Sepia Saturday Carts and more wagon train travelers of the past

This prompt raised my memory of  travelers we met in California, in December 1983, wagoneers,  of the oddest, adventurous, aspiring to live in the 1800's.  It was a family of four, man, woman and   two children.  Fortunately I had some photos of them, fading now and not of the sepia era but on theme as you will see. 

It was right after Christmas in 1983, when we lived in Newcastle, CA but this  took place in  the then rural area of  Penryn, a village established by Welsh  quarry miners in the 1800's.  We were at the home of friends for cocktails and were to meet others for dinner but this couple announced that they had a meal to take to a traveling family before we all went for dinner, the delivery would be on our way.  It was and remains the oddest traveling group we have ever known of then or since.  Today we recall little about  the particulars and unfortunately at that time I was not journaling  faithfully nor blogging, else I  would have more information to share today.  When we arrived at this rail road property  less than a mile from our friends'  ranch, with the platters of hot food she delivered,  my mouth fell open at the sight.  The weather is cold in Northern California in December and January, damp and foggy, bone chilling at times. 

Home base on railroad property of the 4.  The big sacks in front are
bush , tree, shrub branches trimmings brought by local farmers
for the animals.  Notice they were neat about their litter in a pile to the
left.  And someone had  given them two plain Christmas trees.

This family was from Arkansas and were journeying on their last leg through northern California with nothing more than wagons, mules and burro.  They were some sort of early survivalists perhaps or what?  John, the man was intent on making this journey to the central valley of CA where his family lived and employment  awaited but that was not his primary vision. He wanted to do this adventure while he was still young enough, was fascinated by the western tales of wagon trains and the like and wanted to be able to say he did this, the old time way.   One could say he lived his dream or nightmare.  They had been on the road over a year when we met them, an extremely long slow journey. This is before easily available cell phones, Internet and Facebook.   

Apparently John had some connections with the rail road lines and was able to stay on rail property so they rather followed the lines when they could.  They stayed in this spot for a couple weeks and accepted  charity of food and animal feed but would not accept cash.  They allowed us to take photos after we returned with food and blankets.  By that time they had become acquainted with many locals who all came out to see this sight and help them out.  

Another  local man brought them supplies while we were there
and the woman was moving them with the burro

It was 1983  how could this be?  Notice the bicycle off to the side which
they had for trips into a nearby store.  It was the most modern vehicle
in their homestead.  On the left you can see the rail line down the hill below them. 

They had a type of double expandable cart system which the man
had designed and built himself.  Some one had given them the two
geese they kept in  a cage.  More of their menagerie

This is the woman, mother of the two children.  The boy was about four
years old and the girl about six.   

The burro

One of their mules....

 We  wondered before what ever became of them,  there were no news stories about them, respectful of their  request for privacy perhaps.  So we assume all went well and John was satisfied with  his dream.  Jerry recalls that John was very  handy,  mechanical and able to fix most everything.  Well he would have to be to  do all this.  This is my Sepia post for this week, the oddest arrangement. 

Click on the link to  see what others have to share in this week of carts and beasties.   http://sepiasaturday.blogspot.com/2013/05/sepia-saturday-179-1-june-2013.html

Sepia Saturday 178 Memorial Day back to 1943, my father

2013 Some things of my father, insignia, leather pilot cap

An open theme this week allows me to travel from today to 1943 with a  Memorial Day tribute to my father and all the brave souls who gave their all for our country and freedom.  The color photo to the left has mementos from my father, US Army Air Corps Lt. Lewis S Ball.  You know the story, I never knew him born  months after he and his entire combat flight crew disappeared into the Atlantic Ocean, June 20, 1944, WWII, The  aviator cap is in perfect condition and most likely could  have been a spare which seems to counter to the sparse gear the US Army distributed back then.  This cap was amongst many  documents and items I found it in an old  suitcase in 2004 after Mom died.   I have wondered as with so many  unanswerable thoughts, where did he get it and how did it stay in perfect shape?  There are letters on the top, "USN"  which I think are for US Navy, curious, my father was US Army Air Corp.  Did they get aviator caps for whatever service branch, did it matter?  

This photo of my father at the propeller is 1943 with him wearing this or another identical cap at Dorr Field, Arcadia Florida during his early flight training in P-38's and PT's. 

