They Could be My Relatives

These three pictures were found in a small album that was most certainly put together by my father many years ago. Nothing was written on the pictures or in the album to indicate who the subjects might be, and I do not recognize the woman and her two children. However, since there are quite a few members in Dad's family it could be one of his sisters that I didn't know and her children. What a great picture of the lady in the really great old car. I'll bet that street is a hard one to drive on when it is raining. I feel sure it is the same lady that is the mother to these little kids.

This little girl looks so very well pleased with herself. I am sure she is so proud of her pretty dress and grand hairbow. Also note the tight little curls - surely there were not permanents back then?

The little fellow is looking cute in his sailor-like outfit. Here the mother reads to her little children. Wish I could ask someone about these pictures - but I am afraid it is too late. Although they must have had some connection to my father if they were in his album.

(Click to enlarge)

More Products to Keep Us Acceptable

Do you keep your stockings perfect? I guess if you are sitting around in the evening with your husband and he is wearing his suit and tie, maybe you better have stockings without snags or runs. This fellow is certainly checking out to see if his wife passes the test. I am wondering if they even make Lux anymore. Are you old enough to remember how pretty soapflakes were and how nice they felt in your hand. Ivory flakes were wonderful. Nothing smelled like diapers washed in Ivory Flakes or Snow and hung outside to dry on a cool, windy day. Include sheets and towels in that statement, too.I wonder where I can get my hands on one of these. My chin needs reduced and beautified. I want the "Curves of Youth"!

Some Fun Pictures

I have seen quite a few pictures featuring people sitting on the "moon" back in the earlier years of the last century. These young couples seem to be having a great time posing for their picture. All are dressed up and looking good. I don't know these folks nor do I know

these cute little kids - probably a brother and sister. Don't you just love his short pants and long stockings? The little girl is looking very cute in her pretty dress and a nice necklace.

But I do know these nice ladies! My Aunt Leah and my grandmother, Maggie, looking out of the "airplane". They would have been in California visiting Nelle, my other aunt. This was in one of the latest group of pictures my brother sent me. I love this one! (Click to enlarge)

Hats

Nan in a very stylish outfit with a great hat sporting a wonderful feather of some kind. She was looking very cute and "mod".

Here's my grandmother, Maggie, in a darling cloche (I think that's what they called that sort of hat) with a band and some flowers. She is holding chubby little Carol who also is sporting a very pretty, ruffled bonnet.

Here's that baby all grown up and just married to Ray. I am wearing a feather hat that looks about the same color as my hair so in some pictures looks like really BIG hair. It was a very cute hat, really. I still have my wedding suit and that was very pretty, too.

A Nice Picture

This picture appears in an earlier post but it is a copy of a copy and not good. This one is wonderful with the added bonus of my mother, Nan, sitting in the background by the dining room table in the Pearce home. Anna Reynolds Carroll is my great grandmother, mother of Maggie Pearce. I look at this picture and can remember my grandparents' home very well. What stands out for me so much is the plate rail in the dining room. It looks different, of course, since there is wallpaper, different furniture, but the big opening between the living room and dining room is the same, and I remember the bay window. Missing is an old stained glass chandelier that must have been installed later. It always reminded me of an umbrella - I wonder whatever happened to it. (I just checked out my post and I DID spot what I am sure is the old chandelier - just a bit of it on the right hand upper side of the picture right below the plate rail!)

This is one of the plates that was on that plate rail. I have had this for many, many years and don't remember just exactly how I got it. There are no markings on the back and I am sure it is not worth a lot of money but I just love it. I'm so glad the Pearces took lots of pictures!

(Click to enlarge)

More from the Old 1965 Spiegel Catalog

First of all, whatever happened to these? Probably still have halfslips but I haven't seen a full one in a long time. I used to just love pretty lacey slips and slips in pretty colors. It's obvious that we wear pants 99% of the time so there is not much need for this old wardrobe musthave.

And I think there are thirteen pages of various styles of girdles! Wow, that is not something that is worn by many of us anymore. They were so very nice to attach our hosiery to by means of the garters. And it was certainly much easier putting nylons on that way than pulling on pantyhose. However, I think everyone prefers just leaving things as they are and not returning to the old days.

Another page of various "shapers" - love the long black ones.

And Playtex - that old rubber girdle that was popular a little earlier than this catalog. You really needed to use talcum powder to put it on especially if the weather was hot. Wow, how did we do it?

Don't you just love this? Her hair and hairbow are adorable, too.

Let's not leave the young teenagers out - they even have little shapers with garters for them.

These are the two pages in the catalog featuring the panties! My, how things have changed. There are some days of the week sets - but nary a bikini or thong in sight. We all wore "granny panties" like in the Bridget Jones movie.

