From Funoldhag Fashion Friday

(Another encore post from  Funoldhag)

Friday, March 11, 2011

Fashion Friday

Our gorgeous models this morning are Molly, my middle granddaughter, and her lovely friend, Angie, when they were probably 11 years old.  Molly would bring Angie over to our house sometimes and they would do things like playing with Barbies in our basement.  This particular day, it was dressup.  Molly looks beautiful modeling the taffeta gown that I wore when I stood up with my sister at her wedding.  It is a lovely melon color with a pleated ruffle over the sleeves and around the back.  Tiny covered buttons acted as the closure.  Pretty Angie is clad in my wedding suit, which is a toast color satin.  Double breasted, it had self covered buttons and the pockets were crosshatch quilted.  The girls took turns modeling the garments and somewhere there are more pictures of each in the other outfit.  I think there was a square dance dress worn that day also.  Will have to look through the albums for the others.  (Both of these darling girls are all grown up and married now.  Molly has a darling little girl, Annie, who is a little over 18 months old.)  

Postcard Friendship Friday

This is the General Office Building of the ATSF Railroad in Topeka, Kansas.  The post card is dated in 1906 or 1908 to the best of my ability to read the postmark.  My husband worked for the Santa Fe for 41 years and retired at 58 in 1984.  We moved quite a few times, and this was our second transfer from Ft. Madison, Iowa, to Topeka.  Our hometown was Chillicothe, Illinois, which was part of the Santa Fe line.  He worked in this building in the 1960's.  I am sure there were no awnings anymore when he was there as they would have had air conditioning by that time.   From Topeka, we were transferred to Newton, Kansas, and then to the Kansas City area where he worked until retirement in 1984.  How  the days have flown by!!

G. B. Sowle writes his Auntie Mary on this card.   Don't you wonder about the people who wrote and received these messages on the pretty picture cards?  G B had beautiful penmanship which is becoming a lost art nowadays since cursive is not being taught in schools.  No more Palmer's method with the circles and push, pulls.

Thank you, Beth, for being our hostess.  Drop by  http://thebestheartsarecrunchy.blogspot.com/ and check out the postcards for today.

Postcard Friendship Friday (on Saturday)

Here is a sweet little card courtesy Card Cow that speaks of spring.  This past week I did some flower shopping -- a pretty hanging basket to hang on the hanger on my privacy fence -- and some flowers to plant in the big container just off my patio.   I have a very pretty basket hanging by my front door.  That was a mother's day present from my daughter and son-in-law.  I probably will buy two or three more hanging baskets and then call it a day.  It is not as easy to do a lot of gardening as it has been in the past and I have had more than my share of flowers.  Gardening has been a great love of my life ever since I was in my late twenties so I have almost sixty years of it that I have enjoyed.

Here is the back showing the message Elsie sent Isabel  back in 1908.  Elsie had pretty penmanship which is very clear, unlike many of the old postcard messages.

Thanks to Beth for being our hostess on PFF.  Drop over to her blog and see the other postcards listed there.  Have a great weekend.

From Funoldhag Fashion Friday

(I will continue to feature one of the Fashion Friday posts on Funoldhag that I did for a long time.   To refresh your memory, Leah was my dear aunt - the youngest sister of my mother, Nan Pearce Droll.  She was my favorite aunt and I so loved being around her.)

Leah, Nan's lovely younger sister and also kind of a tomboy, is shown here wearing an outfit featuring a sailor collar and either a skirt or bloomers of some sort - can't really tell - and looking ready to take part in a game of football! Aunt Leah, you're a cutie! I know her brother, Ham, was a football player in highschool so that is probably his ball.

Here she is wearing a very pretty white summer frock, high button shoes and a big taffeta bow in her hair looking very feminine and sweet.

My mom's family took a lot of pictures and were pretty good about identifying the subjects. As you can see, many times it was on the front of the photo!

Postcard Friendship Friday

 

Way back when I was a little girl, this would have been just a weekend - not a holiday one.  The holiday even had a different name and fell on the weekday that it happened to be on during the current year.   It was called Decoration Day back then and I remember everyone hoping the peonies would be in bloom for that day to decorate the graves of the veterans and also those of other loved ones gone before.  Since then, it has become one of the holidays that has a variable date to enable people to have a nice three day weekend at the start of summer as has Labor Day also being adjusted to give a nice long weekend at the end of summer.    So here is a very pretty card for "Decoration Day".