1943 July Lt L S Ball  Dorr Field

Lou  liked flying and especially  those small planes and aspired to be a fighter pilot in the Army Air Corps, but Uncle Sam needed ever so many more B-24 pilots and although Lou was not a large man in height he was strong and eager and assigned to fly the B-24 Liberator.   The following post card was one of the few things Mom shared with me although she would always call it, "that damned plane."  I don't know what he thought but I have some of his own notes and drawings from training, he was a dedicated student.   It has been said that the B-24's  were flat faced, rectangular and had  the look only a "myopic mother" could love.   The cockpit  was cramped requiring pilot and co pilot to live cheek to jowl during missions.  One WWII pilot wrote, that the first time he entered the cockpit of his B-24 "it was like sitting on the front porch and flying the house."  The Liberator was one of the heaviest planes in the world, the D model  weighed 71,200 pounds loaded.  Flying it was like "wrestling a bear" which left the pilots tired, and sore.  B-24 pilots were known to have huge muscles on their left arms which they used to man the yoke while their right hand worked other controls.  
 



This is the cover of my father's  August 1943 "Dorr Way", a booklet for the pilot trainees, they were the class 44-a.   I am  mindful of the task these  men faced  and grateful that I have these historic items.  It is a wonder that in the times of WWII the U S Army Air Corp would take the time to photograph and document their times at these different training sites.  It was a time when they would move quickly through and advance to the next training or wash out and be assigned to another task, not able to make it as a pilot.  Many hundreds of thousands of men went through the training but most did not achieve pilot status. The wash out rate was  at it lowest 30 percent but in  later years 45%; but the men who were not pilots would be given other flight status  jobs, bombardier, gunner, radioman, all with an appreciation of the difficulties they faced.    

 

 Louis Zamperini discusses the huge fatality rate of B-24 crew in his marvelous  book ,  "Unbroken" authored by Laura Hillenbrand,  the dangers that abounded even before they flew off to war theater.  The men called the B-24  "The Flying Coffin"   "Stories of its dangers circulated among the would be airmen all over the country.  Pilot and navigator error, mechanical failure, fuel leakages, sinkability, inability to ditch, and bad luck were killing trainees at stunning rate.. 52,615Army Air Corps stateside aircraft accidents over WWII killing 14, 903 personnel...In August 1943  590 airmen would die stateside, 19 per day." 

 

My father's squadron, # 6 at Dorr that Class of 44-a.  There were 6 similar
squadrons according to this book.  He is seated to the far right on the ground.

I cropped and enlarged the photo to the right of my father from the Squadron photo.  There again is that aviator cap, and goggles.  He looks happy and excited.  Look at his sparkling smile and his eyes.   He had less than one year of life left ahead when this photo was taken.  Maybe he did not yet know that the Liberator awaited. He was a positive young man.   Lou would  confide  in  his young brother, Henry, on his final leave home  that he was not so sure he had done the right thing in taking the pilot's training.  I doubt if he had much choice, he was in the Army and they made the rules.  It was not today's Army by a long shot and how could he have declined pilot training for which he scored very high in aptitude and  preliminary  screenings.   The aviators gathered in the photo below are waiting solo assignments.   


1944 June, short  newspaper clipping about
disappearance of my father
 and ..Combat crew 193







Last photo Dorr Field book 1943, an almost
spooky quality to the men now ready to meet their destiny, whether  to the next phase of training  as in Lou's case or...,.

This is  my Sepia Saturday contribution.  Click here to the Sepia host site where members of the international community respond to the prompt.  This week many consider the  eyes  in the   photo.   
 http://sepiasaturday.blogspot.com/2013/05/sepia-saturday-178-25-may-2013.html

 









Sepia Saturday 177 Fences

This week's prompt immediately reminded me of several  fence photos  and one nearly upside down boy, but finding them, ahh that took time.  I remember hanging upside down just like the  children in the Sepia prompt off the cross bars of swings or other things.  It was all the better to startle adults who would shout, "get off there right now before you fall and break your neck!"  And then would come warnings about too much blood going into  the head from upside down.  It never bothered any of us.  Today, I don't like an overly  upside down  tilt to my chair in the dentist office when I have exams and teeth cleaned and protest, as I did a couple weeks ago, "Better let me up for a while, too much blood going to my head."  Ahh how childhood warnings stick in the psyche and emerge so much later in life amongst our truisms. 

