Possums (We Do Our Part)

Pictured in this photograph are participants in a parade supporting the National Recovery Administration, circa 1935, during FDR's New Deal. Based on where I got it, in all likelihood it was taken in Griffin, Georgia.

The details of the picture tell an interesting story. The top of an actual tree has been installed in the mule-drawn wagon, and climbing around the branches are at least six live opossums. Just above and to the right of the man at center, there's what looks like the mask of a raccoon, blurred during the exposure. You can see the fellow at right is gently holding the face of the hound that eagerly tracked and treed all these living decorations. The fellow at center is holding a dog calling horn, and just to the right of his head is a lantern. So my guess is that these guys have been up all night, putting together a compelling display on behalf of the West End Cafe, and entertaining people who've been enduring some very tough times.

Ever see anything like it in the Macy's Thanksgiving or Rose Bowl Parades?

I didn't think so.

Possums rock.

Sunbury Grave Markers

Sunbury, Georgia was a Colonial seaport that once rivaled Savannah, which is about 40 miles north. Sunbury is now a tiny town, but in early 19th century America it was important center for cotton and rice, and later timber and turpentine. It remains important for the grave markers to be found there, especially those adjacent to the Sunbury Missionary Baptist Church, an African American congregation. The markers there may be unique in the United States, incorporating handprints, mirrors, shards, seashells and unique inscriptions. At one time there were wooden markers as well, but they are long gone. The WPA-era Georgia Writers' Project documented the greatest of those, a sculptural installation by local man named Siras Bowens. The last scan above is from a photograph of that monument taken in the late 1930s. There's a book titled The American Resting Place by Marilyn Yalom, and you can see some relevant parts of it on Google here.

I was lucky to have a chance to go there some years ago and take some pictures of my own.

Last summer I was in Paris' Pere Lachaise cemetery, and the memorials there may be more grand, but not any more impressive than these.

Legs Sell

One of my favorite pieces of advertising ephemera, this folding card from Dovedown Hosiery Mills in Griffin, Georgia, opens to reveal two long lines of "legs." Each has a slightly different sample color of ladies' hosiery. They're individually hinged at the top, so that the entire series swings out and back, giving something of the effect of a kick line of dancing chorus girls.

This was the spring and summer line for 1937. It's probably not a coincidence that the Rockettes had won the grand prize at the "Paris Exposition de Dance" in 1936. And the Hollywood choreographer Busby Berkeley was doing some of his geometric dance work in the years just prior.

There must have been a powerful appeal in suggesting that the woman wearing them shared the vitality of those performers, emphasized by the exotic, ethnic colors like Carib, Cubatan and Kona hinting at something sexy and forbidden.

But it's the innovative design and animation that sells me.