Sepia Saturday: My Daddy Made All of That!

My dad was a master of many trades. Though a CPA, he was also a farmer, auto-mechanic, carpenter, welder, blacksmith, roofer, plumber,mason, painter, backyard griller, and a list of another dozen trades. He couldn't carry a tune and had two left feet, but that's beside the point.

That's the house I grew up in, and he built every bit of it, including the flagstone chimney and fireplace. He also built the playhouse for my sister out of the remains of an airplane engine box he brought home from Douglas Aircraft when he worked there and he felt it was a waste to discard it. It later served as my tree house where I held court with my secret club and stored my personal childhood library.

That's my sister Nanette in the middle, cousin Glen on the right, me in the sock cap and glasses, and my grandfather's dog Buddy, probably around 1959 or 1960.

Learn more about Sepia Saturday here.

Sepia Saturday: Poodle Parlour

I have a pretty hefty collection of photos I took in and around Oklahoma City from the 1970s and 1980s that I've been trying to pull together. This one, oddly, has always fascinated me. It's such an amazing sign. And I greatly appreciate that it's a parlour not a parlor. I remember this place from my childhood and know that it was there well into the 1980s but am fairly certain it is long gone. I don't get to Oklahoma very often, but I know there were a number of curious attractions like this one that made an impression on me during my impressionable years. For some reason, poodles have been coming up a lot lately in my life.

Sepia Saturday: 'Oh You Kid' - 20th Century Tweets

As I mentioned in my last post, I have the duty of being the custodian of my maternal grandfather's trove of 78 discs. On the other side of the family, I have an equal if not more daunting task -- caring for my paternal grandmother's stash of hundreds of stereographic cards and even hundreds more post cards.
Born in territorial Oklahoma in 1890 -- just months after the big land run the previous year -- she had only a couple dozen photos of her and the family before her marriage in 1910. But there are hundreds of postcards sent to and from her brothers and recounting her budding romance with my grandfather.

The bulk of the cards are from 1907 to 1909 to and from her brothers (such as Oscar who wrote her in the card below from teacher's college) and between her and my grandfather. They provide an often fascinating glimpse into her teenage years as her older brothers left the nest and she prepared to marriage.
There is often very amusing disconnects between the messages and the accompanying photos. It's not unusual to read about an encounter with a Cherokee chief or an attack by a rattle snake in the chicken house with a picture of Buckingham Palace or the Tivoli Gardens on the front.
These semi-private messages -- going through the public mails and likely shared with the whole family offer an intriguing glimpse into daily life and colloquialisms of the day. "Oh you kid" was the "Yo, homie" of its day.
This was likely the only communication between my grandmother and her brothers at the time since long distance phone calls were probably considered an extravagance even though they were only 30 miles away.
When I was a child, I love to flip through these cards, amazed by the art and message from so long ago.
My grandmother was amazed that anyone of my generation would have an interest in something that she thought so trivial and ancient. But she would fill in gaps and context for the cards.
Looking back at them today, they bring additional nostalgia and fascination. I also see that this was the Twitter and Facebook of its day, immediate, snappy communication that was running a parallel track with the contemporary popular cultural -- the personal and the popular running side-by-side.
I love the cards just for the artwork and glimpse into cultural norms, but the family history and human connection carry much deeper meaning. One side of me says that I can put off until retirement transcribing all of the messages and connecting the dots with my own memories, oral histories from my grandmother and her writings. Good sense tells me that needs to start now. One card at a time.