I snapped this photo of our late son, Steve in 1976 climbing over one of our pasture fences that were not all that sturdy.  He was 12 years old then.  Fences were a necessity when we lived in Newcastle in northern California because we had a bottom pasture with a pond and we and the neighbors had horses, which had to be corralled, "good fences make good neighbors."  This pasture  fence had a gate farther down the hill that could be opened but Steve could not bother with walking farther when he could go over.  I remember shouting many warnings about this activity to no avail because he was typical country roughneck boy,  always tearing holes in his pants and shirts climbing over  fences to shortcuts.  

I don't know how I happened to have the camera with me just in time to snap this but I must have yelled something, like, "you are going to break your neck and go over upside down someday yet.....walk down the hill to the gate."  He  never did.  There in the left lower corner is  a glimpse of Cookie, one of  our German  shepherds who went wherever Steve went on the hillsides, she could not have climbed over that fence  but she would have found a way under because wherever he went, she shadowed.  Steve's birthday is this coming week, we will still feel pangs from loss although after 5 years we have accepted.

It was less than half a mile all the way down that old dirt road to the pond, lower pasture, too far for a boy on foot to be bothered walking to reach a gate when he could hop over and run through the pasture.  The following photo shows how run down those fences had become by 1980, weather and age taking a toll and necessitating  replacement at a healthy investment.  By that time we had given up our horses so it was not as critical to mend and keep up fences.  I will have to copy this and send to a neighbor who still lives back there.  Today that old dirt road has been paved and before we sold off, many homes had been built farther down on subdivided and developed property, making the old dirt path a daily speedway.  It was just one more reason why we no longer wanted to live there on those seven acres.  Country life was going away.   

I took a photography class in 1981 which included film development and working only with black and white photography.  I took and developed this photo  March 1981 showing the partial replacement  from run down rail fence to post and barb wire along the upper pasture.  I was advised that the photo was too busy and to focus down, but today I am glad I have this "busy shot."  We no longer live there and it does bring back the memories.  I tried to post it as an extra large photo but my blog lay out will not permit it, so here it is a bit smaller than I would like. 

This has been my Sepia post for the prompt of upside down urchins on fences.  To see what others have shared this week, click this link to the Sepia site, an international community.  http://sepiasaturday.blogspot.com/2013/05/sepia-saturday-177-18-may-2013.html

Sepia Saturday 176 Our Town and the chick chick chick

I have few photos from my own school days or anyone else's in the collection here being predigital, we lacked ready use of  cameras at school and film developing was considered for special occasions.  Maybe that is all for the better, but this week's prompt recalled my obligatory high school chemistry class which I enjoyed  but no photos of our experiments. 

Louisa Lucy Leidel Wetchen

However  following my meandering mind while I was adjusting some ancestral documentation and errors this week, I found this photo of Jerry's maternal  great grandmother,  Louisa "Lucy" Leidel Wetchen taken about 1888 with a brood of chicks.  Lucy was a force in her own right, a straight arrow distinctive MN woman of farm and prairie who lived to be 86,  and as a widow for her last 18 years.  My in laws always said  "Grandma Wetchen was a stickler."   

This photo  immediately reminded me of one of my high school plays, "Our Town" by Thornton Wilder and my  role as Mrs. Gibbs and my lines, "here chick, here chick, here chick chick chick"  That  I  recall my opening lines 51 years later, is a tribute to memorization insisted upon by Mrs. Klinke, our drama teacher.  Not only that we all had to speak up and out, we had no fancy microphones nor sound systems as in  today's school auditoriums.  She drilled us, rehearsing up until opening night, again and again and again; until we could  deliver just right, according to her ear while I thought, "what is the big  deal about some woman feeding chickens?" some other lines are much more important, but not to Mrs Klinke, every line had to be projected and delivered. 

 As I recall I did quite well in my performances, Mrs Klinke signed my yearbook, "to Mrs. Gibbs."  as you can see here.   Back in that day, we all had our yearbooks signed.  I wonder if they even have year books that we had, they were quite the production for us. 

