

Okay, so I'm no expert in this field -- I think, in fact, I'm the one who most frustrates and aggravates Pop. But today, I did something on a whim that raised his eyebrows in a positive manner.

As some (many) people know, I spend my Sundays at one particular auction house, in large part for the social scene, as well as the occasional opportunity to pick up a cool post card or two for dirt cheap (which I did again, today, but only by accident).

Today's auction had a lot of musty, fusty, mildewed books and other not-too-terribly-interesting items, including a half table of cameras and accessories. The bulk of those cameras had been battered Brownies of all sorts, with a few plastic-bodied virtually-disposable single lens reflex units generally given away when one subscribed to Time or TV Guide magazine in the 1980s or '90s. In the midst of these items lay a somewhat grimy thing which, to me, looked as though it might be worth a couple of dollars. It had a bellows structure, and a brand name which only vaguely rang a bell (unlike Kodak, Minolta, Canon, etc. in all their everyday familiarity): it was a Graflex. It had a film packy-thing attached to it, too, so I could tell it wasn't your everyday 35mm toy.

I brought it, plus a box of lenses, filters, etc, for a Zeiss-Ikon, home to my pop. He was practically beaming, as he came downstairs after checking on their respective values -- the Zeiss-Ikon stuff was worth ten-to-twenty times what I paid for it, and the camera, for which I forked over a grand whopping dollar, is quoted in Pop's sources, as valued at $200.

I really like it when good luck comes my way at the auction. Especially when it's pure-dee dumb luck.

And, Pop isn't complaining, either.