Sepia Saturday: Acetate and Cold War Memories

In this photo are (from the left) my mother (Helen Biggs), maternal grandfather (Ralph Polley) and my mother's sister (Barbara Dunbar) at the time of Aunt Barbara's first marriage in 1958, when I was almost two. Amazingly, I have the print above the fireplace as well as the golden tea pot. How I wish I had the pink round chair and footstool, pink lamp, pink couch and golden drapes. This photo speaks volumes of the people and the era. For years I would look at it and see people and a sensibility of an era as foreign and incomprehensible to me as life on Mars. Now I look at my grandfather and see not only aspects of myself, but even my past.
Of the many daunting tasks in my life as the "patriarch" of my family, one of the more challenging is being the steward of my maternal grandfather's relics. He loved music, and had several hundred 78s, most of which I still have in my possession. (The photo above is the tip of the iceberg.) They cross many labels, genres, and sensibilities. I won't try to list them all here. But in the spirit of Sepia Saturdays, I'd like to suggest the recently discovered resource of Old Hat Records. My grandfather had a good number of the tracks available there. I have long since made MP3s of his quirky mix of 78s that include Bob Willlis and the Texas Playboys, Josephine Baker, Louis Armstrong, Herbert von Karajan, Kate Smith, the cast of "Broadway Melody", Benny Goodman and various recordings of "Mother Machree". Looking back at these acetate discs and the murky McCarthy era image at the top of this post, I have mixed emotions of what I carry forward from the past to the future. Though I will have no heir to carry forward these memories, there will be family members to whom I hope to pass these relics on to whom I hope will at least respect if not revere them. I care less about the various discs of von Karajan's take on Beethoven as I do about the Crew Cuts' version of "Slam Bam", Sarah Vaughan's "Naughty Papa" and The Stevedores take on "Last Night on the Back Porch I Loved You Most of All".

Sepia Saturday: Abandoned

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, I worked for a couple of small town and suburban newspapers. At some point I will trudge through old photos and articles. I enjoyed interviewing local eccentrics and recall being in a tiny, poorly ventilated dark room as I processed film and made prints. "Surely a day will come when all of this can be done...without these wretched chemicals I mused." I don't miss the chemicals but sometimes I miss those images slowly emerging in a pool of developer under a 25 watt red light.

Much as I loved the people photos, my favorites were those of abandoned places and buildings such as these two. I don't know anything about the stories behind who lived here once or why these places were abandoned. The fact that they are a mystery is probably why they most appealed to me then and now.

Sepia Saturday: Those We Lost Young

Sepia Saturday posts are often tinged with a bit of sadness since the subjects are typically no longer with us on earth. What strikes me as that so many of the family members in yellowing photo albums are not only gone but left at an young age.

Several posts back, I wrote about my great-uncle Claude who took his life in his 20s. His half sister -- my maternal grandmother -- also lost her "baby" brother Frank Cain, above around 1935. Born in 1907, he was the youngest of four children (not counting half brother Claude who was gone by the time he was in kindergarten). He is the baby in the photo below, taken in Kansas around 1908.
Though the baby, he assumed the role of the patriarch in the family when his father passed away when he was a teenager and was very close to my grandfather. Though brothers-in-law, they felt almost like brothers, equally ambitious and hardworking. Although his older brother was the first born, he was an eternal drifter and alcoholic, spending most of his adult life in and out of residential hotels and plasma banks.
Exactly what took Frank was never clear to me, a mysterious illness before he was even 30. His widow and three children left Kansas City for northern California, and I heard about them second had for years. She never remarried and was said to have been in mourning for the remaining 55 years of her life. I finally met her children in Fairfield when my parents first visited me in San Francisco in 1997. As we drove away, my mother said, "It's like they never left Missouri. I bet things would have turned out differently if Frank had lived."

Sepia Saturday: Do You Shorpy?

Maybe this is cheating a bit, but I've had a really busy past couple of weeks with travel and other projects, so I'm recommending a "third party" sepia site.

Fans of historic photographs might enjoy Shorpy. Many of these come from national archives, and each one is sort of like a mini-novel/movie. Shorpy, to me, is the granddaddy of all sepia sites, and there is always something fascinating there. Be sure to hit the "click for full size" button, especially on the street scenes. The level of detail is jaw dropping on most of these since, I am assuming, most are from glass plates and the clarity and human detail really takes you into the places, making you feel like you are walking down a Brooklyn street circa 1893 or walking through the front door of a former slave cabin.

