Postcard – unusual tote!

A beach, a pretty woman, Bright yellow swimsuit, sunhat, laughing, and an interesting TOTE bag! I love totes. They hold STUFF. We need stuff, and we need to tote around stuff.

short post for today…will be back soon!

Dustbunny

Squirrel

Squirrels are interesting critters. They are quite brash and bold yet so very aware that they are a tasty morsel for others in the food chain. While at the park on Saturday I spotted this one – and he was snacking on some of the corn chips left on a plate by a kid at a picnic. I didn’t get a shot of him stealing, but did snap this one and he has such an innocent look yet alert stance…

Oh, and in case you are wondering, those spiky looking things coming out of the ground are cypress knees.

Apparently the fascination with critters goes way back. I found this picture of me as a toddler chasing a squirrel around at Silver Springs. This was back before I had a sister or brother to play with and I had to make do.

A few years ago my sister and I traveled to Washington DC (That trip will be another whole series of blog entries!! Great Trip..) and we drove back to Fla and took a couple of days on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Seemed quite a few squirrels had fatally miscalculated the mad dash across the road. This was about the time a national car insurance company had a commercial with two squirrels trying to make cars wreck while swerving to miss them. They would chatter at each other and give high fives when the car went off the road. Of course in our version of humor we had a few words to say and then laugh as we remembered the commercial…

Then there is this joke -

A man is crossing the road and thinks he has plenty of time to safely get to the other side before the oncoming car gets too close. The car speeds up and he runs faster – but the car moves to the other side of the road – the man turns and runs back to where he started. The car again changes lanes and is almost there! As the man leaps off the road, the car stops, backs up, and the tinted window slides down. The squirrel driving shakes his fist and yells, “It’s not so easy, is it?”

Dustbunny

Postcarding – At Eventide, Florida

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time the last couple of days putting more cards up on ebay. One of my favorites is this one.

I try to limit the cards in my personal collection to a couple of topical areas. One I enjoy is the beautiful scenes like this one. It is so calm and quiet and I almost feel as if I am there. (ebay item #290208104499). It is listed because You Can’t Keep EVERYTHING and I hope it goes to a good home.

This is another one – The postcards from the turn of the century (19th to 20th…) of industrial or business scenes are so fascinating. This one is loading wheat on a ship in Portland, OR with Automatic Conveyors (ebay item #290207827572). There are still a few men standing around and someone had to put the wheat on and off they conveyor, so the automation is not quite as complete as automation is in 2008. I love the glimpse into how things were done in the past. Ingenuity and invention are thrilling!

You can really tell the quality of the cardstock, coloring, and printing on these two. They even feel important. I’ve been learning about some of the different publishers, and the ship card is published by Edward Mitchell of San Francisco. From what I understand, German publishers essentially owned the market and collectors far preferred them to the American printed cards. Mr. Mitchell was able to show that American printers could challenge the German printers in quality and desirable subject matter.

Most of the other cards I’ve been listing were attractions – most closed, sold, and paved over now, but still fun to remember or wonder about. I’ll be writing more about them in the future. You can go to one of the item numbers I’ve listed and click on “see seller’s other items”, or about an inch or two further down the page look at the scrolling slide show of all the cards at auction.

Dustbunny

A Beautiful Day

Saturday was a Chamber of Commerce day in Florida – perfect blue skies, calm, and about 75 degrees. After running errands I picked up a $1 sandwich at a drive-through and took it to the park.

Watched a couple of men take their bass boat out of the water, a mom holding a picnic cookout with her kids, and took a walk on the boardwalk along the edge of the river. My camera had fresh batteries and I was eager to record the day. A White Ibis flock loitering in the parking area was not happy and scattered when I eased into their parking space. Their buddies the Boat-Tailed Grackles were quite vocal about my invasion and certainly told me off. I’m glad I don’t speak Grackle.

Thought you might enjoy a couple pictures:

The trees along the river-

and a White Ibis -

Dustbunny

Later, Gator!

No, I am not one of the numerous University of Florida fans. My blood doesn’t run blue and orange. U of F is a FINE university, but I just don’t follow the BIG sports. As teenagers I don’t think we missed a High School football game, but in general organized sports don’t interest me. As soon as I typed this I thought – what about Track and Field? What about the Olympics? NASCAR? Atlanta Braves? OK-I do admit to enjoying those but I’d still rather spend time with my nose in a book and often watch while reading or surfing on the computer.

The saying is a holdover from childhood – maybe you remember saying, “Later, Gator” and someone else responds, “After while, Crocodile.”

With the advent of e-mail it seems rude to stop what you are typing, sign your name and hit send. Sincerely, Best Regards, or Thank You are a bit formal for me. Then I started typing “Later, Gator” as it seems friendlier…or is it Just Too Cute?

I’m thinking Just TOO Cute so I will just sign…

Dustbunny

1961 Postcard – Picking Oranges

This was a common sight when I was growing up. It was so common we never thought to take pictures to commemorate it. Farmers are at the mercy of nature, and orange growers are no different. There are various ways of fighting off freezing weather; the more modern groves had wind turbines (they look like smaller versions of the wind power generators we see today) to prevent the cold air from “settling” on the trees. Other growers used big kerosene heaters that had to be refilled to keep burning all night long. Before the environmental movement in the 70’s some growers burned tires as a cheap source of heat for their trees. Then came freezes so severe that these methods didn’t always work and the financially strapped farmers had to sell off their acreage. A great hunger for high and dry land exists in Florida, perfect for housing developments. The groves we remembered from childhood are gone now.

A few more memories – these ladders reached over 30 feet and were needed before growers started trimming the trees to keep them more compact.

