Friday Farming: Denver Stockyards, 1939.

Cattle in the Denver stockyards, 1939. Some of these photographs depict a building belonging to the Swift packing company, which is still there.  Indeed, this stockyard looks much the same now as it did then.  My grandfather had worked for Swift in the 1930s, although he'd left Denver in 1937.

The Abraham Lincoln Blog: Lincoln Riding The Law Circuit

The Abraham Lincoln Blog: Lincoln Riding The Law Circuit: Abraham Lincoln spent much of his time as a lawyer riding the law circuit in rural Illinois. In those days in the late 1840's and early...

Interesting item on Abraham Lincoln as a circuit riding lawyer.

I'm working on a post now about equine transportation, part of the series we've been doing here on transportation prior to the automobile, and this is a topic that will be touched upon in that thread.

A Day In The Life. Pondering A Century Ago

Some time ago I started a series called "A Day In The Life", but I only made two entries. Still, it's something that's interesting to consider in context, and there's all sorts of parameters to it. The approach I took was to take a calendar date exactly a century prior, and wonder what I would have done that day.

That approach, I'll note, isn't quite an accurate one as in order to place it in context, you'd have to take the correct day of the week.  It turns out in order to do that you actually have to go back another year, to 1913, to get the dates to match up.  So, if you look at today's date, November 17, 2014, and want to engage in that exercise, you have to go back to November 19, 1913.

And what if you did?  Would you be in the same line or work, something different?  Most of us probably wouldn't be in the big events we read about , for one reason or another, but its also the case that most of us might have gone down some other path for all sorts of reasons.  Its an interesting thing to contemplate.

And, of course, if you were a certain age, certain huge events, like World War One, for instance, might be hard to avoid.

Mid Week At Work: The Civil Air Patrol. Bar Harbor, Maine, 1944.

The Civil Air Patrol is the official auxiliary of the United States Air Force.  Created during World War Two, it's original purpose was to harness the nations large fleet of small private aircraft for use in near shore anti submarine patrols.  The light aircraft, repainted in bright colors to allow for them to be easily spotted by other American aircraft, basically flew the Atlantic in patterns to look for surfaced submarines.  As submarines of that era operated on the surface routinely, this proved to be fairly effective and was greatly disruptive to the German naval effort off of the American coast.

The CAP also flew some patrols along the Mexican border during the same period, although I've forgotten what the exact purpose of them was. Early in the war, there was quite a bit of concern about Mexico, given its problematic history during World War One, and given that the Mexican government was both radical and occasionally hostile to the United States. These fears abated fairly rapidly.

The CAP still exists, with its post war mission having changed to search and rescue.  It also has a cadet branch that somewhat mirrors JrROTC.  Like JrROTC it has become considerably less martial over time, reflecting the views of boomer parents, who have generally wished, over time, to convert youthful organizations that were organized on military or quasi military lines into ones focusing on "citizenship" and "leadership"..

Lex Anteinternet: They Were Clerics: Clerics who were well known fo...

Lex Anteinternet: They Were Clerics: Clerics who were well known fo...: This thread is like several other recent ones, notably the " They were lawyers " and the " They were soldiers " thread...

As with several other "they were" threads (but not all of them yet), this thread, just updated, has been made into a separate page on this site.

"Shall We Gather At The River", or how to tell when you've seen too many cowboy movies.

A couple of weekends ago the choir at Mass sang Hanson Place (which I didn't know it was titled), more popularly known as Shall We Gather At The River.  It's a neat tune, and I know the first verse of the song by heart.

But not for the right reasons, and it instantly brings up a strong mental association with Western movies, which unfortunately says a lot about me, and nothing about the song.

The tune may be well known, but I've never heard it in a Catholic church before, so it caught me off guard.  None the less, all its lyrics are familiar to me.

Shall we gather at the river
Where bright angels feet have trod
With it's crystal tides forever
Flowing by the throne of God.
Yes, we'll gather at that river
The beautiful, the beautiful river
Gather with the saints at that river
That flows by the throne of God.

Why do I know it? Well it seems to be in every Western movie ever filmed, and sometimes to make a counter point or set up an ironic scene.

For example, its the tune being played, with its common name even mentioned, in the opening really violent scense of The Wild Bunch.  In that movie, temperance marchers are playing it just before the big gun battle breaks out.  It's also in another film by the same director, Sam Peckinpah, Major Dundee, in which its sung at a funeral for soldiers actually killed in a river crossing.  A funeral scene also figures in John Ford's The Searchers, where its sung again.

I looked it up, and while I don't recall it, it's also apparently sung in Stagecoah, Hang 'Em High, Three Godfathers (a great film), and My Darling Clementine,  all of which I've seen.  and two of which I like.  It apparently is also sung in Cat Ballou and The Oregon Trail, which I haven't seen.  Its use in film seems to be traceable to director  John Ford who really liked the hymn. 

It's apparently also spread beyond Westerns.  According to what I read, it shows up in Hobson's Choice, Tobacco Road, Elmer Gentry, and others.

I guess that means it has entered into what some would call "The American Song Book".  Of course, that also means I've seen too many Western movies.

1957 Dodge Power Wagon W100 $9,500 [ID]

1957 Dodge Power Wagon W100 $9,500 [ID]

Shoot, I didn't know that the three speed column shifts came with the V8 engine.