A Mackey Airlines DC-3 heading south. The card is probably from the late 60s.
Category Archives: Uncle Bob’s Pix
Don (?) Rey
This colorful, embossed cigar label was printed in the 1920s, when Don Rey cigars were being made in Red Lion PA by T. E. Brooks & Co. (later Van Slyke & Horn). As far as I can determine, the company lasted from 1910 to 2011, when the assets were auctioned off. The brand is now being produced in Puerto Rico (if they survived the hurricane).
Hmm. Pillbox hat, red kerchief and lipstick, sideburns. Early gender dysphoria?
Red Postcard
It’s a red postcard, all right. Printed by Dexter Press, which was in Pearl River NY from 1928 to 1952, when it relocated to West Nyack NY.
The Fendrich Cigar Company was headquartered in Evansville IN as early as the mid-19th century, but it became a very large company and could very well have had a factory in New Castle PA in the 20s. It was listed as having one in Columbia PA around that time. I see ads in the New Castle newspaper promoting La Fendrich cigars in 1925.
More to the point, one of the cigar brands they sold was Red Ruby.
The Graceful S. S. Princess Anne
With a superstructure designed by the famous Raymond Loewy, the S.S. Princess Anne launched in 1934 and plied the waters until 1964, when it was sold and became the S.S. New Jersey. It is now an artificial reef 100′ deep off West Palm Beach. (I have enhanced the color. The card has faded)
Dandelions!
Dandelions! They’ll grow anywhere…
(That’s a blasting drill hole on the right)
Old Silo
You don’t see a lot of these around. It’s a wooden feed silo. I have no guess of its age, but these tended to rot out over a period of time. It’s located on the right on Highway 58 in Lee County VA, just a bit east of the junction of 58 and 421.
Ozark Air Lines DC-9
Oversize 5″ x 7″, company-issued postcard. Since Ozark Air Lines acquired its first DC-9s in 1966, I would suppose this card dates from about then. Ozark lasted from 1950 to 1986, when it was bought out by TWA. The company was based in St. Louis.
Virginia Intermont College
This card was printed in 1950. The factory-added color is kind of slapdash, but it’s probably reasonably true. The salesmen made pretty accurate color notes.
Begun in Glade Spring in 1884, the college in Bristol closed in 2014.
Arches
On the site of the old Columbian Paper Company in Bristol. These were supports for a Norfolk & Western railroad loading ramp at the plant. This ramp was made for very heavy loads. The first arch (at the other end) has a 1931 date formed in the concrete. Oh, wait, here’s a shot of it now (taken with my VERY CRAPPY cell phone camera…I always have a good camera with me, well, except for this day):
Sneaky!
Both of these postcards show a Delta DC-7 with different livery (color scheme). And, except for the livery, they both feature the same photograph. Whoever did the retouching was really good. These are from the mid- to late-50s. This particular DC-7 was “written off” in 1962, after a service of eight years.
On the back: “Delta-C&S Air Lines Golden Crown DC-7’s are world’s fastest airlines. This luxurious transport, seating 69 passengers cruises at 365 miles per hour at 25,000 feet, has a top speed of 410 miles per hour.”
The card was printed by Delta and included in folders presented to passengers upon boarding. The flight attendant would mail this card for you at no charge (I think). All you had to do was address the card and scrawl something banal as a message.
Wienermobile!
I put the back of the card first because that’s Meinhardt Raabe as “Little Oscar”. Starting in 1937, he was the original little person (he was 4′ tall) to be the official representative of Oscar Mayer Wieners. This card dates to the 40s.
Raabe was in The Wizard of Oz. He was the coroner who pronounced the Wicked Witch as “dead”. Ding, dong, etc.
The credits are: Pub. by William Wollin Studio, Madison 3, Wisc. (63826)
Dextone Made Direct from Kodachrome and Ansco Color by Dexter Press, West Nyack, N.Y.
Psycho Rabbit
I’m not going to let him near any of MY eggs! This bunny has found some strange drugs…
Wilbur Dam, Twice
On the back: PLANT OF WATAUGA POWER ON WATAUGA RIVER NEAR JOHNSON CITY WHICH FURNISHES ELECTRICAL CURRENT FOR INDUSTRIAL, COMMERCIAL AND DOMESTIC PURPOSES TO THIS CITY, THE CITY OF BRISTOL AND SEVERAL SMALLER TOWNS.
This is Wilbur Dam. The dam, fully completed and on line in 1912, actually began generating electricity on a test basis to Elizabethton on December 25, 1911, apparently making it the earliest major hydro-electric generating facility in Tennessee. According to Jackie and Dawn Trivette Peters in Images of America – Carter County (page 101), it was named for James Wilbur, a sawmill operator “in the community”. Thanks to Joe Penza, Archivist at the Elizabethton – Carter County Public Library, I found out the whole story and it hinges more on the importance of a railroad name than that of a logging operator. Joe forwarded documents to me that noted the Virginia and Southwestern Railroad Company had established a flag station and side track for the logging operation on Big Laurel Branch. The railroad named it “Wilbur Station”. So, the dam, officially known as “Horseshoe Bend Dam”, took on the name “Wilbur Dam”. When TVA bought the dam in 1945, the name stuck.
Dan Crowe, in his book The Horseshoe People (1976/self-published), quotes an Aunt Cass Carden as saying during the dedication of the dam ceremony, “Youngins, they’re a-burnin’ a hairpin in a bottle.” I think she was referring to a light bulb.
Curt Teich Printing Company of Chicago began producing the (above) C.T. American Art Colored cards in 1915, using an offset printing process. Later, in the early 1930s, using new European inks and linen-effect embossing, they brightened the cards up tremendously. This Asheville Post Card Company card, from the 1970s, shows how the process, along with more careful and artistic photo editing of the original black-and-white photograph, produced a much more pleasing picture. The colors and other details were added at the facility and printed using a five-plate process:
That suspension bridge in front of the dam was for a time the only access to the powerhouse.
Uncle Bob's Pix 