Hattie sent this message to Maude on the postcard a long, long time ago.  I cannot make out the date on the postmark.

Have a great weekend.  Stop by http://thebestheartsarecrunchy.blogspot.com/ to see other postcards--maybe not ones for Decoration Day, but great ones regardless.  Thanks, Beth, for being our hostess!

From Funoldhag Fashion Friday

(As I start posting again to Pieces of the Past, I am continuing to feature old family pictures that I used each Friday on my blog, Funoldhag.  I don't think most of these made it to this blog;  but, if they did, it will be fun to  see them again.)_

 

Today our sweet little models are Nan and Nelle Pearce, my mom and my aunt, when they were very young little girls back in the late 1890's.  I have this picture in a pretty old antique frame hanging by my fireplace in a group of other old photos.  This is so sweet.  Nan is wearing a dark long dress with a lace trimmed collar.  Nelle wears a lighter colored dress with a double ruffle feature around the neck and shoulder line.  Both little girls appear to be in awe of the camera - do you suppose it was one of those that the photographer went under a dark cover when the picture was being taken?  

The Big Four

 

Billing themselves as '800 pounds of harmony,' Chillicothe, Illinois' Big Four became Sweet Adelines Quartette Champs in 1953. Fine singers and entertainers, they appeared on tv with Jack Paar, Steve Allen, Arthur Godfrey and Dave Garraway of the 'Today Show' to name just a few. The Big Four are Bertha Bradley, bass, Sarah LeMaster, baritone, Inez 'Junior' Thompson, lead, and Lucille Miller and Mary Waters sharing the tenor duties.   By the pound or by any other measure, this is Entertainment!

What fun these four ladies must have had traveling and singing!

Sarah, the lady standing in the middle of the picture, was the mother of a boy in my class in high school.  Dick LeMaster was a very talented fellow and made a name for himself in the world of carving duck decoys.  He wrote at least one book that I know of.  Dick drew illustrations for our high school newspaper and it was fascinating to watch him draw.  I had a cute little furry skunk pin that I wore on my coat.  He drew that on my notebook cover and named it Stinky - and thereafter his family called me Stinky anytime they saw me.  Silly little story, but the kind of thing that sticks in your memory over the years.

 
  

Postcard Friendship Friday

It has been a long, long time since I did a post on Pieces of the Past.  I really should work on this blog more although I have about exhausted the old pictures that I have.  Maybe I can find a different direction to go. Would love to have you visit my blog  Funoldhag  anytime!

This postcard is to wish a Happy Anniversary to Beth and her husband!!  May they have many, many more. 

Postcard Friendship Friday

Getting close!  I love vintage Halloween cards!   Here is a very cute one but no message on the back.  So I looked further and found another--

 Another cute card which does not have a message either, but it does have something very interesting--

 

This looks like it is being used for a dance card - and it looks like S. King is the

one who has asked for the most dances!  Doesn't it make you wonder where the party was, who S. King was and who was the girl who had her dance card filled?

Sweet.  Happy PFF and thank you, Beth.  Go to http://thebestheartsarecrunchy.blogspot.com/
and check out the other postcards for today.  Have a great weekend.

Fred and Ginger

Here is a Piece of the Past that will set your feet tapping!  Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers swing dancing most likely in the thirties.  You can find the greatest stuff on YouTube!  Make it full screen and enjoy! 

Encore Run of Injun Summer

For some reason or other, I got to thinking about something I used to see in a newspaper every year when I was a little girl back in Rome, Illinois. We took the Peoria paper, but on Sunday Dad usually went "uptown" to Chillicothe and bought a copy of the Chicago Tribune which had marvelous funnies. The Katzenjammer Kids, Fritzy Ritz, and Brenda Starr. Wow, a bonanza. (Brenda may have been in the Peoria paper, but that's neither here nor there. I loved her especially when there were paper dolls!!) I could recall seeing in a supplement to the paper a cartoonlike picture of a cornfield in the moonlight with dreamlike visions but couldn'temember exactly what it was like. I knew it was very fallish and sweet.

