How I Learned to Stop Worrying...

I got a call from a friend last night, and the conversation devolved into his fears and anxieties about the frightening decline of civilization. He began to yaw and bend toward how dangerous our times are as compared to the past. Maybe he's right. But as chance would have it, I had found over the weekend a piece of ephemera that I thought at least merited mentioning to him, as a reminder. It's a map of evacuation routes from our city, along with a lot of other instructions, in the event of a nuclear attack. It's dated 1956, and gives a pretty specific idea of where the bombs would fall, with circles indicating the immediate areas of most dire effect. Suffice to say that I live well within the zone that even a namby-pamby 50s-era nuclear bomb would blow clean. All that's just a pretext to show some other thematic images I've gathered over time that also caused bemusement or amusement. For example, a dexterity game where you try to roll the clear capsules into Hiroshima and Nagasaki on a map of Japan. How about a children's toy ring featuring a facsimile of a nuke? Or a dartboard with degrees of success measured by what you destroy, made in Japan, no less. And a panel from a comic book, showing the monster ape problem being neatly solved. In closing, I note that the southern evacuation routes for refugees from nuclear attack are the same roads used by the fleeing citizenry upon the incineration of the city by one William T. Sherman, a few years back when life wasn't as scary as it is today...

The Help

I probably should save this one for Labor Day, but I'm ready to show it now. This is a maid's uniform worn by an employee of the historic Henry Grady Hotel, which was a popular place for travelers to stay in Atlanta. It also served as the home away from home for politicians while the state legislature was in session, so whoever wore this dress patiently served the lower classes as well.

Dress sizes are not something I estimate well, but this is small and was worn by a petite woman or a teenage girl. I bought it as you see it, complete with the pinned paper tag and the little cloth crown that tied with ribbon around her head.

The hotel operated between 1924 and 1972. The paper tag shows the address as Atlanta 1, Georgia. That zone identification was used between 1942 and 1963, when zip codes came into being, so my guess is that it dates to sometime in those years.

Here's to the invisible folks who keep things clean and tidy. And one more thing about those who clean up after you: they know your secrets. Be glad for their discretion, because there's nothing menial in that.

Rainy Night in Georgia

You may have heard that we've been getting a little rain here in Atlanta. As in an historic deluge. I live near the Chattahoochee River, and flood level is 14 feet. Last night it crested at 28.1 feet. So there are hundreds of roads and bridges closed this morning, including the nearby section of I-285, the perimeter highway around the city.

Below is a shot of that expressway, less than a mile from my house, and below that is your correspondent taking advantage of a break in the rain to ride my bike on it, during rush hour.

They say more rain is on the way.