Carnival Cutout Standee. Three lovely woman on a "girls day" at the carnival! (Does this suit make me look hippy?)
Who doesn't have a photo in the basement or the attic of the kids in fake stockades at some western tourist trap? They are back, if they ever left, that is. Here is a company which will make them, disco-style.Original carnival cutout snapshot circa 1940 Collection Jim Linderman
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The best "no trespassing" signs are the ones you have to trespass to read. You can click to enlarge this one, but it won't help any. Usually, the worse the sign looks, the most you want to follow the directions. I once had a shotgun pulled on me near a no trespassing sign. I had stopped not to read it, but to steal what I thought was portions of a LONG abandoned whirligig nearby. I was wrong, but learned having a gun drawn on you isn't really so bad. I was worried more about buckshot in the rental car than I was for my life.I saw those nice boys on American Pickers buy a factory made porcelain no trespassing sign this week. Two comments. Boys? That weren't no good no trespassing sign, and you don't even KNOW "Free Styling"
Original Snapshot, circa? Collection Jim LindermanBUY DULL TOOL DIM BULB BOOKS HERE
PHOTO BY ADAM BIRD FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESCLICK HERE TO VIEW SLIDESHOW from "Mining the Margins of Pop Culture" profile article by John Strausbaugh from the New York Times February 12, 2012
I never did find out what sideshow game Roly-Poly was, but if they really did award a prize to every player you can be sure it was from under the counter, not from the wall display in back.I will, however, take the slightest excuse to share Bob Wills, especially when it is a number performed by the great Tommy Duncan. Tommy was smooth as the expensive whiskey Bob was able to drink to excess every day, but what made the pair work so well was the suppressed, seething tension in Tommy's voice every time the lovable drunk buffoon stepped on his lines with a patented "Aaah Haah" aside. You can tell Tommy wanted to throttle Bob, the biggest country ham in the state of Texas, but it was a good gig.He finally left...and as the clip below shows, he should have stayed. Still, you have to see a real roly poly play the Bob Wills part. Gnaw on a biscuit. Roly-Poly Carnival Sideshow Sign. Circa 1930 Collection Jim LindermanORDER JIM LINDERMAN BOOKS AND eBOOKS HERE
Chicago citizens will sleep better knowing the pin-up peep shows have been unplugged by Chief Investigator Paul Newey. Since there was no other crime in the second city on this day in 1959, Chief Paul invited the press over to see his collection of confiscated coin-op smut. Paul's pursuit of the peep shows was crime-bustin' action of the highest order. To celebrate (and convince the public Newey was on top of the situation) he flicks his ashes on the filthy coin slot in distain!
Original Press Photograph (8" x 13") Unknown Chicago Paper 1959 Collection Jim Linderman
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A circa 1880 hand-painted tintype. It is remarkable to consider the photographic process which resulted in an actual unique physical object one could hold, paint by hand and frame has gone from black and white to gone in two or three lifetimes. I haven't quite figured it out yet, but the warmth of an image may have gone with the film.
As far as the public goes, each step forward in the photographic process helped the producer become more effective (and profit more) while leaving the consumer holding less of a product in his hand. While it is an art, and it is progress... it is easy to view photography from a simple supply/demand capitalistic perspective. Dags, so beautiful and shimmering, an amazing thing folks will still circle to see at a show, turned to cruddy metal tintypes which were churned out like pizza at the shore in one lifetime.
It wasn't long before paper came and paper went. Instant photos followed and dropped the quality even further. Now the darkroom is empty and the bits and bytes which tore the guts out of reproduced music have done the same to pictures.More and more recording artists are releasing their product once again on vinyl. As I understand it, digital music provides only a very small percentage of the aural quality not only possible, but once common. Once even standard. The consumer loses but pays more for it than ever before.
What is yet to be fully understood is what we have lost in pictures. Is the photo above particularly beautiful or desirable? Nope, not at all. But you could hold it in your hands.
"Full Plate" tintype (ferrotype) painted by hand circa 1880. Collection Jim Linderman
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Ten cents worth of eleven novelty gag Valentines. One shown.
No date, no publisher Circa 1960 Collection Jim Linderman
Years ago, I had the fortunate pleasure of visiting one of the most prominent collectors of American folk art on a regular basis. Besides teaching me much, I was learning at the feet of a master. (Literally...there was no room in his house and I had to sit on the floor.) We traded things back and forth monthly. I would study them, he would study them, and once in a while swaps were made. The stuff didn't have much financial value then, and I'm not sure if it does today.I once brought the collector three huge carnival knock-down targets, each about 3 feet tall, with effigies of Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo painted on them. I didn't want Hitler in my house, so I hoped to trade them for an equally not valuable whittled miniature cane he had by a carver from Georgia. (Years later I saw Saddam Hussein painted on some carnival punks at the boardwalk in Seaside Heights, New Jersey, so things never change.)
I cabbed them down and presented them saying "check out THESE punks!"