So, a little while ago I decided you can find anything on the internet - and started putting phrases in the search box. I tried "cornfield in the moonlight", etc., and did get some pictures that did fit the description but not the one I remembered. Then a phrase popped into my head - Indian Summer - and lo and behold up came the top picture with the address of a blog my-over-the-fence.blogspot.com/2010/09/injun-summer.html and I went there to find "Injun Summer", my picture - two of them - that I remembered from so long ago. This really is a "piece of my past" and conjurs up memories of the fall in Rome (Illinois, that is) in a much simpler time. There was an orchard behind our old house and I can still remember the smell of apples that were frozen on the trees and how wet the long grass was when you walked through the orchard. Read more about Injun Summer on My Over the Fence blog.

(I did this post originally in November of 2010 -  thought it might be a good time of year to bring it forward)

Postcard Friendship Friday

Here in the part of Michigan where I live,  it seems as if autumn came rushing in the door early this week.  All of a sudden the leaves are really turning, the weather is lovely and my favorite time of the year is here.  I love the colors, the temperatures and even rainy fall days.  It has been ever thus with me.  So thought I would find a postcard that says "Autumn" and this little card  with the cute squirrels gobbling the acorns seems to fill the bill perfectly.

The back of the card from Roger Day (I think) - what do you suppose it means in the lower left corner?  Why shouldn't Arla and Frank write?  Don't you love the little messages on the cards?  Gives you food for thought.

Happy PFF and Happy Autumn.  Thank you Beth for hosting.  Stop by her blog http://thebestheartsarecrunchy.blogspot.com/ and check out the other postcards on this Friday.

I Hearted Paper Dolls

When I was in grade school in Rome, Illinois, in the 1930's and early 1940's, my siblings and I certainly did not have a lot of toys, books and games that the kids of today have.  Our parents were recovering from the big depression.  However, that does not mean that we were unhappy or bored or felt cheated.  We each had a bicycle (I was 10 when I got mine) a big yard and the riverbank where we could play and lots of kids in the little town of Rome in the same boat as we were that we could play with.  One of my loves in life was paper dolls - if I ever got a dime (sometimes my grandfather gave me one) I would go to the dimestore and buy a book of paper dolls.  I remember having Gone With the Wind and King George and his family which included Queen Elizabeth of today as a little girl along with her sister Margaret.  They were in my age bracket and Margaret Rose and I had the same birthdate.  Then there were the free paper dolls that were in the Sunday "funny papers".   My dad usually bought the Sunday Chicago paper which I think was the  Herald American.  There was the Tribune, also, and he may have bought both, but I am not certain about that.

Jane Arden - the doll above - was in the paper a lot.  Jane was sweet and fun to have, but she wasn't my favorite.

Here is my favorite - Brenda Staar with the redhair and sparkle in her eye.  I loved it when there was a new Brenda paper doll!  I had a friend who was a year younger than I who also was paper doll crazy and we would play with them for hours.  Her name was Fern Davis and Fern and I would  design dresses for them, color them and cut them out.  We were also into movie star pictures.  I was kind of envious of Fern because she had scrapbooks for individual stars and couples while my pictures were in a big box.  I spent many fun hours with Fern! 

Gorgeous!!  Brenda and wedding dresses.

And then there was Mopsy - or Flapper Fanny in the earlier days.  So darling.  I wonder if little girls still play with paper dolls--I think I was still playing with them in late elementary school.  At that time it was more the designing and coloring of the clothes but it was still fun.  I will always have a softspot for those little paper people!!

This picture is in an earlier post, but here we are - me and Fern Davis!  Fern lived across the street from our grade school which you can see in the background.  It had gone from a one-room school to a four-room school.  Happy Days!

Postcard Friendly Friday

 Friday is almost over,  but here is a cute moon picture on this day of August's blue moon.  Love the message of the "heartbroken Romeo" to his Sue.  An adorable card and fun message.

 

Thank you,  Beth, at http://thebestheartsarecrunchy.blogspot.com/ for hosting.  Go to her blog and check out the postcards listed there.  Happy PFF!

Some Out of the Past Sewing Related Pieces

Pinterest is such a fun place - such wonderful pictures to look at and enjoy.   I have one board I call "For Old Sew and Sews" and that's where I pin great pictures of lovely, nostalgic items dealing with sewing.  Above is an old sewing basket - there are many of these great old items.  I have one that I have had for many years and it sits on the table in my living room holding odds and ends relating to my sewing and quilting.

Here is a beautiful spool cabinet.  These sat on counters in general stores and department stores holding thread.  Lovely piece.  across all  three drawers. 

