Hewing Timbers

It's easy to forget, in our day of automation and refined machinery, that America was built with skill and the sweat of manual labor. These timbers are massive, and are being hewn and prepared by hand.

Given that this is taking place in a railroad yard (the two Chicago, Burlington and Quincy boxcars suggest that this might be Chicago) suggests that these timbers might be destined for a railroad trestle (although that's purely speculation on my part).

Hoisting Cement

This photograph is essentially dying, crumbling to powder due to age and poor handling in the past. It's evidence of how transient our memories of the past can be. When they're gone, there is no replacing them. Long before modern cement pumps, this is how construction was done.

The cement mixer in the lower left of the image is a Koehring Mixer, which helps date the image a bit. The Koehring Company was started in 1907 to manufacture cement mixers, and was the first to develop a steam-powered, portable mixer (a photograph of an almost identical mixer can be seen here on Robert Grauman's Photobucket gallery). The Koehring company's product lines were owned by different parent companies over the years, but the name lasted until about 1987, when then-owner Northwest Engineering acquired Terex, and discontinued the Koehring and several other brands.

Our House - 11

So, I have to wonder with this photo: what was the point of hauling such a beautiful rocking chair out into the yard if no one was going to sit in it for the photo? Maybe it's in memorial to someone who recently passed? Maybe the husband of the woman sitting in the other chair? And I wonder why the son chose to stand behind the fence, instead of with the rest of the family? Given the wife's dress style (specifically the puffed sleeves at the shoulder), I'd guess this was taken in the 1890s.

A Church of Hats

For the second #ThrowbackThursday of every month, I usually feature a school class, but today it's a church congregation. One of the really fun things about the decade between roughly 1900 and 1910 were the really austentatious hats most women wore...and the hats shown in this photo are wonderful!

One has to wonder if these women felt pressure to compete with one another to have the more outrageous hat.

This is one of those times when I wish these old photos were in color: those hats must have been spectacular!

The minister is the only adult present not wearing a hat.

Even one little girl has gotten into the hat thing in a big way.

End of the Line

It's hard to tell the age of this photo (it's clearly early) and there is no location information written on the back other than (in very light pencil), the tantilizing phrase, "This is some more of the same job." But in the pile of neglected photos in the antique store where I found this, there were no more similar images. How frustrating!  At any length, this is the point where the wild frontier gets civilized, the arrival of the Iron Horse. For the moment that this photo was taken, the crudely hewn ties are in place, the rails laid but not yet spiked, and they stop in a hundred yards or so. Just days after this photo was taken, more track was laid and this spot, which hosted so many toiling men for such a short moment, was all but forgotten, just a lonely place on a prairie that the later passengers using this rail line barely even noticed.

Teddy and Family

I found this photo buried in a stack at an antique store a while back...price: $1. The obvious resemblence to Teddy Roosevelt jumped out at me. As the lady working the cash register rang up my photo purchases, she saw the resemblence, too, and her eyebrows went up, then went up further when she realized I was getting the photo for a buck, and there wasn't anything she could do about it at that point!

So, is it Teddy Roosevelt? I think so, but can't be positive. It looks to me that they were on a family outing that day, enjoying what appears to be some nice spring-time weather Several of the women in photo look like women in Teddy's life, as well.

So what's your take? Teddy, or just a guy that looks like him?