The pickers slung the heavy canvas bag over their shoulder and climb to the highest branches. A picker reaches out between the branches, grasping the fruit, giving it a quick twist while tipping the fruit up to “pop” it off the branch. They were so expert and skilled their hands were almost a blur. After filling the bag, they climbed down the ladder and walked over to the orange crates to release the latch on the bottom of the bag and allow the oranges to spill into the crate. Each worker was assigned a number and given a pad of those numbers. When they started on a new crate, a number was tucked it into the metal strapping supporting the crates. Each worker was paid by the crate. I can now imagine how tiring this job was.

A truck was driven to a group of boxes and the driver lifted each one to dump the oranges into the truck bed.

The bed of the truck was hydraulic – the driver worked levers to raise it and dump the load into a waiting semi trailer. A good driver skillfully positions his truck and was able to work the lift so not an orange was spilled. It was their responsibility to pick up the fallen fruit and toss it into the trailer. The fruit seemed to magically sail up and over the sides of the trailer with only a flick of the wrist!

At the end of the day the ladders were loaded onto the truck to go back to the garage for the night. To my child’s eyes the ladders stuck out WAY in front and back of the truck.

A lawyer our family knows worked for a grove management business building these crates as a boy. Guess what he uses as bookcases to hold his legal books? Yep, he built new “vintage” orange crates for himself! Think how useful milk crates are – orange crates were just as versatile. Today a good one is pretty hard to find – and if I had known they’d be such collectors items I would have bought a few of them 30 years ago…they are quite useful and can hold a lot of STUFF.

It is cards like this that started us in the hobby of collecting postcards. They remind us of the stories and events when we have no pictures to stir our memories. See how all these remembrances just bubbled up with this one postcard?

Later, Gator!

The Camera Ate My Pictures

I had an “Oh, Dear” moment recently. I was designing this blog and wanted to use one of the pictures of the sailboats on a lake. I wasn’t carrying a camera bag and had tossed the camera in my purse. Sitting down at the computer with the purse I lifted the camera out of the junk in the bottom of the purse and the battery door was swinging open. The batteries fell out of my camera…my fault as I didn’t engage the lock on the little door, just clicked it shut.

I reloaded the batteries and turned the knob to view and nothing appeared. Just a horrible blue screen that announced NO PICTURES (thank you so much for that observation, camera). After turning off an on a couple of times, still no pictures so I put it down – I had to find the USB cable anyway.

Somewhere in the vague recollections of reading the manual with the camera I seem to remember some warning about the battery and pictures, but I figured that was for the tiny internal memory, not the card. Was my assumption wrong? To my mind when pictures are put on a card, they stay on the card unless you do something evil electronically to remove or disturb them.

Came back to it a little later with USB cable in tow and all my pictures were back!!! I hurriedly downloaded the pictures into my computer. Now I need to do a back up on the external hard drive. After all that I’ll delete them off the camera. The card holds over 400, anyway. I have a card reader, but it doesn’t accept the cards that fit in the camera.

Happy dance when the pictures were found! I was right!

Not only were there the pictures of the gorgeous sky and sailboats from last Saturday, but the family Christmas photos were on there, too. All rescued and ready to go through and select the ones to print for SCRAPBOOKING!

Along with the pictures of the sailboats, a favorite oak tree:

Later, Gator!

Postcard – Globe of the Earth, Pan American Airways Terminal, Miami, Florida

One of the reasons I wanted to start a blog was to share stories behind some interesting postcards I’ve collected. Some will be or have been for sale on e-bay, others are from my personal collection.

Isn’t this a great glimpse of history? From when travel was an event, not an endurance trial. Everyone dressed in their best. I am quite content to travel in my comfy stretched out jeans and sneakers instead of a girdle, hose, and heels and am glad to travel as a slovenly tourist.

A little more about the card:

Huge Globe of the Earth, Pan-American Airways Terminal, Miami, Fla
“The Globe is 31 ½ ft in circumference and weighs 6,500 lbs.” Is written on the front lower border.

Description on the back: “This huge globe revolves in the lobby of the Pan-American Airways Terminal. Globe is oriented so that its axis parallels that of the earth under foot at Miami and its North Pole points to the North Star; thus in the course of rotation Miami comes to the top of the globe once every two minutes and the observer has opportunity to orient himself with reference to rest of the world.”

1936 Genuine Curteich – Chicago 6A-H1643
Original owner wrote on the front of the card in the border that they were at this location in 1941.

In looking up information about the Pan-American terminal in Miami, I found this site where the author is a pilot and has researched the various abandoned air strips around the US. Fascinating! In looking around Miami, I noticed a dirigible landing area!

I put the card on e-bay and it didn’t sell…that means I get to KEEP it!

The building was purchased by the City of Miami in 1954 and became the City Hall. The interior has recently been renovated and the murals and decorations have been repainted in the original colors that you can see here. The Globe was moved to the Miami Science Museum lobby.

The National Park Service has some great history on this site going back to WWI.

Most of my favorite postcards are scenic views, but locations such as these force me to look into their interesting history.

Later, Gator!

Hello world!

Looking at this blank page is daunting – and I anticipate it will get easier as days go by and I share my fascination with so much of this world.  It seems I jump from topic to topic and read and learn a bit about this then about that and then about the other.  I do keep coming back to my favorite things – crafts, sewing, and reading are just a few.

I’ll try to make things interesting and give you some links to the wonderful things I find while blog crawling.  A special thank you to other bloggers out there – you are the ones that inspired me to take this big step into the cyberworld.  There are some great friends I’ve made online and I hope to meet other encouraging and supportive folks just like you.

Later, Gator!