Standards of Dress. Attending school

This is a 9th Grade (Freshman) Class in high school, 1946.  Specifically, is the Freshman class at NCHS in 1946 (the Class of 1949).

Now, some will know NCHS who might read this, others will not. But in 1946 this class attended school in a city that had under 30,000 residents.  It was a city, but it was a city vastly surrounded by the country, as it still somewhat is. This class of boys (there were more in it than those just in this photograph) were from the town and the country.  None of them were big city kids. Some were ranch kids.  I recognize one of them who was.. Some came from families that were doing okay, some from families that were poor.

So how do we see them dressed?  One is wearing a striped t-shirt.  Exactly one.  Every other boy here is wearing a button up long sleeved shirt.  Of those, all but one are wearing ties.

One of the ones wearing a tie is one of my uncles.

Did they turn out with ties just for their photographs that day?  Probably they did.  I suspect so, but even at that, they all actually could come up with ties.  And somebody knew hot to tie them.  None of these boys appears to be enormously uncomfortable wearing a tie.

 

NCHS Juniors in 1946, this is therefore the Class of 1947.

Here's a few of the boys in the Junior class that year.  Here too, this is probably a bit different depiction of high school aged boys than we'd see today. For one thing, a lot of them are in uniform. As already mentioned in the thread on JrROTC, it was mandatory at the school.  Based upon the appearances of the boys at the time the photograph was taken, this probably reflects relatively common daily male dress at NC.  Most of the boys are in uniform.  Of those who are not, most are wearing button up shirts, but no ties.  A couple have t-shirts.  Nobody's appearance is outlandish in any fashion, and nobody is seeking to make a statement with their appearance.

NCHS girls, Class of 1947, as Juniors in 1946.

Here are the Junior girls that year.  As can be seen, NCHS had a uniform for girls at that time, which appears to have been some sort of wool skirt and a white button up shirt.  They appear to have worn their uniform everyday, as opposed to the boys who must not have.

Uniforms at schools are a popular thing to debate in some circles, and I'm not intending to do that.  Rather, this simply points out the huge evolution in the standards of youth dress over the years.  This is s cross section of students from a Western town.  The people depicted in it had fathers who were lawyers, doctors, packing house employees, ranchers and refinery workers.  They're all dress in a pretty similar fashion, and the dress is relatively plan really.  No t-shirts declaring anything, as t-shirts of that type weren't really around. And no effort to really make a personal statement through dress, or even to really stand out by appearance.

Shaving

West Point Cadet shaving with a straight razor in the field.

The first thing I do every weekday, or at least every weekday that I work downtown, is shave.

I don't really like shaving.  I don't want to grow a beard however, so shave I must.  I've been shaving, but not every day, since I was 13 years old.

As noted, I frankly don't care much for it, and I'd likely skip shaving a lot of days if I had the option.  It sort of irritates my skin, and it's just not something that I look forward to doing in any fashion.  Still, for the most part it's been part of my daily routine for decades.  Having said that, prior to my practicing law, I'd skip days now and then, including week days, and I still skip Saturdays usually.  Just because I don't like it.

Shaving is one of those things humans do that go back into vast antiquity.  You wouldn't think so, but it does.  Shaving certainly goes back to classical antiquity, the Romans for example were normally (but not always) clean shaven.  But it goes further back than that.  People who have researched this topic claim there's evidence of ancient cultures sometimes shaving with pieces of obsidian, which is that sharp.  It's also be darned dangerous.

At some point that practice gave way to shaving with razors, a type of extremely sharp knife with unique angles.  Razors were a permanent fixture, i.e., unlike now you didn't toss them out after the edge grew dull, but rather resharpened the edge, or kept it sharp, with a leather strop.

It took some skill to shave with a blade like that, and getting cut was pretty common.  People often chose to get shaved in a barber shop, if they happened to be in one, probably simply to avoid having to use the difficult implement themselves.  Generally, barbers today still have them on hand, and some use them to finish a haircut where the hair meets the beard line or neckline.

 

 Soldier receiving shave from unit barber with straight razor.

Shaving is much less of a pain now than it was in prior eras.  Thanks to the safety razor.

Patent drawing for the Gillette safety razor.

The safety razors was an invention which allowed for a disposable razor blade to be held in a device that thereby allowed the user to dispense with a razor, i.e., the true super sharp knife.  The design was perfected in the early 20th Century and provided in large numbers to U.S. troops in World War One.  Thereafter it rapidly replaced the old razor.  The device was the safety razor, as it was safer to use than the old hand held blade.

Man shaving with "safety razor."  Dish was brush for making lather can be seen on sink.

Safety razors themselves are a think of the past now.  When I first started shaving, that's what I had, and I used them for what seemed like a long time but it really was not.  At some point in the late 1970s Bic introduced the disposable razor, which you started to see around a lot. And about the same time some company introduced a new style of razor with a disposable head.  When I went to back training, we were required to have two of that type (one of which we never used, as we stored it in our locker so that it was always clean for inspections.

 Soldiers hanging around, one shaving, 1918.