Mrs Klinke

In 2008, on this blog,  I wrote about my  Our Town experience, sans photo of Lucy. Here is the link to that post. http://patonlinenewtime.blogspot.com/2008/10/our-town.html

I suppose one could draw some mystical curious coincidental connection  that my 1962 high school play role would have been portrayed in real life years previously by my husband's great grandmother, someone I would never  know. Strong  women were not really on the radar screen back then, but I was fortunate to have many of them as teachers and my  relatives too.  There was one page of the yearbook with photos of that play.  I have scanned it here and you can enlarge it to see us in our poised glory.  I am "Patty" seated front row top photo and gazing at the bride bottom photo.  Bobby Ormesher who played  Doc Gibbs, my MR. wrote across that page.  We were so young back then, in the times of our lives.  We celebrated  our 50th class reunion in September,last year, it was a good time , and Bobby was a good dance partner.  

his is a Sepia Saturday post.  To read others,  click here to the main Sepia site.  http://sepiasaturday.blogspot.com/2013/05/sepia-saturday-176-11-may-2013.html

Sepia Saturday 175 Smoking and our marriage

Each week I think I will return but finally, I have.  Gotta admit I despise smoking, its awful smells and its dirt, always thought it gross.  But Jerry smoked for a long time and finally, wisely gave it  up, many years ago because at first he said he could no longer tolerate my nagging (I do not give up when I know I am  right!)  and then he reluctantly admitted it really was not healthy.  Besides it became very expensive and today neither of us understand anyone just burning up their dollars, but they do.  While in the past smoking was common, it is a rarity today.

People thought nothing of lighting up wherever they were.  Here is Jerry at maybe under a year old with his dad and Grandpa Morrison, both smokers, 1938.    


1938 Jerry as a tot, held by his dad and his
Grandpa Morrison alongside.  Notice both men have cigarettes


Mom and her husband both   smoked and I hated it when I was a child and would ask her to please not leave her dirty ashtrays all around.  She paid no attention to me.  I put a sign on my bedroom door, "No Smoking"  I might have been an early anti smoker, ahead of my time.   I tried smoking briefly in my 20's to be sociable, many friends smoked, many people smoked at work, at their desks, so I tried it too.  But I was never converted, and soon  quit because I hated the smell, and honest to goodness, I NEVER inhaled. I know our former president made that statement famous, but I can believe that because I did likewise.   I would get a mouthful of smoke, not even think of inhaling but blow the smoke away from me while furiously waving it away.     

1971 Christmas Day  Me with Jerry and his cigarette





1986 Jerry to the left, Uncle Carl to the right outside
Uncle's home in PA;  you can almost see Jerry's cigarette

 

I banished Jerry to the outside of the house if he was going to light up following our 1986  trip to Pennsylvania when my late Uncle Carl took Jerry outside if he was going to smoke.  I never knew Uncle Carl to smoke but he admitted he had all through his US Army days in WWII but quit in the  1950's.   I decided that would add another trick to  my bag of getting husband to stop smoking, once home I announced I was adopting the Uncle Carl method.  Up until that time he had only been allowed to smoke in the den anyway, so outside was not all that surprising to him.  It was awkward to have smokers around our home but I would simply state, "only outside for smoking.  I am allergic."  I suppose that might have been true and perhaps why I never climbed on the smokers wagon.





1986  Jerry to the right with his late cousin Kip Cook
The Cooks visited us in Newcastle, and Jerry went outside
for his smoke

Not so long ago smoking was accepted, even touted as glamorous, the habit of the gorgeous and the virile, remember the Marlboro Man cigarette ads, the "'d walk a mile for a Camel".  We lived in California when the anti smoking campaign started and I really was very happy when restaurants and bars and other public places were required to become non smoking. Besides  the dirt and stink, the way it burned my eyes I worried about all those workers who had to be exposed to the smoke from others' cigarettes. Yes, I was all for the smoking bans. There are still some places in our country where smoking is allowed but when we stumble upon such a place on our travels, I do not go in. I do not even like to walk by smokers outside of buildings and show my grumpy fce while covering my mouth and nose and holding my breath as we pass them. Suffice, that I think it is a filthy habit and no good can come of it.

