President Obama has done many good things, but one of the best was awarding the medal of honor to Loretta in November 2013. Here is my medal, originally posted in 2011.
An unusual original source document in the form of a postcard. Loretta Lynn recorded her first Gospel album "Hymns" in 1965 (shortly before writing this note to fans Don and Doris.) Country performers are famously good to their fans, and hand-signed letters are still common, as are "meet and greet" appearances where the fans can say howdy...still I treasure this modest little document.
Despite the newspaper ad here, Loretta did more than perform at smorgasbords. She has had 16 records reach number one and had four children before reaching the age of 19. She has released 70 albums.
I am happy to be living at the same time as Loretta Lynn. She is a Honky Tonk Angel who isn't afraid to generate controversy, but has said "My music has no politics" and that her father was a Republican, her mother was a Democrat. You ain't woman enough to take her man, and if you think you are, meet Fist City.
One should go to Loretta's website HERE just to see the pictures in the new Coal Miner's Daughter" video.
Gross handmade postcards from Borat land! Circa 1900 and circa disgusting!This year a single feather from the extinct Huia bird sold for nearly $7000.00 at an auction in Auckland. I don't think you can clone a bird from a feather, but maybe one day. Ritual objects of Native American Tribes containing eagle feathers are illegal to sell, and there are numerous other laws protecting the use of our animal friends in collectibles today, thankfully. I don't know the species here, or if the feathers match the paintings...but they are grisly and gross reminders of when Victorian "fashion" dictated the wholesale harvesting of feathers for silly hats. Not to mention post cards.
I have nothing against my friends in Chicago except for a huge, disgusting invasive species known as the Asian Carp. Able to jump large boats in a single bound. In fact, during fishing contests, they often do just that, literally giving themselves up by plopping their gross girth right into the hull. That isn't all they do...bigger eaters than Joey Chestnut at Coney Island after a fast (look him up) they deplete any water they occupy of the good fish...leaving you forced to make a decision. Do I stop eating fish? Or do I adapt and start rolling that ugly water dinosaur into corn meal.
Seriously, man...pictures of those giant goldfish look like exaggeration postcards from the 1950s. They'll grow to four feet on our delicious sport fish!
So far, as near as I can tell, an electric barrier (a bug-zapper for fish!) has been installed to keep the river monsters away...but some carp DNA has slipped through...Ewwww! Around here there are signs on lawns reading "NO MISTAKE IN THE LAKE" and though they refer to the fat, scaly Mylopharyngoden, they always make me think of something I did in the lake as a kid.
Michigan is attempting to force some Illinois rivers and canals to zip it up. Some of them appear to be trying to sneak through near Calumet (a city once known for sin, drugs and strippers)
So anyway, speaking of postcards, here is a nice one. A note sent to Mr. Roy Teeter way back in 1958. Mr. Teeter found a message in a bottle! Apparently walking near the shoreline, he found what is known as a "drift card" released by the Great Lakes Fishery Investigations several years earlier. He was rewarded with this note acknowledging his fine fishy find!
President Obama has appointed a "fish czar" to monitor the situation. I hope they keep an eye on things, or the fake fish postcards of the past will have to show BIGGER fake fish.
"Drift card note" to Roy Teeter, 1958 collection Jim Linderman Salesman Sample "Freak Fish" postcard circa 1950 collection Jim Linderman
Today's post introduces a good website and also recovers the somewhat disturbing era of postcards made out of DEER HIDE. In the postcard trade, they are now known as "leather" postcards in deference to Bambi. These are not particularly "good" leather postcards, just disturbing. As with everything, I'm drawn to the most curious and somewhat pathetic examples. There ARE some spectacular pieces around and they seem to be one of the more active areas of postcardology. Remember that woodburning kit you father finally trusted you with back in 6th Grade? These are sorta like that. Primarily desired not for their artistic skills, but for their scarcity. They were made for only about five years, from 1900-1905 or so, as the Post Office banned them (!) A shame, as the cards, or rather little squares of deerskin (let's be honest) had pre-punched holes so you could use them in craft projects. See above, a splendid example of a make-do satchel or pillow made from a small herd of them. Ingenious. It looks like a Native American bag, with the sinew-like lacing and fringe...I guess it could be. Plenty of tribes were still active in 1900, and they were certainly familiar with animal skin. Maybe they made a few.
