History Adventuring

When I first saw this image on the Duke University website, it reminded me of the miniature towns that I used to build when I was a kid. It's looking south on Main Street at Summerfield in Asbury Park, New Jersey in 1935, and it's just too perfect. Let's take a look. First of all, just to get us oriented, and to prove it's real, that building just south of Sears is still there. You can go on Google Street View and take a look. There's a laundromat now where the Sears used to be. There's just so much to see! I like their slogan "We save you money". Catchy! Looks like you could get lawn chairs and umbrellas so you could soak up the sun there by the ocean. Of course, you could get tires and batteries, and all kinds of service for your car. This is just too much fun looking at the cars and buildings! The truck on the left says "Butler Poultry Farm". To me, it looks as if someone said, "Let's do a miniature of 1935, with lots of fun detai...

I feel like going for a walk, but it will have to be an imaginary one. Right now, as I write this in the Phoenix, Arizona area, it's nearly 100 degrees and humid, so I won't be going for a walk IRL (In Real Life). I'm going for a walk based on a photo that I found yesterday on the Duke University site, in Asbury Park, New Jersey in 1935. Time-travel with me! Yes, the location is real, but the rest I'm just gonna make up. Call me Ishmael. It's June 14th, 1935, and it's 9:45 in the morning. At least that's what time I think it is, I don't have my specs on and it's difficult to read the clock across the street. You're looking south on Main Street at Bangs Avenue, and I'm walking towards you. I'm dressed in a suit with a vest and my favorite cap. I just walked past Casner's Cafe, where I could have gotten something to eat, even a drink or some beer, since Prohibition is over, but I didn't feel like it. I just want to walk. There's...

When I first stumbled across this wonderful image, on the Duke University website, I really had no idea where it was. I sent an email to my number one history adventuring friend (who prefers to remain anonymous) and just said that it had an "LA feel". He determined that it's looking east on Washington Boulevard and Normandie Avenue in Los Angeles. I was still skeptical (because that's what I do) because I had thought that the LaSalle Market was part of a chain, but it wasn't - it was the only one in town. And any doubt that the location was exactly right faded away when I saw that it was right nearby the Rosedale Cemetery (look over at the trees on the left). I went to the Rosedale website, and this is what I found: Angelus Rosedale Cemetery It was founded as Rosedale Cemetery in 1884, when Los Angeles was a small city of around 28,285 people, on 65 acres of land running from Washington to Venice Boulevard (then 16th Street) between Normandie Avenue and Walton and...

In a longish life, I've looked at a lot of sidewalks. I've always enjoyed what I call "Urban Hiking", because although I enjoy the great outdoors, I want my great outdoors to have convenience stores nearby. And when I would return home from these walks, the grownups would ask what I had seen. Even when I was a little kid I learned to tell people something that they could relate to, like that I went over to the tennis courts, or the library, which was true. But what I saw, and looked for, is a world that was invisible to most people, and I can see a lot in sidewalks. But until very recently I hadn't even tried to read the strange marks that are spray painted on them, so yesterday I started this journey. I'll tell you what I know. I started with a "cheat sheet" that I found on the internet, but of course I have no idea if it applies to my local area, which is Phoenix, but it's a start. Mostly I was interested in the color code. That blue meant wate...

Although I've never had a lot of money to throw around, every once in a while I've done something that will often cause gasps of amazement from people that I'm having breakfast with at a restaurant - I order orange juice. If you've ever done that, or watched someone who is brave enough to do it, you've seen a tiny glass being served, and if you look at the price on the menu, you see something that appears to be as valuable per ounce as Unobtainium. Of course, oranges aren't terribly expensive, you can big up a big bag of them for cheap at the grocery store, but but that doesn't stop restaurants from treating them the same way that my grandma got them back when she was a kid. By the time this billboard was made, in 1935, oranges really weren't all that expensive anymore, but back when my grandma was a little girl, before that, they were so crazy expensive that she would often get one for a Christmas present. She told this to me quite often, especially whe...

I just love looking at old photos, especially the ones that feel as if I could step into them, like this one I just found on the Duke University  website. There's so much to see, and what I like best is the dents and scratches on the cars. OK, calm down there, I'm not fascinated by dents and scratches, but I do like to time-travel to a world that has imperfections. If I woke up tomorrow and walked into a street scene that was absolutely pristine, like what you usually see in period movies, I'd figure that I'd woken up on the Universal backlot, or hadn't woken up at all. This photo, by the way, wasn't taken to show the cars, or the buildings, it was taken to show the billboards. It's how billboard companies could prove that the ads were up and visible. And if that's what catches your attention, I understand, but I'm looking at the cars. And since I've only seen cars like this in movies, or at car shows, I'm fascinated by the wrinkled fenders, ...

If you've ever wondered why beautiful women, or pretty girls, are used so much in advertising, even when there really isn't any kind of connection (although there is with this ad for Sea Nymph bathing suits in 1951) it really comes down to what most people like to look at, and that's women. I'm not exactly at what age I discovered this, but when you look at magazines for women you see women. When you see magazines for men you see women. Everyone loves to look at women, the only exception being (this is an old joke) blind people. Speaking for myself, I like women. I like to look at them, I like to be around them. And yes I mean that in a romantic way, but I've also preferred my doctors to be women, my bosses to be women. Heck, even my dogs are female! In this image from the Duke University site, I'd imagine that this drawing of a bathing beauty got a lot of attention. I'm inclined to think that if I were a teenager walking along the boardwalk there in Atlanti...

As much as I looked forward to getting my own car as a teenager, I have to admit that driving was mostly very dull for me.  As a kid, I'd imagined that a car would help me escape the dull world, and be able to escape to a world of adventure. Sadly, what I found over the years is that it rarely took me anywhere. By the time I learned to drive, super fast and safe freeways had been built, and the idea was to get from one place to another as quickly as possible. All of the conversations that I had with people about traveling was about how quickly it was over, and driving, like flying, just turned into leaving one place and arriving in another place that was virtually the same. So I never traveled much, at least not in the way that most people did. I took the road less traveled, and I still do. Nowadays I call it "history adventuring", but that's really just my excuse to go hit the road, stop at a lot of places, and breathe it all in. Now don't get me wrong, I like sa...

Because of my interest in history, and advertising, I really enjoy looking at the Duke University site called "ROAD", which has thousands of images of outdoor advertising, mostly billboards. My old advertising teacher would have been fussy about what to call these things, as most of them are technically posters, some are murals (like the image at the top of this post), and some are billboards. For practical purposes, they're all billboards, and to me it's historically interesting to know why they're called that. Although these images look interesting, and quaint, in reality they were just as annoying to the people at the time as any other type of unwanted "eye pollution", like "pop-up ads" on the internet. And it had gotten way out of hand by the time most cities stepped up to control it. It was so long ago that these ads were called "bills". That is, "advertising bills" that were slapped up everywhere, sometimes painted, so...

I'm enjoying looking at this billboard, which I found this morning on the Duke University site, which is advertising taking a bus from Trenton, New Jersey to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for $1.50. My first thought of course, since I live in the 21st Century, is that a buck-fifty isn't much, but now I'm pondering what it was like to spend that amount in 1927. Prices of things change over time of course, but it's all relative to income. I'm not a very mathematical person, and I tend to think of a haircut being twenty-five cents "back in the day" - you know, "shave-and-a-haircut, two bits!" but now I'm really curious about that bus trip in 1927. Hang on, I'm going to go see if I can look it up on an inflation calculator. OK, I just looked it up and the site I visited said that it would be about twenty-three dollars today. And that sounds very inexpensive for a bus ride, so I think I'll check the distance from Trenton to Philly. OK, I jus...

Although all of my Los Angeles friends have long since moved away, taking their million-dollar profits on their houses into other states, to drive up the cost of real estate there, there was a time many years ago when I could always count on being able to sleep on a friend's couch, just to get out out town. My friends were all single, or divorced, so they weren't upset by this, and all I needed to do was to bring a toothbrush. There was absolutely no point to my visits other than getting out of town, and seeing my old neighborhoods in LA. If you're familiar with LA, you know a place called Studio City, which is a pleasant neighborhood, and absolutely infested with actors, models, etc. I mean, they gotta live somewhere, right? So you can't really avoid them, and they can be a lot of fun to hang out with. And no, I'm not talking about "A" list celebrities, these are people who have been on that one commercial you may remember, or were extras on "Titanic...

As a man, I've always been aware that women seem to live in a different world than I do. And so when I started looking at this billboard from 1930 that I found on the Duke University site, I could see that I had two challenges in understanding it, it's both a different era and a different world from what I know. Let's take a look. This ad is obviously trying to appeal the ladies. By the way, before we go any further, let's stop and take a look at the frame of that billboard - they don't make 'em like that anymore! The ladies are all showing different outfits for different activities. I'm not exactly sure what "snappy togs" means, but my best guess is that it was slang for "nice-looking clothes". The lady on the far left is holding a riding crop, so she must be dressed for riding horses. Next to her is a woman with a tennis racquet, wearing what looks to me to be a housedress. Please correct me if I'm wrong! Sitting there rather uncomf...

Since I enjoy looking at the old photos that are on the Duke University site, when I saw a billboard for Ken-L-Ration I smiled, because I remember the commercials, which went "My dog's better 'cause he eats Ken-L-Ration, my dog's better than yours!", but I had no idea that there was a corresponding cat food. Really, if I hadn't found this myself I wouldn't have believed that it wasn't Photoshopped. But there it is: Kit-E-Ration. And for those of you who aren't quite old enough to remember the brand Ken-L-Ration, I'll explain it the best I can. "Ken-L" is a goofy way of saying "kennel", which a place for dogs, and "ration" is a term for food, usually used by the military. Since this photo is from 1928, it looks like Ken-L-Ration had been successful enough that the manufacturers, which were the Chappel Brothers Inc. of Rockford, Illinois, decided to come up with a clever name for cat food. They reused the term "...

When I saw this image on the Duke University website of a group of men in 1924, I started thinking about wearing a suit. And although I don't know who these men are, my best guess is that they were business bigwigs. You know, captains of industry, robber barons, that sort of thing. They're not models, or actors, which is what most of us are used to seeing when we picture people "back in the day". And so it's reasonable to assume that they dressed themselves, not a wardrobe person. Of course they would have had help from their tailor, and possibly their wives, but mostly I'd say that this is a fair representation of what these men wore every day. Of course, they all had hats (I'm assuming that the man on the far left is holding his behind his back). Men took off their hats for ladies, and to be photographed! The man with the cigar seems to have buttoned just the bottom button of his coat, which makes me wonder if it was in fashion, or if this guy just got i...

If you've ever wondered what it used to say along the top of the building at State and Carroll in Trenton, New Jersey, it said, "Rider College", which taught things like Mathematics, Shorthand, and Banking. No, I'm no historical wizard, or expert on Trenton, I only know this only because of a photo that I just found at the Duke University site, and you can see for yourself. I jumped on Google Street View, and sure enough you can just barely see the lettering that has been covered up. Here's a screenshot: People who look at old buildings, like me, call these "ghost signs". Not sure what the two dates mean, maybe the establishment of the school and when the building was erected? Anyway this is a fun picture with a lot of details that I call "slice of life". And my eye immediately went to the guy on the bicycle, because I love to pedal around! And I love the old cars that went "A-Oooogah!" Wilson the Printer was right next door. If you r...