Funny how 1986 fits a Sepia theme this week.  As does our 2010 trip in North Carolina where amongst other sites we toured the a Durham Museum dedicated to the preservation of the history of  tobacco in this country and its importance to revenues in the South. I cannot find my photos or perhaps that day I took none, only this of an old poster.

It was fascinating to see cigarette dispensing machines, now artifacts of a time when the country touted smoking and tobacco was revered.  Today there is an organization, Artomat,  that refurbishes the old cigarette vending machines to dispense various kinds of artwork or crafty items.  I think that is clever.  Here is their website, and we have seen these in Louisiana.  http://laughingsquid.com/art-o-mat-retired-cigarette-vending-machines-converted-to-sell-art/

Refurbished cigarette vending machine

I  now dismount my anti puffing soapbox and invite you all to peruse the various contributions on this week's Sepia site hosted by Alan.  Some have been faithful posters all along and others like me are dabblers.  Time has a way of slipping by us as it has here, travels and tasks take their share of the 24 hour days. Click here to get to the Sepia site to see what others have done with or without the theme.   

http://sepiasaturday.blogspot.com/2013/04/sepia-saturday-175-4-may-2013.html

Sepia Saturday 154 Bridges

With a theme of bridges or waters it is easy for me to find photos from our travels over the years and others in family archives.  This got me to thinking and so I share the Capilano Suspension bridge  in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada from our 1975 road trip.  That was the year we and friends journeyed from our northern  California homes  to the Calgary Stampede and along the way stopped at Glacier Park; we left our group after Calgary and  went west to Vancouver.  Steve was only 11 and we had a wonderful  three week adventure in our new   pick up truck cab over camper, we'd consider that primitive traveling accommodations  today but then it was the best we  knew of and we were also younger.   

I have always  had an aversion to bridges, don't know why, an unreasonable fear because I grew up in western Pennsylvania where there are bridges across all the rivers and going from place to place meant crossing on the bridges.   Today we live near the mighty Mississippi and my frequent LaCrosse journeys require my driving over the bridges, I still do not like them.  But bridges that I really fear are these so called simple suspension bridges, or for automobiles the open to no railings such as the Mackinaw Bridge we crossed in July this year.  

The Capilano Canyon Suspension bridge is advertised as the 8th wonder of the world, or it was in 1975.  The postcard to the left shows it up there,  230 feet above the  canyon and 450  feet long, or " 140 metres long and 70 metres above the river"  according to their website today. 

 Well to an eleven year old it was just the ticket, a challenge to  run across shouting, "no hands, Mom,  come on out and look" .  But to this mother,  who was  sure that something would snap, sending us all to a bloody demise below, it was a horror.  Jerry and Steve both went back and forth to assure me it was perfectly safe.  Hah!  They were different than me,  no way, the thing was obviously not stable, pedestrians pass another person by and there is a feeling of  the unsteadiness.  I only ventured a very few feet onto it so Jerry could take my picture.  So much for conquering my fears, baloney! 

This was years  before digital cameras, so these photos are fading and are difficult to identify the people up there on the bridge amidst the forest of fir and cedar trees that are thousands of years old.  You will see I am not a happy camper here.

1975  Jerry and Steve in the middle of the Capilano Bridge
They are the two tiny people in the middle behind the couple, closest.
I was taking this photo and recall refusing to get closer

Finally I ventured onto it,  about 5 feet, that is me holding onto
a wobbling rail for dear life, ready to cry as I recall
Steve is ahead of me saying, "Come on Mom you can do it."
He ended up coming to get me, holding my other hand and walking me
back to the mainland.  I was/am a wimp  with  such heights. 

.  From the website today I learned some history.  If you are interested you can link to the site and take their  tour.http://www.capbridge.com/our-story/history/    The Capilano bridge was built in 1889 by George Grant Mackay, a Scottish civil engineer and park commissioner for Vancouver.   The website  site has some excellent photos of him with  his cohorts.   It was originally made of hemp ropes with a deck of cedar planks, and was replaced with a wire cable bridge in 1903. In 1910 Edward Mahon purchased the Capilano Suspension Bridge. "Mac" MacEachran purchased the Bridge from Mahon in 1935 and invited local natives to place their totem poles  in the park, adding a native theme. In 1945, he sold the bridge to Henri Aubeneau.  The bridge was completely rebuilt in 1956.  So what we walked onto in 1975 was already 19 years old but how much worse it could have been back in the 1890's.  The park was sold to Nancy Stibbard, the current owner, in 1983. Annual attendance has since increased, and in May 2004, Treetops Adventures was opened. This new attraction consists of seven footbridges suspended between old-growth Douglas Fir trees on the west side of the canyon, forming a walkway up to 30 metres (98 ft) above the forest floor.  

