Time for Your (Tintype) Profile collection Jim Linderman

Post "light" today as I'm working on a project. Photographers adopted the "frontal" portrait style from traveling limners I suppose, but once in a while someone knew their better side. A nice example of a young gent who would not face the camera.

Tintype Photograph, circa 1900 Collection Jim Linderman
Tweet

Homemade Postcard from a Drowning Man collection Jim Linderman

Two inches of text. Dr. Stillman is near death, Paul and Paul jr. are quarantined with Scarlet Fever and a drowning man who needs mail will not be home for the holidays.

Handmade Postcard Hand-drawn with applied cutout head 1919 Collection Jim Linderman


ORDER DULL TOOL DIM BULB BOOKS AND DOWNLOADS HERE

Little Hoofers by Frank Wendt Cabinet Cards Collection Jim Linderman

Photographer Frank Wendt is best known for his sideshow photographs, but he took more than his share of little women.

Cabinet Card Photographs by Frank Wendt, circa 1890 collection Jim Linderman

E-BOOK DOWNLOADS AND BOOKS FROM DULL TOOL DIM BULB HERE

Tweet

On the Cusp of Extinction Roy Carling Captures the Family Farm in Comics and Cartoons

Roy Carling captured the family farm right on the cusp of extinction. Roy was born in 1918 and lived to 2009. I purchased some 100 of his original cartoon drawings recently at a flea market and am just getting around to reading them. Roy lived and worked in Howard City, Michigan.

Family farm. A term which evokes pleasant memories even if you never worked on one.

You won't see any gags by Roy about Listeria or E. coli outbreaks from somewhere affecting folks ten states over. There are no jokes about recalls or "lot numbers" to watch out for. Back when Roy was doing his farm gags, crops traveled to the market down the road, not across the country. Each cow had an affectionate name, and when she gave birth the calves got names too...(they sometimes even talked!) Property was bought and sold by the acre, not the million hectacres.

Monsanto, patent owner of the genetically modified seeds everyone has been forced into relying on today evokes no pleasant memories, nor do any of the other "agri-business" companies now holding us and our elected officials by the turnips.

In Roy's work you will see chickens strolling freely and stopping to peck at a feeder. You see they had beaks then, they weren't clipped off to prevent fights in the factory. Today, Roy's chickens would be known as "free-range" as if that is something strange.

You will see a farmer trying to figure out how to use his new combine, or getting his tractor repaired, or discussing the new "hired man". One man...who negotiates his monthly wage while the farm owner rolls in the dirt laughing.

Junior is asked to open his piggybank for the next tractor payment. A farmer marvels at his new "six-row" tools. The big day is when the "poultry buyer" drives up while the wife gathers eggs and junior receives his allowance. One farmer here brags that he has doubled his flock size from 40 to 80 birds.


Roy depicted the world he knew, and that world had neighbors loaning their barbwire stretcher to each other. The "milk tank" springs a leak and the barn cats have a feast. A local eccentric stacks his chicken cages in piles of four. FOUR. Have you seen a chicken factory of late? Chicken skyscrapers. In fact they don't WANT you to see them. Long buildings back from the road with no signs...just enormous fans to remove the smell and warnings from a distant conglomerate to keep away. I can remember an elementary school with a visit to a farm. Not anymore.

Roy didn't know he was capturing the death of the family farm. In his work you see the silos getting bigger, the owners worried about being bought out, the first experience with breeders and traveling seed salesmen and putting up a barn sign as it changes ownership. The hardworking family imagines a bright future with "atomic" powered tractors. The availability of "new crop varieties" gives the wife a chance to argue for a new hat. After all, if corn comes in varieties, why shouldn't her wardrobe?





Roy Carling numbered each cartoon and saved a few of the publications they appeared in. The newsletter of the Central Ohio Breeders Association runs Roy's gag with a farmer holding his hat out for donations while leaving the local IRS office. The New York Breeders Cooperative runs his "cow a minute" gag. Roy saved a letter from Land O Lakes asking for a turkey cartoon for the thanksgiving issue.

Farms are not funny anymore.

Original, hand-drawn gag cartoons by Roy Carling, circa 1960-1975 Collection Jim Linderman

DULL TOOL DIM BULB BOOK AND EBOOK DOWNLOAD ORDERS HERE

Tweet

Let's RIDE ! Capturing Motion in Sculpture RPPC collection Jim Linderman Folk Art

Click to Enlarge

The ability to capture motion in sculpture is rare, but seldom does a carver FAIL to display it so well! Let's STAND!

Real Photo Postcard "An exhibition of Hand-Carving made by Nat V. Ranney, Rochester" No date collection Jim Linderman
Tweet

Lutheran Halloween

Pistol Packing Pin Ups The Origin of the Armed Pin Up (INVESTIGATIVE REPORT)

NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN, AND SHE'S LOADED





In this exclusive report, we reveal the secret behind armed pin up girls. Women with weapons and very little clothing. Gals with Gats. The Texas Two-Step Double Armed.