That was the first time I had used one of the new type razors.  When I came back from basic training I briefly went back to the old safety razor, but the new razors really were much better and much more difficult to cut yourself with. Even with safety razors cutting yourself accidentally was pretty common.  At some point in the 1980s the manufacturers stopped making blades for them entirely.

At some point in the 20th Century, most like in the 1920s or 1930s, and certainly by the 1930s, electric shavers started to make their appearance.  Early ones are downright scary to see in photographs, as they actually plugged in. Given that people were using them around sinks and what not, it's amazing that people didn't routinely electrocute themselves.  But by the 1950s they started to be battery operated.  My father had one that he hardly ever used, and which I think he bought for traveling.  I have one as well, for a similar reason.  If I go to industrial plants, and need to shave my mustache off due to plant restrictions, I have it with me.  Otherwise, I don't use it.

Electric shaver, 1930s.

When men used old fashioned razors, they also made their own lather.  This involved using soap chips, which we largely just throw away now, and mixing them up in a bowl with a brush.  You can still get all of these things, including the brush, if you want to do any part of this the old way. According to those who have tried it, the soapy lather made in this fashion is superior to the stuff in the can, but a good brush is outrageously expensive, with badger hairs being the favored material for construction of the brush.

While I never experienced, I've heard of the requirement of a brush being retained in some sorts of military kit well into the 20th Century, by which point hardly anyone made their own lather.  And probably the first time I saw a shaving brush outside of the barber ship was in a military use, albeit in the hands of a Vietnam veteran who had picked up the habit of continually dusting off his M16 with one.  But some people still do indeed use them, and those who do regard the lather they produce as far superior to canned shaving cream.

Canned shaving cream, by the way, is what people used to use around here to dress cattle up for 4H shows, fwiw.  It dries pretty stiff.

At some point in the 20th Century, commercially prepared shaving cream became available, with it first being available in tubes, like toothpaste.  The canned shaving cream wasn't invented until 1949, in spite of what hte clever series of Barbisol "Shave Like A Man" commercials might suggest (Barbisol did exist prior to that, but in tube packaged form).

It's been occasionally noted here, in spite of the routine departures from  it, that the main point of this blog is to explore the period of roughly 1880 to 1920.  Here a least is something that routine and strange at the same time, the change in the way men shave.  And I have to note that as much as I dislike shaving, and I do, I still shave most days.  I don't want to grow a beard.  But had I lived a century ago I'm afraid I would have liked shaving much less.  I can see why some individuals chose to grow beards even in well shorn eras, such as Henry Cabot Lodge who kept his beard in hairy and clean shaven eras.

Henry Cabot Lodge, not a shaver.

Indeed it amazes me that there were eras that were so clean shaven before the safety razor.  You have some eras, like the Civil War era, when everyone gave up on their razors and grew beards, but you have others where everyone is shaved like, for the most part, the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.  Indeed, in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries solders were not restricted from growing beards, like they started to be with the introduction of the gas mask during World War One, but almost none of them did (mustaches were another matter).  Likewise, you'll hardly ever see a photograph of a cowboy with a beard.    

The added amazing part of that, to me, is that these individuals were shaving in the field, which would have involved packing a straight razor and soap chips.  Pretty involved process for people living with a minimal number of things really.  I've shaved in the field, while in the National Guard and in basic training, but I never liked doing it and always felt like I was scratching my face up.  

In contrast, now we have quite a few men who like to have a couple of days beard growth all the time.  That's a look I don't get, but it's become extremely common and accepted.  To me, it always looks like these individuals need a shave, or are growing a beard, but they're not. That's the look they're shooting for.  I've even seen lawyers adopt it, albeit always young lawyers where that look is more common and in.

Anyhow, this post is another noting a trend, and an observation.  Had I lived a century ago, I suspect I would have disliked shaving even more than I do, or been one of those guys who just chucked it and grew a beard.

Being surprised by past conditions

As everyone who stops in here knows, one of the purposes of this blog is supposed to be to explore historical conditions.  The blog itself, of course, meanders a fair bit, so a person could be legitimately excused for not knowing that, but that's the general theme of things here.

Given that this is the authors' focus, you'd think that the authors themselves wouldn't be surprised by the very things they note, but in fact that's not always the case, which demonstrates, I guess, how accustomed we can become to noting things in our own neck of the woods, while running off of general assumptions in regards to other areas.

People stopping in here have no doubt noticed that there are suddenly a lot of photos or reflected posts on Hawai'i up here and that the authors have recently been there.  For me, it's not the first time, but the first time in a very long time.  I think I was last there in about 1975 or so, but frankly, it could have been as long ago as 1972 or 1973.  It's a while back.

At that time, I was pretty young, and while I recall being there, I also frankly wasn't as prepared, rather obviously, to be surprised by one thing or another of the type we generally note here.  This time, much older than I was back then, things are a bit different.