The old catalogs are fun - it's also amazing what isn't in them. So much has come about in the 45 years since that one was issued. Back then, we would have probably scoffed at the idea of some of the wonderful things we have to make life easier and more enjoyable, thinking things like that could never be. What on earth will come about in the next 45? (Click to enlarge)

Cousins

When I was working on my family history book several years ago, I found some negatives that produced pictures I had never seen. It was so rare to find pictures of us as small children and you can be sure I was thrilled to have these. I am in the middle and Jo is on the right with little brother Buddy in front. When I saw this for the first time, my immediate reaction was that my sister looks so much like her granddaughter at the same age.

The older girl is our first cousin, Barbara Jo, who was the daughter of dad's sister, Barbara. She was about a year older than I and I did spend some time at their home playing with Barbara Jo. I have a memory of being at their house when the Dionne quintuplets were born. In this photo, we are standing on the bluff on Grand View Drive in Peoria Heights, Illinois, that overlooks the Illinois River. All along the drive are beautiful homes and also places to have a picnic or look at the lovely valley below.

In this picture, the girl on the left is Barbara - she went into nurses' training at St. Francis Hospital in Peoria. This was a picture from the Peoria paper most likely in the late 1940's. (Click to enlarge)

The Glorious Hats Worn by the Pearces

In the pictures of the Pearce family, there are many that show the lovely Pearce ladies wearing wonderful hats. With four women in the family and all of them dressing up a lot from what shows up in the photos, I wonder where they kept all the bonnets. I have isolated the headgear and saved them in a file from which I will post three or four at a time. Most of these photos are not in this blog but rather in my Funoldhag blog where they are featured on Fashion Friday, so if you do keep track of FOH you will have seen most of these. Anyway, they are cute enough for a repeat.
My mom, Nan, and her mom, Maggie, at the cottage wearing what I think is called a dustcap. I remember Grandma wearing one when she would be cleaning. I continue to be amazed when I see my grandmother in this and other pictures when she was young. I think she was very pretty and I remember her always as so much older.

Love this picture of my mother with her coy smile. And isn't that an adorable hat?

Little Nan and her big sister, Nelle, in matching outfits with cute little hats featuring a trim of some kind under the brim. Neither girl is looking too thrilled about having their picture taken. I wonder where it was taken in Peoria - there is a big concrete lion behind them.

Probably in the 40's - my Aunt Della, wife of my Uncle Harry, and my Aunt Leah. They both have pretty hats - Del's is frilly and Leah's more tailored to match her outfit. This probably was taken in California. Will post some more hats sometime next week. Hope you enjoy looking at them.

(Click to enlarge)

More Ads You Won't See Today

Just a couple of "sextist ads" that appeared in magazines and newspapers not too many years ago. Here is the cute little housewife standing behind her man (who is pretty darned cute himself) and feeling so lucky that she has a great new mixer. I think this one is a hoot - no comments needed. I am sure Sabrina will get her point across in her presentation. (Click to enlarge)

The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad

Isn't this a great old locomotive? Trains have always been a large part of our lives.

To be more precise, the AT&SF Railroad is where my husband worked for 41 years - starting out during a summer when he was 17 and retiring when he was 58 years old.

Ray was a railroader through and through. He was in engineering - maintenance of way. Over the years, he rose up through the ranks nicely. Much of his job kept him on the road part of the time - in fact a lot of the time for some periods. And we did a lot of moving.

First to Ft. Madison, Iowa, when they consolidated the Illinois and Missouri Divisions and headquartered the office at Shopton - which was Ft. Madison. That is shown above. A nice period in our lives. We moved with a lot of Chillicothe folks and met a lot of Marceline, Missouri, folks and it was good.

After about six years, we were transferred to Topeka, Kansas, to the main headquarters of the Santa Fe. For a time, he was home all the time until they sent him back to Ft. Madison to take care of a job there, so he was "on the road" again. Topeka was a great town and we enjoyed that for about 8 years. The kids went through junior high and Sherry through high school there. Again, about Thanksgiving time when Bill was in his last year of junior high and Sherry her last year of high school, we were transferred.
This time to Newton, Kansas. Needless to say, Ray went down and got a room and the kids and I stayed in Topeka to let them finish their school year. We moved right after graduation. That was a tough one especially for Sherry. Bill found some guys his age right away and we had the fanciest tree house in the corner of our yard which was part of a shelter belt. I know the move was so hard on Sherry, and I am sure she was so glad to leave for KU later that summer. Ray was gone a lot in Newton so it was Bill and me most of the time. I worked at Hesston Corporation as a secretary - they made farm implements. Newton was not well loved by any of us - we were there three years. Right after Bill's graduation from high school, we were transferred to

Argentine, Kansas, where Ray was Division Engineer. We lived in Overland Park and were there for thirteen years.