Sepia Saturday: Adventures in the Time Machine

It's a busy week, and I am about to hit the road, so I apologize for playing "reruns" from last weekend, but since I didn't post it for last Sepia Saturday post, here goes. I've been taking trips in my time machine to visit the early 20th century around the world.

For your enjoyment, you can hit these links for:

My trip to London.

My trip to Paris.

My trip to Vegas.

My trip to Cairo.

Sepia Saturday: Dress Up Day!

(It's Sepia Saturday. Here are the other great posts here.)

If for no other reason than to dispel the rumor that there are no photos of me smiling, here is one of my "big" sister Nanette and me engaged in one of our favorite Saturday activities -- dress up day. There are other, more dramatic ones I will try to share for future posts. We got more creative through the years and went on to put on shows with our increasingly elaborate home made costumes. But this one is just a taste of our repertoire.

Sepia Saturday: Father's Day

Though there are thousands of photos I could post of my father (1922-2006) these are two of my favorites. The one at the top is from around 1927 when he was transitioning from Kindergarten to first grade. He is the boy second boy on the left on the far top row . I love this picture if for now reason other than the flaming flapper teacher on the far left. For years I've wondered just what she is reaching for deeply in those pockets. Way far left. This is the only photo we have of him from between 1922 and 1937.

The second photo was taken with my sister around September 1952. There is much that is "wrong" with it as far as lighting, contrast, and shadows. Those mistakes are what make me love it and the memory of my father. Mistakes, memories, shadows and mystery are what makes Father's Day worth remembering, even though there is no tangible address where I can send a card.

Sepia Saturday: Private Life, Family Life

(Our contribution to Sepia Saturday. Check the others here.)

This week I finished Jane Smiley's great new novel Private Life. Besides being a compellingly written story, I was struck by how the life of its central character Margaret Mayfield could have been any number of my female ancestors. Moving from Missouri to California, she suppresses her own aspirations and dreams in order to be a dutiful wife.
In a recent interview, Smiley mentioned that the story was inspired in part by a distant relative she knew little about and ended up inventing her fictional character from that base. I've said more than once that some of the most fascinating family photos are of those I never met and knew little about.

Born in 1874, Lulie Ann Fleming was the youngest of the nine sisters of my great-grandmother Eva Bell whom I chronicled in this post.
Like Margaret Mayfield, she married at 27 in 1901. In that era, I am sure that her family worried that she was on the road to be an old maid. Seen here with her husband Charlie on their wedding day, I can imagine the guests whispering "I was beginning to wonder if it would ever happen," as she walked down the aisles. I am always drawn to the hankie delicately placed in her lap.Although they lived in Kansas, not Missouri, Charlie and Lulie left for California sometime during World War I. I am sure that this was devastating to my great-grandmother since she had no other family there, all the other siblings still in Quebec. This shot is of Charlie on the Kansas farm sometime before their departure to California.
Taken in 1911, this shot shows four of their six children, including the youngest, Bessie, and Lulie's parents Spencer and Elizabeth visiting from Montreal. One son died as an infant, and another was on its way.

This final shot is from 1948 at Knott's Berry farm with Bessie and Lulie. Notice that nearly five decades after her wedding, she still had a hankie in her lap. Having been born in the days of horse drawn wagons as the main means of transport and much of the American west still a frontier, Lulie must have found it bemusing to pose for this re-enactment of it.

Looking at the photos of Lulie, I see so many familiar aspects of her face that remind me of the women in my family -- especially the position of the nose above the mouth. Seeing just that portion of her face, I could think it was my mother, sister, niece, aunt, grandmother and other women in the family. I can even see a bit of it in my own face.

I have never met any of Lulie's offspring, those surviving likely being fourth, fifth or sixth cousins. But I am curious where they are in California, if our paths may have crossed without us knowing it. I know that having these photos of Lulie was a great comfort to my great-grandmother who felt so alone in Kansas, and it is intriguing to look back at them and try to guess the fuller story.