In travelling to Hawai'i, I'll note that we went to Maui and Oahu.  Last time, I went with my mother to Oahu and then to Maui.  We went to Oahu as my mother had a great aunt who lived there, and who actually had been born and raised there.  So we spent most of our time there.  I recall that Maui, where one of her daughters lived, was less developed than Oahu  and I remember visiting the extremely impressive Haleakalā National Park.  I also recall that my cousin was married to a Native Hawaiian and that he was quite the hunter, which really impressed me.  But I didn't run around looking to make observations on old Hawai'i.

 Hunting is a traditional activity of the Polynesians and is very much a local activity in Maui.

I didn't this time either, but perhaps for some reason, I can't help but not do that. So I did a bit. And there were plenty of things that surprised me.

For one thing, I was surprised by the serious nature of cattle ranching on Maui. Frankly, I shouldn't have been, but for some reason I assumed that ranching on Maui was probably a touristy remnant of days long gone by. Not so. There are cattle everywhere outside of town.  And a lot of the country looks like pretty good cattle country to.

I feel downright stupid in making that observation, as its' probably the same sort of observation that tourists make here that I find rather lacking in one way or another.  "You have a lot of cattle here!"  Well, no kidding.  Well. . . they have a lot of cattle there too. And reading up on it, cattle have been a pretty big deal in rural Hawai'i for a really long time.

One thing I wouldn't have been prepared for at all are some of the efforts that were made to develop the cattle industry beyond that which it was.  For instance, one of the islands visible from the southern coast of Maui is a small island most recently used by the Navy as a target range.  Now its a state park, closed to general access, but at one time in the late 19th Century a Wyoming rancher and his partner tried to make the entire island a cattle ranch.  I would never have guessed that.  I guess that also says about how lucrative big time ranching in general was, and how comparatively cheaper Hawaiian land was, prior to air transportation (and more on air transportation in a moment).  No way a Wyoming rancher could buy an island like that today.

 Kahoʻolawe.  During and after World War Two this was a Navy target range, but in starting in the mid 19th Century it was ranch land, and was one big ranch owned by a partnership made up of Wyoming rancher Angus McPhee and Maui landowner Harry Baldwin from 1918 up into the 1940s. Even at the time it was first a target range, it remained a ranch.

That cattle were and are such a big deal shouldn't have surprised me, as pig have been since before European contact.  Pork is a major Polynesian food item, and the pigs sure didn't swim to Hawaii.  Indeed, there were no mammals at all on the Hawaiian Islands before the Polynesians started to colonize them around 1100. They brought the pigs with them.  Before that, the islands were the domain of birds and spiders.  Some really big birds too.

Some of the birds are now extinct.  That's not a surprise to me, but what probably is a surprise to many is that the Polynesians had a major hand in that, in the early colonization process.  The Hawaiian Island were partially deforested in the process of Polynesian colonization, and some of the really tiny remote ones were virtually completely deforstested.  Bird life also took a pounding.  I'm not saying, however, that the Polynesians were bad people for doing that.  They were trying to survive against incredible odds, and to the extent that they recreated the islands to suit their needs, well, it's pretty impressive really.

If pigs are no surprise to me, and cattle shouldn't be, one animal that really, really is, is the horse.  I wouldn't have expected any significant horse use on the islands at all, outside of ranching, but I was very far off the mark.

 

Saddle Horses today on Haleakala, Maui, Hawai'i.

Horses were apparently introduced to the island relatively shortly after European and received very widespread use.   That really shouldn't have taken me off guard, given the general difficulty in getting around the island, or in transporting anything, at the time.  The last Crown Princess of Hawai'i, Victoria Kaʻiulani Kalaninuiahilapalapa Kawekiu i Lunalilo Cleghorn, actually died after dying from a cold she caught while riding on Oahu, although her heath had otherwise become weak by her concerns over the fate is the islands and her loss of climatic acclimation by living abroad.  Still, it's interesting that riding had become common in the islands.

The Hawai'ian monarchy had actually established a cavalry unit in order to be able to rapidly deploy troops in an environment in which it otherwise was difficult to, and the U.S. Army consistently deployed cavalry to the islands after the US annexed them in 1898.  Foreign invasion of the islands was a major military concern for the US and while we now principally think of the Navy in this context, the Army had a major role in defending the islands.  A lot of that mission was fulfilled by cavalry, the only type of unit that was capable of going from one spot on the islands to another quickly.  Cavalry remained stationed in the islands as least as late as the 1930s.

I don't know if it was the Army that brought polo to the islands, but I've read that George Patton, who was station in Oahu in the 20s or 30s, played a fair amount of polo while stationed there, which isn't surprising as polo was a huge Army deal at the time.  I noticed that Maui has a polo grounds, which doesn't mean the Army brought it there, but I do wonder.  Anyhow, an area has to be pretty horsey before polo will show up there, particularly a place like Hawaii as it isn't as if it'd be easy to ship your polo pony there, or that it'd be even easy to ship a horse from one island to another.  Anyhow, it says something about how common horses had become.