Here is my spool cabinet.  It has glass in the drawers and I had enough of the old wooden spools (have been sewing for 65 or more year) to line the fronts.  We put legs on this, but they can be taken off easily one day if so desired.  Below is the first chamber pot in my collection.  On top, my wonderful $1.50 pitcher and bowl from an old hotel in Ft. Madison.  My start into a modest collection of cool antiques.

I learned to sew on a machine like this - the old treadle.  They did a beautiful job and many of them are still around.

One of the reasons I so love Pinterest.  What a gorgeous wreath made from old wooden spools of thread!  How neat is this?  I would hang this in my house anytime, but don't have enough old spools to make one even if I took them out of my spool cabinet!   If you would like to check out my boards on Pinterest, click on the button at the top of my sidebar and you will go there.

Postcard Friendship Friday

Found this cute old postcard that is rather timely since school will be starting soon.  Cardcow has such fun cards when you search around a while - and, as I've said before - I love the ones with messages.

Whoever is sending this to Miss Mary (maybe her mom?) notes "You know dear Royal will like you better if you follow this advice."    Funny little card.  Thanks to our hostess Beth - stop by at http://thebestheartsarecrunchy.blogspot.com/  and check out this weeks cards.  Happy PFF!

I Love the Twenties and Thirties

Source: squidoo.com via Carol on Pinterest

 Here is a cute video of people doing the Charleston back in the Roaring Twenties - great music and great dancing.  Just click on the picture and I think it will take you to my Pinterest page where you click on the picture again to get it started.  Enjoy. 

Postcard Friendship Friday

Here's a funny little card I found some time ago at Cardcow.   There are some great old postcards there and I especially like the ones that have been used.

Esther has written a message to Charley Parsons (maybe a brother?) about Cale (?) who I am thinking may be her son and his family, home and auto. She may stay all summer!  Fun to think about what the actual circumstances were behind the cards. No date - but from the pictures on the front probably in the early 1900's.


Thanks, Beth, for being our hostess.  To see the rest of the postcards, go to http://thebestheartsarecrunchy.blogspot.com/
Happy PFF.

Some Little Kids from Long Ago

Ain't she sweet?  I found this darling little gal on the internet quite some time ago and thought she was about as cute as you can get.  I figure she is somewhere around my age - which is almost 84 - since there is a picture of me on my bedroom wall that shows a very similar haircut and it appears we are about the same size.

Here is another cute little girl - this time it is actually me, but not the one in my bedroom.  Don't you think there is a similarity between these two little girls?  I would venture to say this was taken in one of those photobooths that were all over the ten cent stores back in the days. I think I am wearing a snowsuit of some sort.

Another little girl - adorable with curly hair!!!!   That was just about the time Shirley Temple reigned as the darling of the movies and all little girls wanted her curls.  What a sweet smile, pose and hairbow!   I think these little girls are all three as cute as buttons.  Hope you enjoyed meeting them.

A Memory from my Childhood

Taken probably in the very early 40's, this is a picture of some of us Rome girls after going to the Sunday School that was held at our grade school and taught by Kenny and Elmira Koch from Chillicothe.  As I was doing some of the few chores I do around the house anymore, I was thinking of life as a young girl in Rome and how almost all of us had very limited "wardrobes" - so much so that I can vividly remember some of the few clothes I wore that were so special.  We certainly did not get anything new very often.  Case in point - I am the girl with the majorette boots - I was so very proud of those boots.  Cannot imagine why I wanted them, but they certainly pleased me.  Most of us in Rome were pretty much in the same boat when it came to having a limited amount of clothes, etc., but we still had a good time and life was good. 

Some things that happen make an indelible impression on you.  The girl standing to my right is Mary.  Mary 's younger sister is at the left in the front row and she also had a sister my age, Sally, and a brother who was the youngest in the family.  Mary never, never or hardly ever got anything new!  She wore Sally's handmedowns and I suppose by the time she had outgrown them, they were too used up for her little sister, Elsa.  But one day, Mary did get a new outfit and I can almost see it.  It was what was known as a "bobby suit" - a two piece cotton outfit.  Her bobby suit was red and navy.  She was so proud and happy.  Then her mom washed it and it faded terribly.  That made me feel so bad for Mary - I have never forgotten that little story.  Even though it isn't a really great story, I will always remember how sorry I was that Mary's new dress was ruined.