Sepia Saturday: Christmas in June

(Here is our contribution to this week's Sepia Saturday. Check out the others here.)

I am fortunate to have a wonderful sister, but for much of my childhood I longed to have a brother and can see ways that plays a role in my life to this day. The above photo is from the Christmas of 1965 when I was nine and my cousin Jeb was three. Jeb lived with us at different stages of his first eight or nine years, and it fulfilled part of my longing to have a brother.

Today we see each other at best once a year, and we are about as different in appearance and temperament as could be possible. But, looking back at these photos (and the one of me below in 1958 during my second Christmas), I am amazed as how similar we looked. That may be one of the great gifts of participating in Sepia Saturday -- looking back at one's own past as something of an outsider and being surprised by the insights that come from the view.

That Christmas was the first Christmas spent by our family at the digs called "Lazy Acres" built by my grandparents and later the home of my parents. It was in the family for exactly 50 years. For the Christmas of 2006, our family gathered there one last time, and I did a multi-part slide/video/music show for the experience. Below is the "finale" that featured the various "cast members", many of whom have appeared in here in past Sepia Saturday installments.

Sepia Saturday: Reunion

(Here is our contribution to Sepia Saturday. Check the others here.)

Memorial Day weekend and June herald the onslaught of family and high school reunions. I won't be attending any this year, but thought I'd feature this one from 1922 of the Biggs family. The older pair on the right are my great-grandparents, John and Mattie Biggs, visiting Oklahoma from Torrance, California. My grandparents, Acy and Cassie Biggs, are the man in the flat cap with the baby (my father who was born that February) and the dark-haired woman in the center with her head turned. I am fairly certain that the young woman in the white hat is my second cousin, Jewell Biggs Castle. I had never met her until last April when she shared her journal from the family's journey from Oklahoma to Los Angeles in 1920 when she was 12. It was a poetically vivid account filled with detailed descriptions of sunsets, the new Broadmoor Hotel where she saw a polo match and the first discovery of the West. She died two weeks later at the age of 98. I look at this photo and feel lucky to so recently had a new personal connection with this group, none of whom are living today but are vividly dancing in my heart and imagination this Memorial Day weekend.

Sepia Saturday: Hey Everybody...

...it's baby Junk Thief. Taken sometime in early 1957. Clearly already enamored by the lure of studio lights, cameras and building a fan base. And a blond.

(And the other Sepia Saturday entries are here.)

Sepia Saturday: Our House, Glenn Bennett's White Pants and Other Sepia Mysteries

Although they can be cheesy as all get out, I can enjoy PBS series such as Antiques Roadshow, Mysteries of the Dead and History Detectives. So I will borrow a bit from them this week for Sepia Saturday. As the custodian of our family's historic photographs, I have managed to sort out the bulk of them and have them fairly well identified. However, there are still a few that need some clarification. This collection comes from the Cain family, on my maternal grandmother's side.

Many are frustratingly and amusingly vague such as the one above whose sole caption is on the front of the photo with no clue as to who the "our" in question is nor where the house might be. Any guesses? At first glance, it looks like it could be in southern California, but I've seen similar styles elsewhere in the U.S.
Now we're getting a little less vague, with this barn of my paternal great-great uncle and aunt, Cecil and Nannie Bennett in Brier, Kansas.
And here is a nice photo of Cecil and Nannie's son, Glenn.
Even more enjoyable is the caption on the back that informs us that what we are seeing is Glenn with his white pants. Were white pants something to shout about in Brier, Kansas?
Now we get a bit more mysterious again with this pair identified simply as "G.C." They are a fetching pair, pleasantly casual and seem to have a great chemistry. But who are they?

