Erin Forever

Happy St. Patrick's Day.  In honor, I present a postcard I found among those I bought at an estate sale last Fall.  I previously profiled the Christmas portion of the cards here.

This is the only St. Patrick's Day postcard I've ever come across, given from one sister to another on March 17th, 1909, 103 years ago.  It was apparently also the receiving sister's eighteenth birthday making her actual day of birth March 17th, 1891.

Each leaf of the shamrock has been annotated with "six years" for a total of 18 years.  The text in the pipe reads, "CHEER UP.  eighteen years ago you where (sic) the cause of great happiness to your mother do you remember anything about this."

On the back, "St. Louis MO March 17th 09.  For my Irish sister."  I'm unsure of the initials.  OOG?  ODG?

The card was made by the Ullman Manufacturing Company of New York.  Not much information can be found on the company on the internet, although what little I did find suggests they operated from around 1888 to 1946 and were run be brothers Nathan, Max, Louis and Isidor Ullman.  Their peak years were between 1900 and 1915 where this postcard falls in.

Happy 121st Birthday Irish sister, and Happy St. Patrick's Day to everyone else.

A Tale of Four Projectors

I'm an admitted AV Geek Wannabe.  Is there anything lower than that?  I never belonged to the AV club in high school and never got to wheel around or operate the 16mm projectors that would grant brief respite from the daily school lesson in favor of a film.  Any film was better than a lecture.  While I had a fascination with the films in school, it wasn't until many years later that I developed an interest in the equipment.  Over the years I've acquired a number of 16mm, 8mm, and Super 8 projectors and a variety of film.  This is the story of four garage sale finds.

First up is the Kodak MovieDeck 455.  This is kind of an odd duck.  As opposed to the traditional projectors where the film reels are upright, this one has the film reel laying flat with the film winding an obstacle course of glides into the belly of the beast and winding on a pickup reel laying flat in the bottom.  I bought this at a garage sale Summer of 2010 thinking it was a slide projector.  The projector and screen were $7.  This projector is a dual 8 projector, handling both Standard 8mm and Super 8mm film with the flip of a switch.  For those not in the know, the difference between 8mm and Super 8mm film, from a projection standpoint, is the size of spacing of the sprocket holes on the film. 

A Banner Year

A couple weeks back I went to an estate sale at an old farmhouse in Jefferson County.  I wasn't expecting much as rural folk tend to have fewer frivoulous items and this was not an exception.  However, while looking through some books, I came across a a couple yearbooks from the 1940's.  I'm always baffled how a family can let items like these go.  People ask me why I would want someone else's yearbook.  First of all, at a quarter, I don't have much to lose.  But also, I think I want them because somebody else didn't.    I become keeper of someone else's memories.  I just realized something.  My home has become the Island of Misfit Memories.   Memories cast off by others, gathered, sheltered and seeking a new home.  And I now have a new category for my posts!

The book I chose to profile is the 1945 edition.  The book is from Kulpmont High School in Kulpmont, Pennsylvania or more appropriately, the newly (in 1945) rechristened Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial High School.

A Handy Connection

I made a Garage Salin' connection this morning.  While reading an regular feature called "A Look Back" in this morning's Sunday edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, I came across a familiar name.  The article told the story of W. C. Handy and his most famous song St. Louis Blues: 

Handy was a successful band leader and composer on Beale Avenue (later Street) in Memphis when he published the "St. Louis Blues" in 1914. He said hard times in St. Louis inspired the lyrics.

But Hardy originally called it "Jogo Blues" and renamed it in honor of Russell Gardner, a wealthy buggy manufacturer from St. Louis. Gardner enjoyed Hardy's music and tipped him $20 whenever he visited Memphis.

"It became a great favorite of his," Handy said of the song and Gardner.

I recognized Russell Gardner as the owner of Banner Buggy Works, of which I have a silver spoon with an engraved image of the company logo and wrote about here.

I was surprised to learn how wealthy Russell Gardner was.  Apparently, he even owned his own steamboat, the Annie Russell.  From the Post-Dispatch article:

Russell Gardner on the desk of his steamboat, the Annie Russell. Gardner was successful and prominent in St. Louis and along the river. His brother, Fred Gardner, was Missouri governor from 1917 to 1921. Russell Gardner's buggy factory on the riverfront just south of downtown on Rutger Street.

It makes me wonder if the spoon was a souvenir spoon as I had thought, or could it have actually been used on the steamboat.  If you can afford your own steamboat, surely you can afford to have all of its silverware engraved with your company's logo.

One final connection to this morning's article: I'm also pretty sure we performed St. Louis Blues on the album I recorded with the Oakville High School Band I wrote about here.

Slides on Parade

I found these in a box of family slides at an estate sale in Oakville a couple weeks ago.  In the box, I found some great slides of the 1982 Veiled Prophet, or VP Parade in St. Louis.  You can read about the parade's sordid past here.  Sordid as it may be, it had some great floats.  Again, I apologize for the quality of the shots.  I'm using a digital camera taken straight from the projection screen.  Still waiting to get that slide scanner.  Can anyone recommend an affordable yet capable slide scanner?

The Missing Piece

I bought this 50's Whitman Jr. Jigsaw Bowling puzzle for a quarter at a recent estate sale.

Of course, as is to be expected, it was missing a piece.  At least it didn't detract from the characters too much.

The other available puzzles appears on the side of the box.  Typical '50's fare, but I was surprised to see "Drag Racing". 

I don't think many '50's parents would condone their children building a puzzle of an amateur drag race down on Dead Man's Curve. I would guess this was a puzzle of a fully-sanctioned drag race at the local track.

I also wonder what "After Tennis" was.  I imagine it was a scene of a young man leaping the net after soundly trouncing his friend in a match.  If that puzzle was from the '70's, it would have had a whole different meaning.
 
I tried to find these puzzles on the internet and Whitman has an impressive and massive collection featuring some great licensed characters, but I couldn't find any examples of these.

By the way, this was my 100th post.  Hundreds more to go.

Tricked!

When I was a kid, I thought magicians were real.  I thought they were really performing feats of magic and that fascinated me.  My brother was also an amateur magician (I fell completely for his old "stretching the thumb" trick.  Always freaked me out.), so that added to the appeal -- I wanted to be a magician when I grew up.  My sister bought me my first magic set for Christmas when I was about 10.  It was a Pressman Magic Show bought at Toy Chest and looked a lot like this: