Photo Friday: The Gang's All Here Edition (1920's-1940's)

Good morning!!

IT'S FRIDAY. We're almost to the weekend! I have paper flowers to string and mix cds to perfect after work, but I am looking forward to having a moment's breath before THE FINAL COUNTDOWN. 

I initially wanted to do a post on the user's mother, who has an unusual, strikingly pretty face, a great sense of style, and not to mention a husband who looks like a cross between Ken and Jerry Lee Lewis (be still my beating heart), but as I got absorbed in looking through the rest of the photos, I decided there was just too much fun to be had in these group shots. The flickr stream features a box of photos from the user's grandmother's collection, as well as photos from various and sundry members of the family-- between that and another stream, there's 600 photos and almost 100 years of relatives accounted for! I love it. It's dedication to sharing vernacular photos like this that make me want to get up and hunt for Photo Friday entrants every week.

Well, what are we waiting for? Let's look!

The grandfather in the center of this photo is probably the reason I chose this one to include in the first place. I was reminded of a western, I can't remember which, where the main character instructs two other characters on the significance of how you wear your hat-- up here means one thing, back tilted on your head means another, down low means this...I wish I could think of the movie! The scene ends on a visual with both the people listening to the lecture realigning their hats to match their dispositions...can you spot the kind of serious, strong cool the center gentleman is quietly projecting from the center of the photo? I miss the days when your average fedora wearing guy looked like this, like someone out of the Old West, rather than like someone escaped from The Game Keep. Bid time return!

In this photo, do you think it's the same guy again, twenty years earlier? I love the billowing dress on the flapperette to the left, and the child streaking across the photo at bottom. "Floyd! You ruint the picture!" 

Here, teenagers doing what they have done since cameras were affordable: standing in in awkward little klatches, unposed, while one of their numbers snaps the shutter. I was talking to Matthew last night about how all the photos taken of me or by me during the whole of my high school and college years are just completely forgettable-- I have albums and albums of "that kid that used to be in my algebra class wearing a Roswell t-shirt" or "that girl I used to be friends with in 8th grade symbolically holding a stuffed monkey and a Mountain Dew can" or "me fleeing the camera, button-covered gas-mask-bag-as-purse-flying"...photos that were hardly worth processing! It must be easier now for kids because they can take 1,000,000 photos and just save them to Facebook...back then, I remember waiting for my photos at the one-hour counter and being delighted that we got "that photo of the geometry teacher asleep on the bus on the junior field trip!" [editor's note: all of the photos described are real photos somewhere in my possession...]

Now, talking about hats...everyone in this photo but one got the memo on not going bareheaded for the group photo they're about to take! I love how all these kids are obviously kids, not older than fourteen, probably, but with their grown up clothes and expressions, they look more mature than I do sitting behind the desk at work today!

"The running board is underutilized!" the man driving this tin lizzie seems to exclaim. "We could fit a bunch of our stuff and the dog on it if we really tried!"  See the three darkened passengers in the back seat, and the reminds-me-of-my-grandaddy ingenious jerry-rigging of what looks like part of a ladder to create extra cargo space on the side of the car? It might not look pretty, but it works! I wonder if they were moving or taking a trip, or what. Also, it was very good of that dog not to just jump off whenever he felt like it...think of what a good ride this must have been for that pup! 

This photo is funny just because I kept thinking about a rich cousin visiting relatives in a working class neighborhood, and having to shoo all these children off his car. "Hey! HEY! GET OFF OF THAT! And don't touch the trim...you little....get off my car!" As long as this photo was consensual between the car owner and the HORDE of "Our Gang" like denizens atop the roof, I'm ok with it.

And one solo, just to round out the bunch:

Have you seen a prettier solitary photo of a girl? I can't get over her hat, her expression, her print dress, that bony hip thrown out of the shadows to sass the viewer some eighty years after the photo was taken. Take your breath away.

The whole photostream is a LOT of fun...1920's dogs standing on 1920's cars, pretty girls in Photomats, dapper Edwardian dandies...all kinds of great stuff. Go'on go check it out!

That's all for this week...keep a good thought for me getting through some of this final hour wedding stuff, and I will see you on Monday! Have a great weekend! Til then.