Indeed, horses were such a factor in the Army's role in Hawaii that Hawaii was one of the first locations in which the Army made a dedicated effort to phase them out.  Mechanization of artillery started to come in during World War One, but it was still something that was somewhat underway as late as World War Two.  Anyhow, while a surprising location, to me, for such an effort, Hawaii was one of the areas where the Army mechanized artillery nearly immediately after World War one.

One thing that very much surprised me, and shouldn't have, is the lack of sea transportation in the islands. As close as they are, you'd think that all the major islands would have ferry services.  They do not.  There are ferry services that serve very nearby islands. For examples, the islands that are within very close proximity of Maui have ferry services, which makes sense. But if its a major island, it won't be in ferry contact with the others. That struck me as really odd, until I realized later that the economics of it just don't allow for that in the modern era.

Traditionally, of course, the Hawaiians traveled from one island to another by seagoing outrigger canoes.  But you can't carry much in a boat of that type.  The Polynesians themselves used more substantial boats, albeit still pretty small, for long distance travel  No doubt that was the norm in the islands up through, and after World War Two, as well. That is, people who lived there went from one place to another by boat.  I guess a ferry existed that operated between Maui and Oahu within the past 15 or so years.  So why not now?

 Traditional outrigger canoe.

Well, it probably doesn't make economic sense.

In my mind's eye, I imaged a situation, for example, where a businessman in Oahu might want to go to Maui for the day and work.  A car ferry would allow him to take his car over, do his work, and catch the ride home that evening.  Makes sense, right?

Probably not.  For one thing, being a landlubber, I probably don't' appreciate the number of hours involved in a trip of that type.  It'd probably be a three day deal, allowing for transportation. And in thinking on it, it makes a lot more sense to just fly over to Maui, rent a car, do your work, and go home.  That's probably a lot cheaper.  Indeed, depending on prices, that's what I'll do quite often if I need to go to a town or city over five road hours away.  I can do it quicker and cheaper by flying and renting a car. That should have occurred to me.

Pearl Harbor, by air.

Maui, by air.

So that air travel has become as vital, for intra islands transportation, as it has become for intra state travel in Alaska, shouldn't have surprised me.  I'm still not entirely convinced that some sort of passenger ferry wouldn't be somewhat viable, but it probably isn't.

On air travel, the airplane has made modern Hawaii what it is, for good or ill.  That's not a criticism, just an observation.  Hawai'i is beautiful and much of it remains unspoiled, but frankly Honolulu is a place that I think only a person who loves really big cities would love.  It's an obvious major destination for Japanese tourists, and has been for decades. Signs are frequently in English and Japanese. Chances are to residents of crowded Tokyo, it's pretty neat.  But no matter what, you couldn't have done a Japan to Hawai'i vacation without the airplane.

For that matter, you really had a hard time doing one from the US to Hawai'i, although one of my grandfathers had done just that. As a young man, his health deteriorating, he was sent to Oahu to live with relatives there.  This was prior to World War One, and it involved a long sea voyage, quite obviously, as part of the trip.  His health was pretty bad at the time, and they sent him there for the weather, activity and to relax, which he apparently did.  I've seen one photo of him from that time period (I never met him myself) and his is indeed a skinny, very sick looking, young man in the period.

But that a rarity indeed, made possible by his father assisting in it and by the fact that his cousins and aunts were living there, making it somewhat cheaper than the norm.  For most people, traveling to the islands wasn't even a remote possibility until the airplane made it easy, although tourism was already a factor in the islands economy in the early part of the 20th Century. Still, on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, while there were hotels there, they weren't garden variety tourists for the most part, but fairly well heeled ones.  

The pink Royal Hawaiian Hotel, built as a luxury hotel (which it still is) in 1927.  As a complete aside, this photos has two Japanese tourist in the foreground, with one posing for the other with arms raised.  While not to seem culturally insensitive, this seems to be very much a Japanese cultural affectation, as Japanese tourists seem to invariably strike one of about three poses when being photographed.  This is one, with the person being photographed having his fingers in the "V" sign.  The same sign, with arms at the side is very common, and young female tourists seem to like to pose for male companions in a hip swung sort of pose with arms at the side as if pointing to something, no matter how dense the crowd near them may be.

Air travel to the islands was, at first brutally expensive, and prior to World War Two it was something that was really only undertaken by the very well to do.  After the war, however, air travel, while still not cheap, became much more affordable.  By the 60s it was very affordable, and now, while not cheap, it's well within the reach for Middle Class Americans.  In the meantime, air travel has expanded to where it is now possible to fly directly to Maui as well, which was not the case until 1983.

 

The first intra island air travel was on a plane like this. Well suited for its role, it'd be slow for most air passengers today.  Model at the Pacific Aviation Museum.

 Pan American in its post World War Two glory days.  This aircraft model, at the Pacific Aviation Museum, depicts a Pan American Strato Cruiser, a commercial airliner variant of the B-29 Stratofortress of World War Two.  Pan American used this long range aircraft to replace its prewar flying boats.  This airplane was the type that was used to fly all the way to Japan, with stops in Honolulu and Wake Island.