This shot of them really thrills me since it's so different from anything else I've seen of late 19th or early 20th century portraits. So charming, and I am trying to figure out what he is pouring and the vessel to receive it is. Milk?
Now we have a couple who are identified -- Perl and Tom Lokey. We have know Lokeys in our family tree, so I have no idea who they are -- neighbors, school chums, distant in-laws? They are a sporting pair whoever they are. Tom is rather handsome, and I love his fashion choices. Perl is no slouch herself, and I love that "just try to mess with me" smirk. Who do you think calls the shots in the Lokey House?
The subject of this shot is pretty obvious if you look closely at the sign on the building on the right -- Tokyo P.X. -- suggesting occupied Japan in the late 1940s, though the street scene looks earlier. Any guesses? It especially mystifies me since I know of none of the Cains serving in or visiting Tokyo.

Our Inner Mother and Inner Goldie Child

(After a long absence, we're glad to be back with another Sepia Saturday contribution. Check out the others here.)

Of all the challenges of growing older, I think the most difficult and comforting is dealing with the memories of those we will never see again on this earth and how their memories and presence grows stronger.

It should be no surprise to focus on my mother this week for Sepia Saturday after several weeks "out of the game". The last Mother's Day I celebrated with her was in 2003. She died March 12, 2004.

This above picture of her is from around 1927 with my mother in the center, the "sullen" child as she would sometimes call herself and her younger sister Goldie in foreground on the left. They was barely 16 months between them, and my mother often said that they were the mirror opposites of the greater whole. My mother was the serious, cautious, protective, reflective one -- always calculating risk and potential hazards. Goldie was, quite literally, the Golden Child -- joyous, foolhardy, always running, never afraid, and always singing. Her golden locks brought her the name of her maternal aunt.

My grandfather was the conductor of the Alameda line street car in Kansas City at the time. Goldie and my mother would often ride with him. My mother would sit in an obscure corner with good light and read a book. Goldie would prance into the center of the car, delighting my grandfather -- a huge fan of jazz and the Charleston -- as she sang "Birmingham Bertha" or "Sweet Georgia Brown", hands on her hips and she did pelvic twists wise beyond her mere three years.
Here we see Mother and Goldie in the spring of 1931. It was a rainy, sick season. Three weeks later Goldie died of rheumatic fever. The family never recovered on many levels. My grandfather invested hard earned Depression dollars on tap and voice lessons for my mother, who was clearly a book not stage person. They went to Shirley Temple movies at once uplifted and heart sick as the cheerful singing tot reminded them too much of Goldie. Years later, I remember my mother watching Paper Moon with me, but suddenly running out in tears as Tatum O'Neal's tough cookie preteen in a bowl cut reminded her too much of what her sister would have been at that age. This photo of my mother and her parents from 1937 was often called the "wave shot" for obvious reasons. There is poise and happiness in the three but I also see the pain in their faces from the loss of the fourth family member that should have been in the photo. A few months later, my mother's second sister, Barbara arrived. She was a beautiful woman on many levels but had a strained relationship with my mother and her parents from the start. My mother resented a baby coming into the house when she was about to enter her teens and felt she often played the role of the nanny. My grandparents groomed her from the start as the "new Goldie" instead of recognizing her unique, individual personality. She had an aptitude and competence in music, but it was always an uphill, deliberate skill for her. She feigned an effervescence, always cracking rather awkward jokes and laughing but never taking to it intuitively.

At the risk of this sounding like a morbid and downbeat Mother's Day post, I'll qualify why I have, with the passage of time, have come to love and appreciate my mother even more. Sometimes I think what drew my parents together was that both of them came from households that were tortured by the loss of a daughter at a young age. From the outset, they said that they would raise their children with no expectations of who or what they should be but honor their personalities. I can remember being taken aback in high school when my father told me, "You know, I've never raised a son before, so we're both sort of learning this as we go." As a tot, I had a reputation of breaking out in song at family gatherings or in shopping centers , hands on hips and gyrating as I got wrapped up in my own act. My parents -- and even my grandfather -- looked on with pleasure and no judgment, even if I was singing "The Man I Love" or "My Boyfriend's Back" at pitch volume at the Piggly Wiggly. A bit of Goldie did live on in the family, without pain, and I feel blessed to have parents and grandparents who could embrace it coming from the most unexpected of packages.