The origin of Pin Ups with a Piece falls directly into Candy Barr's lovely holstered lap. Hailing from the wide open plains of Texas, where a gun was as natural as a spoon to a baby, the baby-faced Candy (one Juanita Slusher) grew up with a grip on the handle. Raped at age 12 and married at age 14 (before she had even bleached her hair) to a safecracker named Billie Joe Debbs. Ahh...pin up glamor.


Texas. Land of Bush and Perry, Ruby and Oswald. The state where Dick Cheney shot his friend in the face. The state where liquor stores carry ammo, and frequently sell them to the same customer. "Will you be drinking and shooting now? Or would you like a bag?"


Once Candy had survived her youth, (and in the process making what is generally considered the very first pornographic film at age 16) it appears the busty (now) blond vowed never to be a victim again. Fully armed, she adopted the stance which would influence naked women on paper for ever...fully packed and loaded!


Soon other pin up models were applying for carry permits. But not in Texas..unnecessary! The shops were practically GIVING away weapons!



So the next time you see a camaflogued cutie with her breasts wrapped in a cartridge belt, combat boots and an automatic weapon, let Candy Barr come to mind. The woman who armed the pin ups.


Their theme song? The heavy rap of Al Dexter ( Clarence Albert Poindexter) another Texan, of course, who wrote "Pistol Packin' Mama"



Don't Mess with Candy EVER AGAIN!



Shown here a bevy of pistol packing pin-ups (ALL FROM TEXAS, I CHECKED!) from the 1960 salesman sample catalog titled "Pin-Ups for Advertising" distributed in Dallas.

DULL TOOL DIM BULB DOWNLOADS AND BOOKS HERE

We ARE DIGITAL at Dull Tool Dim Bulb (Books now $5.99 iPad Downloads)

VINTAGE SLEAZE / DULL TOOL BOOKS NOW AVAILABLE AS $5.99 EBOOKS for iPad HERE

We are STILL NOT DIGITAL at Dull Tool Dim Bulb Upload THIS

Here at Dull Tool Dim Bulb we still take our portraits with machines...and the only "upload' we do is into the truck with burly union helpers when finished with the shoot.

Secrets of 42nd Street and Fugitive Literature Ted Poole and The Missing Book

"Legitimate" books are those for which the Library of Congress received two free copies. That is how copyright is established for a book. (It is also a smart way for the nation's library to build their collection) It is also a law, in some states anyway, that books published must show the actual publisher and location where it was printed. These laws are enforced selectively...so that, for example, a mobster printing smut could be found guilty of SOMETHING to keep the magazine racks clean, even if his product did not satisfy the nebulous requirements to be banned as obscene.


Book folk, of which I am one, refer to books not within the system of copyright and above-ground publication as "fugitive literature" when they lack any form of bibliographic control. No Library of Congress number, no ISBN, no indexing and I suppose no "accountability" though I don't think the Constitution had an ISBN number. Or Walden, Common Sense and Leaves of Grass for that matter, but they all do now.


Try to find a copy of Secrets of 42nd Street. I did for a year. I failed! And I hate to fail.


Now this could be for many reasons. Rare? Thrown away? A ruse designed to collect $1.98 from pervs who lived in Podunk? Trust all are quite possible. If any of you actually HAVE a copy, let me borrow it...I need it and my research doesn't depend on any stinking numbers!

I am starting to suspect this book may not have ever existed, nor did the apparent companion volume Secrets of Greenwich Village advertised two pages away. Unless they really were "fugitive" literature and just plain slipped into and out of the system for good.


Claimed author Ted Poole existed...sorta. In addition to the ad copy here (From a 1960 issue of MAN to MAN, a real stinker from Picture Magazines, AKA Volitant Publishing, Adrian Lopez's pulp empire) I have found TWO articles Mr. Poole was responsible for. Ready? "The Lonely Women of Lesbos Island" which ran in Sir magazine in 1959 and "My Life in an Arab Harem" in South Sea Stories 1962. For all I know Ted was their staff writer, or as the copy claims their "famous adventure writer" as Sir isn't too well indexed either. Though it did spew fiction as fact for a long time.


So having established, almost, that Ted Poole existed, even if in pseudo anonymous form...you would think I could find a copy of the books. Nope. I'm not sure how carefully MAN to MAN checked their advertisers, but we might assume they didn't at all...so maybe this mail drop was a ruse and your money order crossed the bridge into Brooklyn only in turn to be loan-sharked back to some other looser in Queens. Or maybe the book was literally one mimeographed page...just enough to satisfy the price.

Whatever. I'm intrigued by the ad copy here and I need the book for my OWN book I am writing which WILL have a LC number and an ISBN. So if you have one, let me know. I'll even go the $1.98 but I'd prefer a real address, not a PO Box. I really, really need this book to strip it for content and then make fun of it.


I already know "where you can go for a cheap drink, when you're short" (The Landmark Tavern on Tenth Avenue and 46th...they waved me away once after three bourbons) and I also know what the ladies of the night "want..and how to outwit them" but that stays with me.


Seriously, if you know of a copy, share?


Jim Linderman is is author of "TIMES SQUARE SMUT" which tells the story of a few rouges who changed the world by publishing illegal soft-core digests during the 1950s.