While tourists come to Hawai'i by plane, it's still the case that a lot of what's used in the islands still is local in one sense or another.  I've spoken elsewhere about local breweries, which tended to be lost in the US and reappear, but they were never lost in Hawai'i, other than during prohibition.  And the same is true of a lot of other products, some being surprising.  Portuguese sausage, for example, has a long local history, reflecting the immigration of Portuguese farmers to the islands in the early 20th Century.  And the islands still farm sugar cane and mill sugar, shipping the product back to the US.

Anyhow, some odds and ends in observations.  And I guess a final comment.  I wonder what it says about a person who picks up such observations while on such a trip? 

Forgetting why things were built that way.

Recently, a series of events has reminded me of how much people have forgotten why certain things were built a certain way, to our occasional detriment.

One of these events happened when I was at Sunday Mass.  A power substation blew out that morning and took power down to at least half the town, including my house, and the Church. When I entered the Church, built in the classic style, the reason for the big stained glass windows was immediately apparent.  The interior was fairly well lighted via the windows alone.

Now this particular church was built in the teens or early twenties; well before audio systems.  At some point within the last 30 to 40 years, an audio system has been put in.  Somebody, used to the audio system, must have thought that we'd be unable to hear the Mass as everyone was seated as close to the front of the Church as possible, given a pretty compact feeling to the the pews.

That was completely unnecessary.  In actuality, traditionally built churches require no audio system at all.

 St. Luke's Church, Forest Hills, New York, circa 1940s.  This church has electric lights, clearly, but it wouldn't be hard to see inside without them. And it wouldn't have had a PA system at the time this photograph was taken.

The large vaulted interiors of traditional churches are more than ample to naturally amplify a person's voice, at least if they are speaking in a manner which projects their voice, which not all people do, of course. But for those who know how to do that, and it's an easy thing for at least most men to do, the mere design of a church is all the amplification enhancement that they'll require.  Indeed, the first speaker of the morning, prior to the audio coming back on, was plenty loud enough simply through his own voice.  We've just forgotten that churches were designed that way for a reason.

So were courtrooms.

The only people who really need to hear in a courtroom are the lawyers, the witnesses, the judge and the jury.  And just about any courtroom fulfills that requirement just as is.  Be that as it may, in recent years courthouses have been almost completely retrofitted to give everyone a microphone.  It isn't necessary, and I don't like it.  My voice is plenty loud enough without amplification, and I often find myself brushing the microphone aside or walking away from it, as I don't need it, and it's just an irritating distraction. But nobody else needs it either.  In those instances in which a person is extremely soft spoken, the microphone actually doesn't help much anyhow, so they aren't really achieving anything.   None the less, all the new courthouses have audio (and visual) systems and by this point in time, probably nearly all the old ones do as well.

 This is the photograph we use as a flag on this site.  It depicts the original Federal Courthouse in Cheyenne, now no longer standing.  Note the extremely high ceiling.  This room was built for natural audio, and natural cooling as well.

Just as older churches and courthouses have been retrofitted with audio systems, older office buildings have been retrofitted with new windows and air conditioning systems.  The two don't always work well, or even work together.

I work most days in a century old office building.  It's a nicely preserved building, but it was clearly built before any kind of air conditioning.  It was also basically framed up while in progress, which was very skillfully done, but which also meant that the windows were set by workers in a less standard way than today.  Indeed, only the front of the building really has a uniform window pattern, as the original thought was that the sides would probably not need them long, as it was anticipated other buildings would be built of a similar five story height along side of it.

None of that is a problem, but some years ago, quite a few now, the decision was made, and wisely, to put in a set of nice new windows. They look great, but they're modern office windows.  I.e., they seal up very nicely but they aren't really made to open.  Indeed, they take a key to open them, and when we first had the windows in, we never opened them up.

The problem there is that the building wasn't built with an air conditioning system in mind.  The air conditioning system was the windows.  As noted, an air conditioning system was put in, years ago, but its always fighting the basic design of the building.  At first, we would try to assist it by not opening the new windows, but over time, everyone has given up on that and we've unlocked some of them, although they don't open wide like the original, not very attractive, windows did.  The other day the air conditioning system was down and we actually had a very warm day. By the time I went home in the afternoon, I was sick from the hot, still, air.  It isn't that high heat actually bothers me, it does not.  But dead still air trapped in a building does.

I'm not suggesting that we do away with the air conditioning and put old style windows back in.  But what I do think is interesting is that it's been forgotten in most buildings of this type that when they were built, they worked in hot weather.  The east and west facing windows were opened, and the ceilings were high.  Probably a decent breeze flowed through them on such days.

Indeed, the 19th Century buildings at Ft. Laramie remain very cool even on blistering hot days.  I've been in them when the temperature was over 100F outside, and they were cool. The reason has to do with the construction.  They were built with very high ceilings. The builders knew that if the windows and doors were left open there'd actually be a nice cooling breeze flowing through them.  I'm sure today, if they were in private ownership, somebody would be trying to put in air conditioning.

