Spreading black death with every stop, a slimy pair of smoke addicted mugs travel the country sharing their misery with others. They don't use gangsters anymore (well, not gangsters, but certainly the kind of traveling salesman one would hide their daughter from.) Now they use sophisticated "advertising agencies" to trick the young. I have always thought pushing tobacco was the lowest morally an individual can sink. It was true then, it is true now. Committing slow murder with every stop.
Set of Original Snapshots, circa 1935 "Traveling Tobacco Salesmen" Collection of Jim Linderman
When it is predicted to reach 100 degrees in New York City, one of the best things to do is to visit the cool space of Aarne Anton's American Primitive Gallery. I never waited for the elevator...it was just a flight up, and the door always opened to a curious world. Aarne has the goods to prove his good eye. Folk Art collector Herbert Hemphill jr. once told me it took a more sophisticated collector to see in the round (meaning 3-Dimensional and sculptural.) I don't know if sophisticated is the right word, but certainly things you can see from many angles are often more fun than a painting on the wall. Just a small sample of the sculptural things available.
Click each title for description. Aarne posts six new items a week on Tuesday or Thursday, and there are literally over 100 objects to see on hissite.
I gave my Frank Wendt photographs to the International Center of Photography in NYC for a forthcoming show, but found a scan I made of an anonymous one man band he photographed. Wendt was an understudy of circus freak photographer Chas. Eisenmann who took over his studio and worked in the Bronx and later New Jersey.
Cabinet Card by Frank Wendt Untitled "One Man Band" circa 1890? collection International Center of Photography
A group of Startling Detective Magazines I keep in a library periodical box behind me, just like in a real library! No, I do not keep them in date order. So that these were all published in the 1950s by Fawcett publications, a company founded by Wiliford "Captain Billy" Fawcett in 1919 is a good story, but I wanted a better one. So I fished around.
My definition of genius is putting something old to a new use. Patterson Smith qualifies. Why? He uses his enormous database of True Crime magazines to help family members, genealogists and collectors find grisly tidbits from the tons of pulp produced from the 1930s to the 1990s. Now personally, If I were doing some family research I would selectively NOT include this source. Some of the goobers in these tales don't belong in any family, certainly not mine. But there you go. An enormous resource, as just one issue here includes 14 lengthy stories, all true, and each has dozens of names, though I am going to guess Mr. Smith doesn't index the names with an asterisk. You know...the names changed to protect the innocent. Check THIS out.
A drag my puny scanner can't handle these giant wrasslers from the past, but then the ring couldn't hold them either. It is nice that Junior built this colorful collection, as he most certainly was watching them perform in black and white.
Of course Gorgeous George is here, down in the lower right corner of one page with blond hair but black eyebrows. The star of the Golden age of Wrestling and the first to use music to mark his entrance. Before the fight, George would have the ring sprayed with Chanel number 10 ("why be half safe?") he said. His first TV appearance was in 1947. He sadly died at age 48, a turkey farmer and lounge owner at the time, of liver problems.
The others, which you can see part of, include The Great Moto, Farmer Don, Ivan Rasputin, Nanjo Singh and his Cobra Deathlock, Max Marek, Poffo, Lord Blears, Drake, Ruff, Cyclone Anaya, and two pictures of Tarzan White!
