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.