This is the back of the brochure I found with our photos

  This week's prompt awakened reminiscing of those  long ago days along with a realization that I need to have the old photos scanned else they will fade away.  We had wonderful vacations back then,  we knew it then and we still do today. 

 I imagine there  are going to be many wonderful bridge photos shared this week.  Check out the Sepia site to browse the other responses to the prompt.  http://sepiasaturday.blogspot.com/2012/11/sepia-saturday-154-1-december-2012.html

Sepia Saturday 153 Lady of Beardstown

Today I share an unknown,  to us, woman in a photo from the collection of Jerry's late Aunt Marie.  There were no names nor year noted and no one seems to know who she is/was. 

It was a professional studio photo taken by "Berniece of The New Shoemaker Studio in Beardstown" so noted on the cardboard folder. 
She is attractive posed  in somewhat formal attire, long skirt with one foot upon the bottom of the  post, her  necklace looks as though it might be carved from some stone, onyx or?  What was the occasion for the photo?  The sleeves of her blouse echo the folded fabric on the posts.  My guess is this might have been in the 1940's.  What was happeing then in Beardstown?

I googled the Shoemaker Studio  and learned that it was founded by M R Shoemaker and thrived for over 50 yearsuntil his 1939 sudden death. I googled  Beardstown which is in  west central Illinois and learned some of its interesting history thinking that might give me a clue, it did not.  I have never before heard of the town but post what I learned here.
 Beardstown, located on the Illinois River was founded by Thomas Beard, from Granville, New York, when he started a ferry service crossing the river in 1826. By 1834 it was a growing port that shipped grain, hogs, and provisions to the interior of the state and downriver to markets. Beardstown became known as "Porkopolis" because of its stockyards and slaughterhouses, where more than 50,000 hogs were processed annually.  Beard's license authorized him to charge $.75 for a wagon and four horses (or oxen), $.37 1/2 for a cart and horse, $.05 per head of cattle, and $.06 1/4 for a pedestrian, among other tolls. The ferry ran until 1888, when a private wooden toll bridge was built. In 1898 the city built a steel toll bridge that afforded the town revenue until 1955, when the state built a bridge a mile south. In the mid-nineteenth century steamboats were built at Beardstown. A plank road was built between Beardstown and Bluff Springs to the east, to cover a swampy area that impeded wagon trade over the otherwise clay surface of the area.

The railroad came to Beardstown in 1869 with the laying of the Rockford, Rock Island, and St. Louis Railroad track. Beardstown was an important division point where engines and crews changed on the Galesburg to East St. Louis run and where the branch, or "jack," line to Centralia merged.
At the turn of the century, the Beardstown Fish Company frequently reported catches of between 50,000 and 100,000 pounds of fish. Black bass, carp, buffalo, crappie, eel, catfish, frogs, and turtles were caught, sold, and shipped from Beardstown. Fishing declined as the river became polluted and levees were built, draining lakes.

Another short-lived industry was mussel and freshwater pearl fishing. Button factories opened along the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers in the 1890s. Hundreds in the Beardstown area were given employment shelling mussels and selling their shells and pearls to commercial buyers. Prices as high as $1,500 for a large pearl were not unusual. Irregularly shaped pearls, called "slugs," sold for as much as a hundred dollars. By 1909 local shell beds had been played out. They were rejuvenated by the 1970s, when prices per ton were high enough for a few shellers to work the beds again. The shells are sold to Japan, to be ground up into "seeds" for oyster pearls.  I have heard of this industry  near here along the Mississippi River in Iowa. 

A third industry, ice cutting, was prosperous until 1909, when the first plant making artificial ice was installed. Ice was packed in sawdust and stored in large icehouses to be sold locally in the summer months, and it was also shipped out by the train-carload.

