MY GRANDFATHER, ALL DRESSED UP...

It’s a Ward Flexible Album; a 7x5 black leather book with “steel gray leaves,” made from Ward’s “puro” paper, and is “guaranteed not to discolor the photographs.”

         

It belonged to my grandfather, Gardner Sabin Gould (1886), and it’s full of wonderful old family photos, some taken at the family summer home in East Boothbay, Maine: Gould kids on sailboats, on the public dock in East Boothbay, lined up on the back steps of the summer house, paddling around in the icy waters of Linekin Bay.

          There are shots of picnics on the rocks, pine woods in the evening, two of the older boys in a small rowboat, the two youngest—Margaret and Howard—sitting on a boulder near the house, proudly displaying their new shoes!

And then there’s this damaged shot – sunstruck, ripped at the edges – of my grandfather, walking barefoot along the pathway beside the seawall...

...wearing a dress!

I wasn’t quite sure I was seeing it correctly, so I rummaged around in a desk drawer for my magnifying glass and took a good solid peek.

          It’s a dress, all right.

          Plain as day.

          It’s below knee level, but not as long as I thought it might be for the turn of the century; it’s belted – it’s actually quite classy, but not so classy on him...my best guess is that it belonged to his cousin Jessie; she had quite a sense of humor and might very well have dared him to wear it.

Jessie’s or not, here he is, striding right along, skirts swinging—my grandfather, in 1900s drag!

WALT KELLY and POGO

Cartoons; funny papers, Sunday funnies!

          It doesn’t matter what you call those panels of humor, but we all remember reading them. For me, it was flat out on the floor on Sunday mornings with the four-page color comic section: Dick Tracy, Blondie, Mark Trail (who must be 105 years old by now) and...

...Walt Kelly’s Pogo!

         

Syndicated in 1949, when I was only three years old, the Pogo strip was a social,, political—even international sensation. He was a possum who lived in Okefenoke swamp with a crowd of totally ridiculous animals.

          When I was small, my father, armed with a six-pack and a box of charcoals and pastels, drew the Pogo characters on my bedroom wall. The biggest was Albert the Alligator, and the others trailed along the wall beside my bed!

          By the time I was ten, I knew most of the characters, including an owl, a turtle and a trio of scruffy-looking bats named Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered. I remember making the connection to Frank Sinatra’s version of that wonderful song!

At some point, my parents bought an LP, “Songs of the Pogo,” which contained twenty-odd completely zany songs written by Kelly and his crew. Inside the jacket was a sheet of lyrics (good thing, for we never would have figured out some of them by listening):

         

Like this:

The Keen and the Quing were quirling at quoits,

          In the meadow behind the mere.

          Tho’ mainly the meadow was middled with mow

          And heretical hitherto here.

          The Prince and the Princess were plaiting the plates

          And prating quite primly the peer,

          And that’s why the Duchess stuck ducks on the Duke

          For no one was over to seer.

Or this one, delivered by a sexy babe with a smoky voice:

          Oh, I may be your cup of tea,

          But baby, don’t you “Sugar” me!

          Don’t stir me boy, nor try to spoon,

          Don’t “sugar” me, ‘cause us is throon!

Last winter, while poking around on the internet, I stumbled upon a CD of Walt Kelly’s re-issued “Songs of the Pogo.” I bought it, gave it to my brother for Christmas.

          He opened it, grinned, slipped it into his CD player...

          ...fifty year later, he and I knew nearly ALL the words!

Note: These Pogo shots are of an original Walt Kelly panel that belonged to my aunt; it was signed and framed, and it shows the pencil work beneath the inking. There’s Albert and the three bats...

NOT HORSES, BUT HARNESS!

Writing historical fiction presents its problems, for sure. Details of everyday life can be sticklers – clothes, dishes, cookware, toys, books, lamps, furniture, tools, farm equipment – and it’s hard to put yourself back there, hard to change your perspective from 2015 to 1915 or earlier.

          I’ve got some tricks, though: I have a large collection of photographs, old magazines and newspapers, scrap books and letters.

          And I’ve got several  old mail order catalogues (Sears, Charles Williams Stores, Montgomery Ward and others) that I’ve picked up at flea markets and used book stores.

          All of that stuff makes it easier; not easy, mind you – but easier.

 Consider horse harness.

          It’s far more complicated than you might think: one- or two-horse buggy and driving harness (general “about town” use – the family car, so to speak); truck and farm (working) harness.

          And that’s just for starters: there’s gentleman’s driving harness, folded buggy harness, runabout harness; surrey or single-strap, double breast collar, and express harness.

And team harness – oh, goodness, the team harness! The Victor, the Springfield, the Empire and Richmond, Oakdale and Baltimore Team Harnesses; there are cup-shaped blinds with round winker stays, double nose bands, plain and stage pattern heel chains and double-stitched spreader straps; clipped cockeyes, folded back bands, single-strap martingales, center bar buckles and snaps; three-ring hip straps, lock-stitched lines, red hames with brass ball tops...

          ...it’s poetry to me.

I get lost in it all, get caught up in the rhythm and rhyme of it. I am pulled back to a way of life that soothes me, calms me – a world that measures time in sunrises and sets, in family breakfasts, dinners and suppers, in changes of seasons...a slower, quieter pace, a simpler state of mind.

To see what others have found, harness up and trot on over to www.sepiasaturday.blogspot.com

EASTER HORROR...

I’m drawn to postcard shows like a moth to a flame; I’m unable to resist them.

          I’ll spend hours sitting in a nasty folding chair; hours flipping through stacks of cards, looking for the early ones – early 1900s, that is. They’re easy to spot by the handwriting and the one-cent postage.