 Old Bedlam, the oldest building in Wyoming, on the grounds of Ft. Laramie.

In the southwest there are very old, very stout, buildings also built with cooling in mind.  Thick adobe buildings were common in the Southwest, and quite a few still stand.  They do not get hot, in spite of very hot weather.  People just knew how to build them.

For that matter, when I was a kid here people generally did not have air conditioning.  A few people did, but it was uncommon.  For the most part, people just opened windows.  My parents house, before some additions were made to it, stayed uniformly comfortable in very hot weather.  An addition of a glassed back porch partially defeated that, but even then, comfortable areas of the house could be found.  Basically, you didn't need air conditioning.  When people did have it, at first, they tended to have a window mounted unit or a swamp cooler.

The schools here didn't even have air conditioning when I attended them.  Granted, school gets out here in May, before the weather generally gets really hot.  Some of the schools are pretty hot in the summer, based upon the limited number of times I've been in them. But I'll bet they're all built today with an air conditioning system.  When we attended them, if it was warm, they just opened the windows.

We have, at home, a swamp cooler.  Truth be known, I hate it.  It may be just me, but I always find about any setting on air conditioning in houses to be annoying, or even arctic.  I never turn ours on, but my wife, who likes air conditioning, and who is always hot, does.  I tend to be always cold, so I'm not keen on it.  It'd be different, no doubt, if we lived in a really hot climate.  And, indeed, a person needs to be careful what they complaint about.  While it was blistering hot in her recently, now the air conditioning is on line and it's absolutely freezing, in my view, in the building.  The system may be old, but it sure works.

Another thing that people have forgotten the purpose of is the strip of land, found in some areas of this town, and in many towns, that runs between the sidewalk and the city streets.  This feature is a thing of the past for the most part. The feature existed so the city could expand the streets if it needed to. It's nice for property owners, and pedestrians, as it allows people to walk away from the street.  But it's really just a convenience and that small strip of land actually belongs to the city.

This presents no sort of problem at all for the most part, but one somewhat bad thing is that in older neighborhoods people planted trees in these strips, which is again, perfectly find, unless they're obstructing vision on busy corners, which on some here they really do.  Nobody seems to recall that the strip actually belongs to the city, and perhaps the city ought to take those trees down when they obstruct vision at busy corners.  Of course, they aren't going to, and people would be upset, as the trees are nice. But, as with the other day when the traffic lights were out, some of those corners are really scary.

Traffic lights themselves are something that they city seems to have forgotten the purpose of.  In recent years the City, to save fuel, has changed the setting on traffic lights on weekends so that some of them, on very busy streets, just flash red (or yellow), rather than turn green.  Well, saving fuel isn't their purpose.  Stopping traffic on really busy intersections is. The weekend streets are really now a little scary.

Here's one that takes younger people completely off guard:

That's an ash tray.

More specifically, it's a nice stainless steel ashtray affixed to the wall by our elevator.  Nobody every uses it, but at one time people did. That's because at one time smoking was so common, and so accepted, that it could be anticipated that people would need an ash tray just standing there, waiting for the elevator.  Now, if you got on the elevator smoking, people wouldn't be happy, and smoking isn't allowed anywhere in this building. The very few smokers who work in the building have to go outside to smoke. But even when I started work here (which, granted, is a quarter century ago) people smoked in the building. Some smoked at work.  And just a little earlier than that, people smoked in waiting rooms and lobbies.  A thing like this was then needed.  Now, it's just a weird stainless steel oddity.

Speaking of weird oddities, how about this:

There's one of these on every floor of this building, in the stairwells.  What are they?  Little access panels for banks of phone connections. . .long since out of operation and disconnected, and totally inadequate for a modern phone system.  Indeed, updating a building, such has been done, is not easy, but one oddball thing it does is leave the entire old phone system there, just not connected.

Here's one that we were using up until just a couple of years ago, but which I've still heard people wonder about.  It's a mail box. That is, an official U.S. Mail drop box.  The post office doesn't let us use it anymore, however.

The reason that we can't use it is that the lobby of this building isn't open 24 hours a day, and there's a postal regulation that requires 24 hour, seven day a week, access to mail boxes.  That is, they must be open for people to drop mail in, 24 hours a day, and this one isn't.  But, at one time, every office in this building dropped its mail here, and the Postal carrier picked it up.  Pretty handy.  It's still here, of course, but it's blocked so that we cannot use it, and they don't pick the mail up from it anymore.  My guess is that people occasionally forget, and some mail will be in it forever.

From the obscure to the ultra obscure, this is a display case for cigars.  At one time some small scale merchant had his small shop here in this lobby.  It probably was that way from day one, up until maybe the 50s or 60s.  A little cigar shop that also sold newspapers and magazines.  No doubt a lot of businessmen bought their newspapers, and cigarettes and cigars, in the lobby everyday. There's still a cigar shop up the block, which also sells malts, but not newspapers.  Even when I first practiced law that cigar shop did a thriving business, in a space about the size of a closet, selling newspapers, cigars, cigarettes, candy and, oddly enough, pornography.  It was bizarre.  Now it's returned, under a new owner in a much cleaner fashion, selling only malts, cigars and, oddly enough, history magazines.

