Round Hill VA came about in 1900 as a terminus for a railroad line. The town is on Hwy 7, NW of Washington D.C.
This card is well over a century old. It is one of those fine, German-printed cards from before the start of WWI. A broad, general guess would put it to 1910 or so.
On the back: Publ. by Wallace’s Pharmacy, Round Hill, Va. No. 21 Made in Germany
That’s Wallace Pharmacy with the Coca-Cola sign on the left. The card is in pretty good shape for its age.
Just a bunch of wild and crazy guys there in the Jolo P.O. (with lots of cautionary signs, too)
Photo by Lee Stone
This is a generic card with the town overprinted. The postmark is from Limestone on January 28,1915. Limestone’s had a post office since 1858, seventy-eight years after Washington College Academy was founded there. Before the Civil War, Limestone was called “Anthem”.
On the back, the credit line on the left reads: Holmfirth Bamforth & Co. Ltd, Publishers (England) and New York. Bamforth’s Locals
The Message reads: “Hello! Guess Who?” (I thought this was printed on the card, but the ink is smeared on the exclamation point) The card is addressed to Miss Sarah Stonecipher, Limestone Tenn. The same lady received the card in the previous posting. Not particularly surprising, I found both of these in Limestone.
This building, on Summit Hill Drive in Knoxville, was built in the 1840s. In 1925, it became Knoxville’s Old City Hall. The building currently houses a law school for Lincoln Memorial University.
The postmark is September 12, 1917, mailed from Knoxville.
It was mailed to a Miss Sarah Stonecipher in Limestone TN.
It reads, as best as I can tell, “Hello I will leave for Athens this morning. (suppose?) I will go to school I would rather take a Business Course if I could Will write soon. (Adrian?)
Published by E. C. Kropp of Milwaukee, inventory number 18434
I don’t know squat about pre-WWII buses (or any other buses, for that matter), but I was curious about this Smoky Mountains Trailways bus. By the shape of the windshield, I think it may be a Mack. I welcome a correction on that. The card was printed in the early 40s (Smoky Mountains National Park was dedicated, by FDR, no less, in 1940.
I read a posting that stated the “founder of Trailways” had a lodge up in the mountains. I couldn’t track down who that may have been, but there was no real Trailways. It was Trailways Transportation System, comprising five individual companies, that was set up in 1936.
Darn nice-looking card, though. Asheville Post Card Company, natch. It’s linen finish, but borderless. I thought it might be a Curt Teich, but that inventory number doesn’t match up (I get a lot of that. APCC used other printers).
As I post this, the Smoky Mountains are actually quite smoky from the numerous forest fires we have going on.
On the front of this postcard are the Southern station (top) and the L&N station. The Southern station dates from 1903; the L&N from 1905. They’re both still sitting around in K-ville, but repurposed. Passenger service persisted until around 1970.
The postcard is a Tichnor Duality Views, published by Standard News Co., Knoxville, Tenn, and dates from the 20s. I don’t have a way to tie an inventory number to a date (there’s not much of anything about Tichnor Publishing Company – they were in Boston – on the web), but the cars look to be 20-ish. It has to be from before 1945, since the clock tower on the Southern station was removed in that year.
I won’t say anything about the dealer writing his/her booth designation and price ON THE CARD. Wouldn’t do any good.
The 1937 edition. It’s 4 x 7″ and, ta da!, it opens out to this:
Martin M-130 Clipper (there were three made for Pan Am starting in 1935: The China Clipper, The Philippine Clipper and the Hawaii Clipper) (one more, I found out, was made for the Soviet Union: the Russian Clipper) (parenthetically write much?) The other aircraft could be an artist’s rendition of a DC-2, which Pan-Am was also flying in the 1930s.
This pamphlet lists all the departure and destination points for Pan Am in 1937. They were all over the place.
These are two cards that were probably in a folder given to each passenger as they boarded the plane. You added your message to and address of your BFF back home, give it to the stewardess. She would then affix a stamp and mail it for you.
They are DC-3 aircraft in NWA livery (at one time, pretty much any airport worth its tarmac had a DC-3 landing there). Later, NWA became Northwest Orient, flying to Japan and other points oriental. “Northwest Orient” makes me think of elk and soy sauce…
NWA was around from the late 20s, then was absorbed, eventually, by Delta.
The writing is all in pencil. The postmark is double stamped and blurry. The interesting thing is that the card, in the upper left, is dated “Feb. 2, 1912”, but the postmark shows it was mailed on January (something) 1912.
Reading on: “Hurry answer soon Hello Hazel how are you by this time I am just fine and having a fine old time tell Bess to send me a card will be home in next month” The author was not big on punctuation.
Mailed to Miss Hazel Lessley, Arcadia, Tenn. Arcadia, formerly known as Reedy Creek Settlement, is one of the earliest clumps of humanity along Bloomingdale Road. We always used to call it Bloomingdale Pike (indicating at some time in the past it was a private road…you had to pay to have the pike across the road lifted so you could get through).
Anyway, there are 36 men, women and children all lined up across the front. The photo was maybe taken in April or May, since the people aren’t wearing winter clothes and there’s some sign, perhaps a circus sign, in the show window to the left advertising an upcoming May 30 performance.
As is common with cards of this vintage, there’s no publisher name shown. There may be an inventory number or other information under the stamp, but I’m not even going to try to steam it off.
At the Kingsport TN Tomato Festival in August. But, wait, there’s more:
Veggies on parade!
What’s a word that begins with “g”, ends with “t”, rhymes with “roast” and means a type of spirit?
BlAAAAAAAAAAAH!
We’re sorry, the correct word is “ghost”.
I have this thing about doors, doorways and windows. It started when I was still a graphic artist. I enjoyed drawing doors and windows. It’s easier to take pictures of them. The Tao rolls on.
This is looking into one of the abandoned Olin-Mathieson buildings in Saltville.
I always thought that saplings painted silver added a certain je ne sais quoi to nearly every place, no?
This was a window in something like an alcove on the second floor of an abandoned school in Glade Spring VA. The place had been trashed.
The foliage outside looked faded in the master file. It was overexposed when I tried to enhance detail in the foreground. There was a simple cure for that: in PE11, duplicate the main layer and then, in that layer, erase everything except the window openings. Set the opacity to 100% and mode to “multiply”. And Bob’s your uncle (no, no, not me…I’m not, repeat, not your uncle! It’s an British expression that means “and that’s that”. “Bob” was Lord Salisbury – this was in the 1880s – who was widely known for being loose and free with plum government positions for those with whom he shared DNA. It’s called “nepotism” and derives from “nephew”, or so I read).
These were at a yard sale in Johnson City. Just sittin’ there lookin’ purty.
Uncle Bob's Pix 