What surprised me was that he immediately asked me why I called them "punks" and I really didn't have an answer. I'd just always known carnival knock-downs as punks. The collector was puzzled, which surprised me, as he had earlier curated museum shows having to do with esoteric material culture from the sideshow and such, and he certainly owned some. I figured no one could puzzle the master.He told me "punk" was a term used to refer to a younger homosexual man dating an older man. I had no idea. To me at the time, punks were the Ramones. Or as Joe Franklin, perennial host of a local TV show called them "The Ray Mones" while appearing as puzzled by them as my collector friend was at my punks.I knew gay "punks" were called "twinks" which I believe may still be in common usage. I'm a little isolated here, so I don't know for sure, and we should refer to all without derogatory terms anyway. But that also makes sense, as my collector friend was Eastern big-city based, and I suspect knock-down targets received their punk name in the Midwest.If you look up punk in a carny lingo dictionary, the slang term has numerous uses. As a rube, a child. a trick, a fake fetus in a bottle, a person primed for a scam, an "easy target" as it were...though the punks here were intended to be a hard target. That's why they had fur...to create the illusion of width, and the carny would also encourage the punk in FRONT of him to lean in "for a good toss" because you would then be throwing off balance. He would watch as ball after ball whiffed through the fur not moving the targets at all.
I found these androgynous punks in an antique mall. My "axis of evil" punks are long gone and I can't find a picture, but I cribbed one of a similar group from an auction website below. Mine were better, as they were entirely made by hand, but these will give you an idea. As a bonus, see Marky and Joey "Ray Mone" jabber it up with Joe!
Group of three unremarkable carnival knock-down ball toss targets (Above) Collection Jim LindermanDULL TOOL DIM BULB BOOK AND EBOOK CATALOG HERE
CLICK TO ENLARGE TOWER OF VEGETABLES
Rubbing a New York State bounty in the rest of the world's face, a well-stacked and stocked "Vegetable Tower" reins over the State Fair of 1918. It was harvest time, and you know all those zucchini ripen at the same time. The upstate farmers must have run out of friends to pass them off to. Click to enlarge and you'll see corn, pumpkins and who knows what else. I do not believe the vertical cornucopia caught on...I find no mention of one at the WORLD'S fair twenty years later down in the city.
I have no idea how one glues a pumpkin to a tower.
Vegetable Tower New York State Fair September 1918 Collection Jim Linderman
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Plucked from a photography book to reveal a lovely note from a best friend."She also taught me this"There is quite a story told in this one little picture. Friendship, skill, sharing, play, joy and pride come to mind without much thought. Captions matter.Untitled, Anonymous Snapshot, circa 1920? Collection Jim Linderman 
Looks like the breeze has started to "clutter" the Lucky Strike "message" a bit. Skywriting has never been measured for advertising effectiveness that I know of. Certainly "brand recall" would apply here. That is the measure of effectiveness advertising agencies fall back on after the campaign is over and sales have not climbed one tiny bit."Hey Charlie? Did you remember what them skywritin' pilots put up there in the sky" "Ayup, sure do Gordy, T'was the Lucky Strikes"Brand Recall!What we do not know if either Charlie or Gordy went to BUY a pack. Similar era photographs of a "ground team" working on market share for a competitor are HERE.Untitled Original Photograph (Lucky Strike Skywriting Advertisement) No date Circa 1950 Collection Jim Linderman
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The whole family visits the Winchester Mystery House!
Full of ticky tacky construction...and as the first image pulled up when I search the place is a real photo postcard which reads (in shaky handwriting) " Winchester Mystery House Near San Jose BEFORE THE EARTHQUAKE" I have to assume these folks were there on a good day...it looks terra firma anyway.
The stupid place was an attempt by the crazy heir to the Winchester rifle fortune to make up for "settling the west" by spilling blood and inventing a machine which could kill three native people with one load...if you had good aim and weren't drunk.
The fantasy ramshackle pre-Disneyland hunk of balsa was the creation of Wirt Winchester's nutty bride, Sarah. Sarah inherited a good chunk of Winchester blood money when Wirt contracted tuberculosis and joined his once youthful and proud civil war friends in 1881, some twenty years after his family helped put them into early graves.
What to do with $20 million 1881 dollars? Why, take it to a seance! The spirits told Sarah to move west, buy land and commence drawing up plans for a house as nutty as she was. With no experience in architecture, Sarah began drawing up plans on paper and handing them to her builders. Obsessed with the number 13, she insisted each window have 13 panes of glass. Windex was not invented until 1933, so those corners probably got "durn dusty" even before the quake.
Eventually the Winchester fortune resulted in 160 crazy, rich widow rooms. Then came the quake. Sarah was trapped in her own insane, pre-code monstrosity.
Fortunately she survived to crazy the place up again for 15 more years before passing away in her sleep in 1922, putting an end to the madness and setting the stage for landmark status!
Today the Winchester Mystery House tricks the public into a visit by spreading myths the place is haunted. The website, complete with the sound of a rifle being cocked, is HERE, a testimonial to what happens when too much weapon dough is left to a emotionally fragile visionary of sorts. There is no indication on the site if a NRA card provides a discount.
Anonymous Snapshot, circa 1925? Collection Jim Linderman
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