Here is the tower in the yards at Argentine. Ray was always home since his "territory" was only seven miles long. That was wonderful!

Here's my railroader in his office at Argentine. Above him is a needlepoint I did depicting his HO layout in our basement (he had model trains from the time we were married). I dubbed it the "OS Railroad" because of the expletive that he used when he ran a piece of rolling stock off the table! That has always been my favorite expression also when things go awry - something about it always makes you feel better. (Click to enlarge)

Two Little Babies

I suppose most people have pictures like this that their parents or grandparents took when they were cute little babies! Someplace, I have one of each of my kids that I will have to find and scan. This seemed to be an obligatory pose to record for posterity, am I right? What is cuter than a little babe unencumbered by clothing.

Someone in my family took one of the photos and someone in my late husband's family took the other. I'm not going to say which is which but I think that anyone who has been looking at my blog for some time will be able to tell which is baby Carol and which is baby Ray. Weren't we both adorable? (Click to enlarge)

Summer of 1950

Sixty years ago!! Good grief - where did that time go? Here we all are at a picnic in my parents' back yard with lots of the family there. The first fellow on the left side is that nice guy I married about a year before! Then comes Maggie Pearce, my grandmother, and Leah, my aunt. Nan, my mom, is next. Seated at the end are my Uncle Ed and Aunt Henrietta. Now up the other side are Charlie, my dad, and two young fellows from California who were visiting. The remaining two are me and my brother, Bud. Check out the price on the coke - 6 bottles for 25 cents. They were the small bottles - I don't think they had the big ones back then.

Here is a good picture of my dear sister, Joanne. Something really had struck her funny. And another thing I noticed was that checks and plaids must have been really in style!

Here's another gal wearing a checked shirt as she sits with her husband and has a cigarette. Yes, I was a smoker for many, many years - but have been a non-smoker for almost 18 years. That was the way it was back then and of course I wish I had not had the habit, but I did. Ray also smoked but quit a couple of years before I did. Both my Aunt Leah and Aunt Henrietta smoked, but they were some of the few women who did in their age group.

One more lady in a plaid blouse - and it is Aunt Leah being harassed by Ray with the fingers behind the head bit. I think a good time was had by all at the picnic long ago. (Click to enlarge)

How Ads Have Changed

In looking around on the web, I ran across some "sextist ads" and that prompted me to search further. I have a dozen of them and thought you might get a kick out of an occasional post containing two or three of them.

Can you believe that it wasn't that many years ago when this is how advertising went? I am sure these were in the time that I was a young bride or mother and the mindset at the time was for women to be very "Martha Stewartish". Don't get me wrong, I kind of like Martha and she definitely bows down to no one! This was the time of frilly little aprons, shelf paper, having hubby's slippers ready - at least, that's the way things were represented in magazines.

It was not a bad time to be raising your children and living your life by any means. In fact, it was so much less stressful and demanding for families back then than it is today. Most of the young moms did not work (outside the home, that is!!) and I think most of us really enjoyed life as it was. I truthfully can say that I would not trade our family life for the family life in this day and age.

Now this ad is awful - it's just plain bad manners to blow smoke in a pretty girl's face! However, you see all kinds of dumb ads today that are not sextist - so many of them now are just plain "sexy". So there you go - no one is perfect and no time is perfect. Just have to go with the flow and enjoy being alive while we are. (Click to enlarge)

A New Car

One of the things that is a big thrill in a man's life is a brand new car. I don't think it makes any difference if it is the first one or several on down the line - when a man gets the new car bug he is caught up in the excitement of thinking about it, buying it and driving it. Here is my Ray standing beside our new Chevie in the year 1950, probably a few months before our first anniversary. You can tell from his stance and the expression on his face that he is well pleased with this pretty new piece of steel and chrome. I confess that I liked it too! The photo was taken in front of my parents home in Rome, Illinois - aren't the old fashioned roses on the fence beautiful? And you can see the river down at the end of the street. Looks like a lovely summer's day. (Click to enlarge)

School Days

From an old newspaper picture, this shows my mother, Nan, and some of her little schoolmates sitting outside what I am certain would be Glen Oak School in Peoria, Illinois. Mom is the little girl in the dark outfit and hat on the left next to the two little girls in white aprons. It is not a very clear picture, but I wanted to include it here in my blog. You can tell that these are sweet little school girls.

Another sweet little school girl dear to my heart is the little girl in the sailor collar and big hairbow sixth from the right counting all the children sitting at their desks. That is my Aunt Leah and I have no idea what grade she would have been in. Maybe sixth or seventh. Long, long ago!

One more school picture of one of the Pearce children. This time it is Harry who is on the left side, third back in a white shirt and tie. Maybe fourth or fifth graders. I enjoy old school pictures - a moment in time. (Click to enlarge)