MOST DULL TOOL DIM BULB BOOKS ARE NOW AVAILABLE AS E-BOOK DOWNLOADS FOR THE I-PAD ($8.99 each) Check the catalog HERE



Tweet

Ablest Exhortation of Boy Preacher Paschl Porter CDV Photograph Collection Jim Linderman

Paschal Porter was born 1877 at Bee Camp (a settlement of four log cabins) on the Ohio River in Indiana. He was one of the few literate members of the community. He announced his desire to be a preacher at age five. By age eleven he was touring the country and beyond with his father and his manager Mr. Bingham. I say "beyond" as the boy preacher was a hit in Canada as well as the states.

The St. Andrews Bay Pilot March 15, 1888 reports on what much have been a typical performance. "Paschal Porter, the wonderful child revivalist, of Indiana, who is now only 11 years old, recently preached a sermon, in the Baptist Church at Williamstown, Ky., that astonished everybody who heard it. The pastor of the church says that he has read sermons on the same subject delivered by the ablest preachers, but not one of them could compare in power or in elegance of diction with the boy's exhortation."

Additionally, the Ashburton Guardian of November 24, 1888 reports "Among the coming sensations from America we to have a "pulpit tour" by a boy only 11 years of age, called the Rev. Paschal Porter. His eloquence is said to be such that thousands sit and listen to him for hours, while he preaches the most brilliant and profound sermons." The best copy on the little fellow is from the Little Falls New York Evening Times of March 21, 1888, which reports "So extraordinary are his powers that Simeon Marks the leading Hebrew of the village is so impressed the he almost believes little Paschl is the "Messiah for whom his race has so long waited."

I'm not going to argue with Mr. Marks, who was there (several times..it is said he attended many sermons) but as the Paschl trail ends in 1888, I am going to surmise he was not the second coming.


Original CDV Photograph by J.Q. Barloup, Williamstown KY with affixed newsprint and handwritten notes, 1888. Collection Jim Linderman

A post here on Dull Tool Dim Bulb AND old-time-religion.

See also Old Time Religion: Faith Healers, Miracle Men, Radio Preachers and Evangelists! Graphics of Revival, the Apocalypse and the Afterlife by Jim Linderman NOW AVAILABLE AS AN EBOOK AND IPAD DOWNLOAD for $5.99 as well as paperback and hardcover.

Deceive the Eye Trompe-l'oeil painting Art History from the Flea market

Too good to let stay behind, I purchased a quite remarkable trompe-l'oeil painting by an "amateur master" (soon to be my trademarked phrase) at an antique mall yesterday and promptly posted it in the Museum of Ebay. (Trademark pending)

SEE LISTING ON EBAY HERE

An "Art Lesson from the Flea Market" (My NEXT trademarked phrase, so don't even think about it.)

The best Trompe-l'oeil paintings are the ones done during the great Depression, when hungry artists would paint their dreams.. artists so poor, they literally PAINTED money. The idea is to render an object so good, you think it is sitting right on the canvas. Reach up and pluck that bill off...and go buy soup.

Also common in Trompe l'oeil are playing cards, and that's what my Sunday painter did...but he threw in a surrealistic twist and a reflection!

Quite a painting, but not my thing, so up it went. Have a look. Tell your friends. Deceive YOUR eye!

Bid like Oprah at a Shaker Auction! (Those in the trade will know what that refers to)

Trump any other Trompe bidders HERE

Trompe -l'oiel painting looking for a home Circa 1920-1930? Currently, but not for long, Collection Jim Linderman

Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books available HERE

Tweet

Best Devil Costume! Halloween Prize Winner Graphic

Best Costume! El Diablo gives it his best.

Early child's costume, circa 1950? No date of mfg. Collection Jim Linderman

Early Graffiti on a Rock for God Dull Tool Dim Bulb

From the pamphlet "God's Way of Salvation Illustrated by Comparison and Contrast" No Date (Circa 1930?) Gospel Folio Press.

See also Old Time Religion the Blog

Folk Art Tintype Background and Backdrop Naive and Primitive

NOTE: THE BOOK "PAINTED BACKDROP: BEHIND THE SITTER IN AMERICAN TINTYPE PHOTOGRAPHY 1860 - 1920" by JIM LINDERMAN is now AVAILBLE AS A DOWNLOAD FOR APPLE IPAD AND E-BOOKS
HERE








For me, the most beautiful tintype photographs are those which do not aspire to be something greater than they are, those with elaborate Victorian backdrops and over-decorative props. Far more beautiful, and representative of the times, are the makeshift, naive and primitive hand-painted backgrounds done by the amateurs and rudimentary early photographers. Traveling camera men who needed to control the background but enhanced a sheet of muslin, not silk.

Set of Folk Art Tintype Backdrops Collection Jim Linderman circa 1870-1880.

SEE ALSO THE BOOK THE PAINTED BACKDROP BY JIM LINDERMAN HERE

Trigger (Surface, Form, Patina) Willie Nelson

Trigger
Willie Nelson's Guitar
Photographer Unknown