Today it is the site of two grain terminals where farm products are transferred to barges for transport. A large Cargill meat processing plant is a major employer and has attracted a substantial immigrant population to Beardstown in recent years. By the 2010 US census it had a population of slightly over 6000.

So who was she and what was she doing in Beardstown, all dressed for a gala?

For others posts on this long holiday weekend here in the states, go to the Sepia site at this link
   http://sepiasaturday.blogspot.com/2012/11/sepia-saturday-153-24-november-2012.html

Sepia Saturday 152 Males gathering

Although the week's prompt shows boys reading at the library and I am a voracious reader and a library lover I had no library type photos to share.  After pondering  while on one of my morning walks, I decided I could find something with males gathering.  Uncle Carl's archives of photographs offered up these from 1986-88, not really Sepia but some years back, from his man cavers  episodes.  He was fond of these hunting and fishing camps that he and several of his friends built as their retreats spending men only weekends, card playing, imbibing their favored spirits, passing time, clowning around and maybe some hunting but lots of camaraderie.  No women or children were ever included.  Well, the camps were rough, outdoorsy as you will see and I know my aunt Marge, his wife,  would have opted out even if the wives had been invited.   This was a time and a group of men who liked to get away from it all, be outdoors and spend time together. 

This camp is/was in Wharton, Pennsylvania, Potter county which is  in  the north central mountains of the state, about 170 miles from their homes in the southwestern region.  According to the 2000 US census this township had a total area of 61.8 square miles (160.1 km), all of it land and there were 91 people, 41 households, and 28 families residing there.  The population density was 1.5 people per square mile (0.6/km).  So it remains today a rural area where there is natural gas exploration as well as hunting for fowl, deer and other game.   I wonder if this old camp is still there and if men still gather for man cave weekends.     

Pennsylvania Map, Potter County in red,

Wharton is  in the southwestern tip

The men's gathering 1986 Wharton Camp

I do not know the full story  of the photos other than Carl delighted in being there and taking photos, above the men are gathering for their time sometimes a week sometimes  several days. Another photo not as clear, faded now shows maybe twice this number of men.   I think that is Carl sitting on the porch, he was the official trail boss and  bookkeeper for the group and made sure that all necessary supplies were stocked and accounted for and that each man paid his share. I imagine he would have addressed that at the beginning of any event.   The back of the photo merely says, "we are just gathering for the week."    Sometimes they had a day or two work detail and from the following photos that looks like what happened this time  but wait there is a mysterious ceremony of sorts occurring as well.  There are checkered shirts too as in the library prompt.  

 

Is that a monk in a brown habit, sack cloth,  anointing one of the men wearing the yellow garb?  Well he does have some sort of book in his hand and a big cross round his neck.  And pay attention to the bald man to the left of the one being blessed or baptized?   

The next thing we know the men are "taking measurements for the back porch" according to  Carl's note on the back of this photo. 

Here the father has gone into the ditch to help his son, Carl wrote their names and identified them as such and he says that "progress."  Strange how there are few workers among that crowd we saw gathering.   Where did they all go?   Evidence of the old adage, 20% of any group does 80% of the work.  

Progress continues, notice that small building in the background.
 One man in the ditch and  3 overseers now.
I told you these camps were primitive, men only.  
The man in the denim jacket with cowboy hat appears to 
have a mug of some  type of liquid refreshment. 

Good grief the monk returns, with the bald man in a robe of sorts.
The porch appears completed.  Are they blessing it?
The woodpile has been covered.

Uncle Carl loved a good laugh so I can only imagine how he enjoyed this escapade.  I do recall overhearing him say that they always had a ceremony of some sort at camps. 

 I have one last photo for this post dated 1988, two years later and it looks like they have had another ceremony.  The man on the far right in the spotted jacket  is Stan Debick (I met him when he came to Carl's funeral in 2011; he's the last of the elders of this group).  Why is  his  boot off and on the floor beside him?   The jug on the porch is Seagrams whiskey and it looks like the party is  underway...  

This is my Sepia post of men gathering, a stretch from the library, but I did have a book, checkered shirts and lots of boys grown to men.  

To enjoy others posts, click  on this link and as Alan says, sit back and spend some time

http://sepiasaturday.blogspot.com/2012/11/sepia-saturday-152-17-november-2012.html