Natrona County High School — The High School Experience

Natrona County High School — The High School Experience

The high school I graduated from, in 1981, was built in 1923.

Its been added on to before, but not like this.  Hard to imagine, but the campus grounds, and that's what it will now be, is set to massively expand.  It's nice to see the old structure keeping on keeping on, but I do wish that the reconstruction wasn't set to take place over a period of years.  Anyhow, it's interesting to see what's in the anticipated works.

Spats

This is a photograph of an item on display at the Wyoming Veterans Museum in Natrona County, Wyoming.

 

It's a really nice museum not, having improved tremendously over the years, and with a lot of  very nice displays.  This particular one displays the uniforms of a long serving National Guardsmen and Reservists, who had Federalized service during World War Two.  What surprised me here was the spats.

The reason the spats surprised me is that I didn't think the Army had ever issued spats, or that officers had worn them as an unofficial item, and as far as I can tell, I'm right.  It's natural enough that the donor included these spats in this material, as they look like they belong there. The Army, after all, did issue leggings and puttees, which are similar.  Indeed, leggings are sort of like giant spats.

Army supply  man fitting private with Leggings, World War Two.

Leggings, as a U.S. Army issue item go back at least as far as the early 20th Century.  When the Army started issuing leggings as a matter of course with certainty I"m not sure of, but it seems to have come in during the Spanish American War, which also saw a turn over in uniform designs reflecting the switch from bold colored uniforms to dull colored uniforms which was caused by the introduction of smokeless gunpowder.  Prior to smokeless gunpowder, the military problem was seeing soldiers, and allowing soldiers to see each other, in dense smoke.  Hence the bold colors of that era.  Once smokeless powder arrived, however, the problem became the opposite.  Soldiers in one unit could see each other well enough, but they were also pretty exposed to the enemy.  The British started the ball rolling with a switch to "khaki," which in that case meant any dull earth tone, and the US followed their lead right at the start of the Spanish American War.  Indeed, as the change came right at that point, most soldiers fought the war in an ad hoc uniform made up of bits and pieces of various uniforms.  The old dark blue wool shirt was nearly universal, but cotton duck stable trousers were usually worn in place of wool trousers.  The Army did start issuing leggings right at this time, but not everyone actually received them.

First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry on the San Juan Heights.  Theodore Roosevelt is wearing Army leggings.  One other trooper is wearing a non Army, perhaps leather, pair.  Many aren't wearing any at all.  These soldiers would be wearing cotton duck trousers, except for Roosevelt who is wearing khaki breeches.  The shirts are the blue wool shirt of that period.

Leggings actually saw use well prior to the Spanish American War, and both soldiers and civilians wore them at least as far back as the 18th Century. They were a standard item for both sides in the Revolutionary War, for example.  Some units wore them during the Civil War, although they were not a service wide item in either Army.  After the late 1890s, they'd carry on as an issue item in the Army, Marine Corps, and even the Navy, up through the end of World War Two, although the Army started phasing them out in 1943.  The Marines actually retained them up into the Korean War.  The Navy still issues white ones today as a dress item, on occasion.

At the same time, civilians started wearing them for field duty use as well.

United States Geological Survey, surveyor, wearing leggings, about 1920.

Since World War Two leggings have bit the dust, and now are a historical oddity, save for "gators."  Gators are only worn by certain outdoorsmen, and are a sort of heavy duty baggy legging designed to be worn with low cut boots.  Indeed, leggings in general were only ever worn with low cut boots, which is one of the oddities of them, as they're really a pain and a person would generally always be better off with a higher pair of boots.  Gators survive as certain really heavy mountaineering boots, or back country cross country skiing boots are low cut by necessity.

Okay, so what's that half to do with spats?  Isn't this a post about spats?

Well, maybe everything.

Up until I ran across them I never gave spats much thought, other than that they appear to be a particularly strange clothing item.  My basic supposition is that they were simply strangely decorative, and in the popular imagination, they have come to be associated with the wealthy, or at least the very well dressed, of an earlier era.

A spats wearing Senator Charles Sumner and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

It turns out that spats is actually a shortened version of the actual name, spatterdashes, and that another name for them is "field spats."  Hence, they served a purpose similar to that of leggings, in that they were designed to protect the shoes and socks from the elements.  So, as odd as they now appear to us, they had an entirely practical origin.  In the era in which they were common, people commonly had fewer items of clothing in general, people had to preserve what they had.

Additionally, and very easy for us to forget, people in earlier eras, in every walk of life, were out and about in the rough more than most people are today.  A lawyer, for example, might have spent most of his days in the office, but he had to walk or ride there, and the streets were very unlikely to be paved.  People kept livestock in town, and if he had to make a house call, and they did, that might well be at a farm. So, in other words, not only were his office shoes probably his only pair, and his socks probably hand knitted and one of a very pairs, the whole world was. . . well. . .dirty.  And he had to be out in it a lot more than most people are today.  Hence, they were practical.

