This unusual accident with a car climbing a telephone pole occurred in Akron, OH on May 14, 1936. The caption for this news photograph is “Lois Gerstenmaer somehow managed to get her car into this position. Thankfully nobody was hurt or injured.”
Bobby Thomson and A Young Fan
Sure it’s just a posed publicity photo, but there was a time when ballplayers actually did interact with fans. At the New York Giants’ spring training home in Phoenix, Arizona, Bobby Thomson demonstrates to a little cowboy, Dennis Filan age five, the proper way to grip a baseball bat on March 6, 1953.
Thomson, who will forever occupy a spot in every Giants fans heart for hitting the most famous homerun in baseball history the “shot heard ’round the world” in 1951, was typical of many ballplayers before astronomical salaries became the norm for baseball. These players spent time among the fans.
Not only that, most players worked other jobs in the off-season to make ends meet. They lived among regular people, who went to the ballgames and had daily interactions with them. In New York and many other major league cities, most players took public transportation or walked to the ballpark from their homes. The players were an integral part of the community they played in.
It’s one of the reasons baseball is so screwed up today. Continue reading
Sometimes It Is A Slow News Day
News photographers take pictures that are assigned to them by editors based upon events that might merit coverage.
The caption to this January 5, 1954 Acme news phtograph is “Photographer Arthur Sasse was assigned to cover a contest for the title of Miss Bra Queen of 1954.”
The top portion of the photograph shows Sasse taking the photo that apppears in the bottom panel. Miss Bra Queen was a bust as far as news coverage goes.
Sasse was an accomplished photographer and three years previous to Miss Bra Queen, he took one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century. Today, young people would probably think this was photoshopped, but of course it wasn’t.
It shows super-genius Albert Einstein had a humorous and mischievious side to him. March 14, 1951 was Einstein’s 72nd birthday and he had just gotten into a car to be driven home with Frank Aydelotte and his wife. Sasse was asking Einstein to smile but Einstein had smiled many times that day for the photographers and was sick of it. So he stuck out his tongue instead. Sasse snapped the photo and the iconic image was captured.
Einstein loved the photograph after he saw it and ordered nine copies of it for his personal use. The original photo sold for $74,324 in 2009 at auction.
This is the scene in the moments leading up to the famous photograph being taken and the original uncropped version.
Comedienne Gracie Allen Enters The 1940 Presidential Race
In this newswire photograph, Gracie Allen, the zany half of the Burns & Allen comedy team “tosses her hat into the ring” to run for President in 1940.
Gracie put out a very funny book after her tongue-in-cheek Presidential run entitled How To Become President (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1940) which has enlightening chapters such as:
Government Jobs Pay Big Money
How Not To Offend Anybody
Buying A Good Used Platform
Secrets of Unsuccessful Speechmaking
Even though the candidacy was a plot line for the Burns & Allen weekly comedy radio show, Gracie did a whistlestop tour by train and over 300,000 Americans came out to hear her make campaign speeches in cities along the route.
After “dropping out” of the race in the middle of 1940, Gracie still ended up receiving over 42,000 write-in votes in the November election.
The forgotten story of her candidacy was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. Click here to listen.
Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?
Casey Stengel photo © Niels Lauritzen
Writer Jimmy Breslin claimed that “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game,” was Casey Stengel’s lament during Casey’s first year managing the Mets in 1962. Breslin later admitted he made up the quote. But it would have been an apropos summation of the Mets first season. Continue reading
The year is 1937 and we are looking north on the west side of Sixth Avenue. The Sixth Avenue Elevated in the background will soon be torn down. Sitting out in front of Roxy Jewelers is a man trying to drum up business to “sell your diamonds, pawn tickets, gold, silver, jewelry & antiques for the highest prices paid.” The Great Depression saw many people selling off whatever valuables they had to pay the rent or just have enough to eat. Continue reading
Monuments And Odds & Ends
The focus for the final installment on Green-Wood Cemetery are monuments and some interesting things that I took note of.
Dogs
Dogs are not permitted to be buried in human cemeteries. Somehow though fourteen years after inventor Elias Howe’s death, a dog “Fannie,” was buried at the family plot in 1881. That is the exception.
For many people, their dogs were like members of the family. Continue reading
Mickey Mantle Bunting
The opening of the 2012 baseball season is only weeks away. It is a time to practice skills that may be needed during the regular season.
In this photograph from 1963, Mickey Mantle is attempting to bunt against the Cincinnati Reds in a spring training game. Mantle would bunt frequently during the early years of his career, many times to try and beat it out. But as his knees went through wear and tear, he would rarely attempt to bunt for hits in the 1960’s. So a spring training game was a good time to get in some bunting practice.
Here he appears to miss the drag bunt as Elston Howard watches from the on-deck circle. The Yankees lost this game 4-2.
Do You Know That Name?
Continuing the journey through historic Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn the next set of photographs concentrates on some names from history, some remembered today, others forgotten.
DeWitt Clinton
DeWitt Clinton has many things named after him in New York including a town, a high school, and a park. Known as the father of the Erie Canal, Clinton was a ten term mayor of New York City. Under his stewardship in 1811 the grid plan for the streets of New York City were instituted. He was also a United States Senator and Governor of New York State. Clinton lost the Presidential election of 1812 to James Madison by less than 10,000 votes and 29 electoral votes.
Clinton was moved to Green-Wood in 1844, sixteen years after his death. Continue reading
A Different Way To Spend The Day In New York, Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery
When I’m asked by people visiting New York what are some of the things they should do while they are here, my answer usually results in incredulous looks. “Go see Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx or Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.”
Most people will never visit a cemetery unless their relatives are located there. Even then, most people dread going to a cemetery. This is a mistake from a cultural standpoint. Cemeteries, especially historic ones like Green-Wood, possess landscape and architectural treasures that you cannot see in any museum. They also contain a history told in granite, marble, bronze, slate and limestone through an array of monuments, mausoleums, crypts, sarcophagi and tombstones of the permanent residents of Brooklyn. As Green-Wood describes itself on its web site:
Green-Wood is 478 spectacular acres of hills, valleys, glacial ponds and paths, throughout which exists one of the largest outdoor collections of 19th- and 20th-century statuary and mausoleums. Four seasons of beauty from century-and-a-half-old trees offer a peaceful oasis to visitors, as well as its 560,000 permanent residents.
The rural cemetery movement began in 1831 with the opening of Mount Auburn Cemetery in Massachusetts, Continue reading