          I’m looking for the messages, mostly; but sometimes I flip them over, and sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised.

          Or amused.

          Or baffled.

This one got me on all three counts.

This card was mailed in South Portland, Maine in April of 1911; addressed to a Miss Ruth Chaplin, who lived in the nearby town of Bridgton. Ruth was born on Christmas Day, 1905, to Eugene and Mary Frances Chaplin.

          So she was six years old when somebody sent her this card.

          “Easter Greetings,” it proclaims.

At first glance, first quick glance, I thought it was cute: the old standards – Easter chicks, a pretty butterfly, etc.

          A perfect card for a six-year old.

         

But when I looked closer, I was horrified!

          One little chicken, flat on its back in the pathway, stumpy wing flapping on the ground and little feet sticking upright, looks positively deceased.

          The other seems to be running for its life, legs extended like a sprinter at a track meet; beak open, eyes intent...

          ...while above them both, a menacing butterfly swoops down for the final kill!

Happy Easter to all!

UP ABOVE.

His name was Up Above.

          My mother named him when she was about six – and she spent every day of every summer on him.

          She grew up in Boston, which was not an environment particularly suited for horses; my grandparents, though, had a summer house in the town of Jaffrey, New Hampshire, right in the shadow of Mt. Monadnock, and Up Above was there each June to greet her.

          “Why on earth did you name him that?” I asked her once.

          She grinned at me. “Because when I was in the saddle, I was up above the rest of the world – made me feel important.”

          I get that, I really do.

That’s my mother, Martha, on the left, and her sister Hope (who named her horse Radio, for some reason!) on the right. Up Above and Radio boarded at a nearby farm during the off seasons, but spent their summer days in a stable on the property my grandparents owned.

The house was on Thorndike Pond. There was a dirt road that went around the whole thing, and the two sisters spent their summer days riding.

          My mother told me they’d make picnic lunches, then be off for the day. They’d stop somewhere along the route, let the horses drink from Thorndike, tie them to a nearby tree, then eat their lunches on the shore.

         They rode in horse shows in the nearby town of Dublin – I’ve got programs from the Dublin Horse Show that show my mother winning ribbons in various classes.

          I love this portrait: my mother, with Up Above, taken (she told me) at the Dublin Horse Show in the early 1930s when she was about twelve. She’d just won her very first blue ribbon. This photograph hangs in my kitchen, where I see it every morning.

          It always makes me smile.

PATTI'S PAGES....

I’m an old piano player, in lots of ways; I’m always drawn to displays of old sheet music in flea markets and antique stores.

         

I bought a whole box of it for a mere five dollars, and inside found about fifty different songsheets, with lyrics, score (for piano and guitar or ukelele), and the most wonderful cover shots of performers from quite some time ago – bandleaders in tuxedos, male crooners in soft, open-throated shirts with loosened neckties (that casual look)...

         

...and Patti Page; lots and lots of shots of Patti Page!

Oh, don’t you ever let me go,

you thrill me so, I can see

as I recall my life

I’ve waited all my life

to give you ALL MY LOVE

MY JEALOUS EYES, what have you seen?

Why are you turning from blue to green?

My lover’s arms hold other charms,

but they’re just dancing...

If you’re fond of sand dunes and salty air,

quaint little villages here and there;

you’re sure to fall in love

with OLD CAPE COD...

ALLEGHENY MOON, it’s up to you,

please see what you can do

for me and for

my one and only love...

I’ve learned to stay away from analyzing the lyrics to those old songs; most of them make me either giggle or rant.

Now that I think about it, mostly rant...

LOST AND FOUND...

Presented

to

Frank W. Meserve, Jr.

By

Preble Chapel S.S.

for Not Missing a Sunday

between Sept. 1926 to June 1927

I found it at an indoor flea market. It caught my eye, not because bibles are hard to find—in fact, there are almost always bibles jumbled into book stacks at flea markets—but because it was full of clippings, notes, etc.  It was clearly a “family” item, and those lost items always make me curious.

          Inside the front cover was a newspaper clipping including a photo of Frank W. Meserve, Jr.: Seaman Wounded In Sinking Spending Leave At Home Here.

          And there he was, Frank Meserve himself, in Naval uniform (cap tipped back on his head, eyes bold and clear, mouth slightly open in a half-smile.

          He was a handsome man.

          I bought Frank’s bible for ten dollars, and then I took it home.

I went through the entire book, picking out the clippings and postcards, reading them all carefully (making notes as I went along), putting them all back where I’d found them.

High school in Portland, Maine, WWII enlistment in the US Navy, service in North Africa, Trinidad, Newfoundland; wounded in the battle of Luzon; marriage to Bernice; a small photograph of a baby, a clipping from a calendar—September 13, 1946—with his handwritten note to his wife: Happy anniversary...; a clipping of a photo of the winners at the July Fourth Old Home Day parade, one of whom isCharles E. Meserve who won first prize!

His son, I’m sure of it.

 Another clipping had a photo of volunteers who were working on the Cystic Fibrosis fund drive (first woman on the left? Mrs. Meserve); two colored bells cut from stiff paper—clearly a school project; a spelling paper; a short article from the Social Notes about a party Mr. and Mrs. Meserve hosted honoring their son Charles E. on his 11^th birthday.

You get the idea—a family record (of sorts); lost to a flea market.

After a bit of scrambling, some research on Ancestry.com and a few weeks of emails and responses, I found a relative of Frank Meserve’s—a woman in Wisconsin—and sent his bible to her.

Lost...and found.