Indeed, as an aside, there's a great depiction of this sort of thing in Sense and Sensibility, when the ladies attend a ball, but are warned, upon dismounting from a carriage, that "the horses have been here."  Not just there, they'd been everywhere.  A good reason to wear spats.

How spats became associated with the wealthy I don't know.  They are today, in a cartoon like fashion.  The top hatted Monopoly figure, for example, wears spats.  Maybe the wealthy just had the best shoes, and therefore a need to keep them clean more than other folks.  Anyhow, these were a practical item and, because of that, they're now gone. They were probably a pain to start with, and with no ongoing need for them, they went.

Not noticing the familiar until its unfamiliar.

The west side of Natrona County High School is an area I didn't go to much when I was in high school.  I walked to school for one thing, so I didn't have cause to park over there.  And that area, surrounded by a bunch of very old small houses, was regarded as a bit rough for some reason.  Indeed, when I was a senior there was a riot on this part of the school, although I was there at the time.

Given all of that, I've never really taken note of the neighborhood to any great detail.  But now it's been torn down, as NCHS is gigantically expanding onto the neighboring blocks.  Over the next couple of years, it'll become a much bigger high school.

Now, because of my route to work, I drive through this area ever day.  And as it comes down, probably about a century after it first went up, I've actually taken note of its appearance for the first time, and what hte small houses all look like.

Railhead: Arminto Wyoming

Railhead: Arminto Wyoming: This is what is left of the sidetrack at Arminto Wyoming, and of a hotel along the rail one, which was located where the grove of trees stands.

I've just linked in two threads from my companion blog, Railhead, dedicated to railroad topics, which depict some things long gone by. This is one of them. This thread depicts Arminto Wyoming.

Arminto is a very small town in Natrona County Wyoming. So small in fact that I once had the odd experience of talking to a FedEx tractor trailer driver who stopped when he saw my me and my brother in law herding cattle north of Arminto. He was trying to deliver something to Arminto, and had driven right through it, not knowing what it was. People driving through this area today probably have next to no idea that this very tiny town is a town, or that it was ever economically significant.

But it in fact once was.

Arminto was the busiest sheep shipping railhead in the world in the first half of the 20th Century. More sheep were sent to market through Arminto than any other place on the globe.

I suppose the partial lesson in that is that economic endeavors that seem so significant at one point can certainly evaporate. Arminto's economic significance certainly has. Sheep no longer are shipped from its railhead. The railhead itself lacks pens. There is no longer hotel, which there once was. The small busy little bar burned down in the 1980s. The Sheepherders Fair, a really well attended local sheep based rodeo was moved to Powder River, and last year the last Sheepherders Fair was held. Ironically, sheep prices are up.

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Updated Entry:

The post on Railhead has brought a number of interesting replies, including one viewer, Ray Galutia, who very generously provided his own photos. As these are so interesting, and historically valuable, I'm reposting the entire Railhead entry here, and posting Ray's additional photographs here.

This is what is left of the sidetrack at Arminto Wyoming, and of a hotel along the rail line, which was located where the grove of trees stands.

While now it would almost be impossible to tell, this location once shipped more sheep per year than any other spot on earth.  It was the epicenter of the local sheep industry, and the busiest sheep shipping point on earth.  It remained a significant sheep town well into the second half of the 20th Century, but  the railhead fell into disuse when trucking took over in livestock transportation, and ultimately the collapse of the sheep industry following the repeal of the Defense Wool Incentive in the 1980s completed the town's decline.  The famous local bar burned down in this period, and today the town is a mere shadow of its former self.

More on the history of this location can be found on the entry on this topic at Lex Anteinternet.

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Ray Galutia very generously provided us with photos depicting Arminto in the  1940s from his personal collection  I'm going to link these photos, which are historically valuable, in here, and also over at Lex Anteinternet, in those instances in which the topics aren't on railroads.  There will be more of those interesting linked in photos posted there.

I'm also going to repost this entry as a new current one, given that it's been updated to such an extent.

Diesel train taking siding for a steam engine at Arminto, 1947-1949.

The location of this photograph, from 1947-1949, is actually quite close to the ones posted immediately above, except it's from a different angle looking back on the town.

 Additional photographs uploaded only here:

Parents of Mr. Galutia.

Depot and Harpers Store.

Harper's Store.

Mr. Galutia and his father on the playground of the Arminto school, which no longer stands.

Snow plow in a much more active era for Arminto.

Pumping water to a train.

Mr. Galutia and his mother.

 

 Mr. Galutia and his father on Arminto water tower.

And from Mr. Galutia's 2009 trip back to Arminto.

 Building sets where Harper's Store was located.

 Water tower and treatment plant foundation.

 Foundation of the Big Horn Hotel.

 "

My car sets approximately   where one of the section houses sat ....and the clump of tree has two  old foundations and on the hill behind the trees is where the water tower sat ....my folks section house sat directly across the tracks from the trees

 Water tower foundation.

Holding tank location.