Anyway, I learned about my leather "cards" from Postcardcollector.org which is a fun and worthy site. They encourage folks to show off, so the site is full of goofy examples, and their seems to be a good dialog going on. I just joined. I suggest you all do too. HERE
A "Drugstore Cowboy" was a loafer in slicked-up in cowboy duds who hung around trying to pick up women. Decades later, Gus Van Zant popularized the phrase by filming the book of the same title by James Fogle (who spent 35 of his 53 years in prison) and now the term refers to one who gets high with purloined prescription drugs.
The phrase was actually invented by a cartoonist named Tad Dorgan, who was born in 1877. An accident at age 13 took three fingers off his right hand, but he overcompensated and learned to draw with his left so quickly he was hired as a newspaper cartoonist a year later at age 14! Soon Tad was the highest paid sports cartoonist in the country. Known as the "Saloon Sloganist" we can not only thank Tad for "Drugstore Cowboy" but "Dumb Dora" "Twenty-three Skidoo" "Cat's Meow" "Dumbbell" "Yes, we have no Bananas" and "Bonehead." That's plenty of hokum for one fellow to conjure up. I am damn jealous.
Unfortunately, we do NOT know anything about "Las Vegas Kim the Cowboy Artist" who drew this risque image in 1934. If I had to guess, Kim probably loitered around the drugstore coming up with ideas for his doodles while trying to pick up women. Here a drugstore cowboy in chaps he couldn't even walk in takes indecent rootin' tootin' liberty with a red dress.
The card is obviously a sexist parody of the old western cliche in which a cowboy fires his six-shooter at an hombre and orders him to dance. But where did THAT come from? It started with the Great Train Robbery! The now forgotten film from 1903 was the very first to depict a tenderfoot getting the treatment. Watch here at exactly 7:17. Scroll to it, you'll laugh like Gabby Hayes.
All that from one postcard, and I didn't even use a stamp.
Primitive postcard, 1934 by Las Vegas Kim Collection Jim Linderman
Mr. T. B. Jackley is shown with his new wife as they embark on a 25,000 mile hike, hopefully not the entire distance wearing wooly chaps. Mr. Jackley, a fortune teller from Boise, Idaho decided to walk from San Francisco to Maine on a $1500 bet and apparently depended on the kindness of strangers...this card was handed out along the way for donations. Did they make it? It appears so. In 1915, they arrived in New York City, blabbed to the press, and started walking BACK to claim their money! This wasn't the first trip Jackley took...note similar card which indicates he took a long bike ride with his brother too! (A note from the editor...as "fortune tellers" have an unsavory reputation, and I can not verify the route...if a train ticket for a pair of grifters with blisters turns up one day, I won't be surprised)
Mr. T.B. Jackley and Mrs T. B. Jackley Post card, 1912. Collection Jim Linderman
AIEEE! Most wax "chambers of horrors" are hardly that...a few familiar Hollywood villains to scare the kids and a damsel in distress for Dad. This setup, however, would warp a kid for a decade. What demented wax sculptor dreamed this up? Vintage grain rake hangs in the back to add a pointy "what is THAT" object to further scare the kids, and a few presumably wax chickens scratch around the "barn of death" floor. A question? Who would SEND this? From the Dull Tool Dim Bulb "Horrors in Wax" series. Collect them all.
Horrors in Wax #15 Postcard c. 1965. Collection Jim Linderman
The modest little postcard folder I found here opens up a striking world...Stryker's world! A regional photographer who deserves to be rediscovered, John A. Stryker obtained his first camera in 1916 while occupied as a penmanship teacher and was soon attracted to more adventurous activity. Stryker began photographing the local cowboys and rodeos. I don't know what type of lens he used, but these images would almost qualify him to take pictures in a war zone with combat pay. Kodak thought so as well and used one of his pictures in an early advertising campaign. Stryker also used his voice to advantage at the rodeo. Blessed with a barreling baritone larger than those rodeo clowns hid in, it is said he could be heard 3/4 of a mile away without a microphone. So while taking pictures, he became a rodeo announcer and was soon hired by no less than the Ringling Brothers to announce acts!