Sepia Saturday: Little Mr. and Mrs. Biggs

In one of my first Sepia Saturday posts, I wrote about my paternal grandparents Acy and Cassie Biggs. Acy (above, around 1949) was the eldest son of his nearly dozen siblings but was paralyzed in a farming accident when he was in his 30s and was confined to a wheel chair for the remainder of his life. Like many families struggling through the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma, most of his siblings and his parents -- John and Mattie Biggs below on their wedding day in 1888 -- migrated to California.
The two branches of the family -- the large one in southern California and the smaller branch remaining in Oklahoma -- had little connection during the 70 years after the separation began. Although I met a few of them through the years, most of their names and stories were mysteries to me.

When my mother died in 2004, I got an email from a second cousin who said that he had been building a family website chronicling the history and that he wanted to connect the Oklahoma and California branches. I was the living bridge, a member of the Oklahoma branch who had been living in California for ten years. Slowly, I have had the chance to meet more and more of the California cousins and have learned first hand stories and histories that had been vague memories and legends up to then.

The cousin who contacted me, Mike, has the diligence of a reporter, reaching out to many long disconnected family members, and the site he built is quite detailed and organized. One of the most interesting tidbits is that although I am a bit over six foot two, I am the exception to my namesake, and my great grandfather John stood just under five feet, often referred to as "Little Mr. Biggs". I've since had the chance to visit the neighborhood in Torrance where the family settled. Ironically, one of my closest friend's family settle just a few blocks down the street, having migrated there in the 1940s from China.

Sepia Saturday: Uncle Will

Last week I introduced you to "Aunt Carrie", the eccentric great-great-aunt who strolled through the neighborhood late in the night. This is her husband, W.R. "Will" McCarty in May 1865. It was a few weeks after Booth shot Lincoln, Will had likely come home alive and victorious from the Civil War.

This "photo" has always fascinated me since my Great Aunt Goldie pulled it out of a trunk in her spider webbed strewn attic in St. Louis. "Oh, would you want that? It's so old, why would anyone want it?" I've never been brave enough to remove the gold framing and glass to get a better scan of the photo. But perhaps it's more fascinating as a series of shadows, a true ghost. There is a youthful grace to young Will's post, what looks like a light beard and his elegant white shirt and what I assume to be a dark velvet jacket. Was he all dressed up as his family greeted him back home after defeating the racist bastards of the South?
It is also just a few years after Leaves of Grass was published and his future wife, Carrie, was about to begin kindergarten.
Although I feel lucky to be the heir and steward to this heirloom, it makes me a bit sad and reflective that although Carrie and Will apparently had a loving marriage and a daughter, they lost her when she was just eight. So any heirlooms went to no direct descendants. I plan to remain a good steward of this and make sure it stays in the family, but it raises questions I've toiled with in recent years about family and bloodlines.I remember my mother and other relatives worrying that I had reached a point in life where I would never produce my own heirs. There was a fear that by being "alone", I would have a lonely life. Yet I look at the story of Carrie and other relatives who had spouses and children that they lost and when alone were so bereft that they didn't know how to survive. I remember my own father after the loss of my mother and wishing I could pass to him the skill of coping while living alone, that being single was not a state of despair. It was a skill I foolishly thought a child could teach a parent, but it never took.
I wonder what Will was thinking about life and the future at the time of the photo, and why he waited another 25 years before marrying Carrie. We know only tidbits about the two of them, some of it blurred by legend and neglect. What has also been a treasure is the inscription inside by my great grandmother (Carrie's sister-in-law, if I remember correctly) and the imprint for Holmes, Booth and Haydens.