After years traveling with the circus, Stryker retired to Fort Worth and spent the rest of his life taking pictures. In addition to many postcards, he sold images for restaurant place mats and through mail order. The images here are from "Stryker's Famous Rodeo Folder Number Three" and the postcard book became a catalog for selling enlargements at $1.00 each, but "if special, made to order glossy prints are wanted for reproduction, advertising and publicity" one is instructed to write for prices. He sold photos up to 40 x 60 inches in size and would "travel anywhere to make up-to-date pictures of rodeos, ranches, historical sites...and individual poses of fine cattle, horses or mounted people" and at one time, his inventory contained 1200 photos.
Stryker's work is held in the Lamb collection at the National Cowboy Museum and in thousands of postcard collections. I based much of the above on the history provided in Buffalo County Historical Society newsletter by Mardith Anderson. "Famous Stryker's Collection of Modern Fast Action Pictures" postcard folder circa 1950 Collection Jim Linderman
Another installment in my Horrors of Wax series, and this one is my SECOND Wax Oswald.So which Wax Oswald did the dirty Dallas deed? Neither...but there certainly were at least two Oswalds made of wax, and to prove it to all you conspiracy buffs here they are, BOTH IN THE SAME PLACE AT THE SAME TIME!The other post focuses more on Wax Jack Ruby. Click Blue subject heading below to see the entire "Horrors of Wax" series.
"Wax Oswald patiently waits for triangulation fire signal from Umbrella Man" (my title) Wax Museum Postcard, circa 1965 Collection Jim Linderman
Circa 1935 postcard with "missing painting" gummed insert "canvas" to affix a picture of a loved one (or to mail a picture of yourself to one) Unmailed. Colllection Jim Linderman
Ahh, Kindle. I'll give in one day soon. I do not lack for reading material, the web has loaded the content of so many things my fingers wear out far before my eyes. But I thought I would address an issue seldom discussed, but will become increasingly evident as we progress. David Byrne on his blog recently said he enjoyed his kindle as he didn't have to lug around books in his luggage. Well, neither did anyone else. Including baggage folks. No one has to deliver the book to his house either. No one has to print it. No one has to do the typesetting, the binding, the paper...Every step of production is gone or going, and all of them were good union jobs at one time. My first real job was paperboy. We don't need no paperboys. We don't need no mailman. We're not going to need no librarian, except to scan our card keeping track of which computer we're using. This analogy extends to so many once physical activities which provided jobs that it is scary. Whenever I hear a reporter claim "jobs will be back in 18 months" I cringe. There are no jobs coming back. Nothing needs to be done made, boxed, carried or delivered. So for now, I'll just say "Kindle this, Amazon"...and I hope a certain percent of the cyber-royalties are going to food distribution...and that they pass a low requiring all Barnes and Noble stores be turned into roller rinks.
Religion fanatic diatribe on postcard Obsessive script mailed from Chesterton, Maryland to Burlington, Iowa 1911 Collection Jim Linderman
Poem printed on reverse of card, with no address or contact information
My kind friends should ever speak Of the strangest man you know It would be strange did you not wish How strange he was to show Strange pictures on strange cards I have Telling in a way new Where you can learn many strange things Which are both strange and true.
From these strange cards you'll also fine How very strange I be And then perhaps you'll purchase some Strange books written by me It matters not how strange your church Or how strange be it's Creed In my strange teachings you will find Strange lessons that you need.
To those who see not my strange car Or look in my strange face Will your dear friends tell them that I Am strangest of our race Then should they wish strange cards or books My strange writings to see, Let me know the strange ones they wish I'll mail them C.O.D.
Cheap photo postcard, c. 1890. Collection Jim Linderman (also posted on old time religion blog)
Lund's Scenic Garden of ten acres in Michigan included these life-size figures propped up among the pines. Mr. Lund was a minister, artist and professional magician. His best trick was living to the age of 100, but he died in 1999. The garden, which was located between Leland and Glen Arbor, MI has been dismantled.
