Ten Sleep Baptist Church, Ten Sleep Wyoming
The Ten Sleep Baptist Church in Ten Sleep, Wyoming.
Sunday, April 7, 2019
Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Ten Sleep Baptist Church, Ten Sleep Wyoming
Churches of the West: Ten Sleep Baptist Church, Ten Sleep Wyoming:
The Ten Sleep Baptist Church in Ten Sleep, Wyoming.
The Ten Sleep Baptist Church in Ten Sleep, Wyoming.
Saturday, April 6, 2019
Best Post of the Week of March 31, 2019
The best post of the week of March 31, 2019.
Heninel, a ses Enfants.
An article in the current edition of Annals of Wyoming really gets into the material resource topics we raise here. . .
Mid Week At Work: Pipers of the Band of the Air Force Reserve Pipe Band and Sean Connery, in 2001.
Que Sera Sera. Samsung shows us just how absolutely creepy the world has become.
What are you reading?
FDA Finds Breasts Implants Cause Rare Form Of Cancer
April 4, 1919. Spring fashions, European Bison, and American Horses.
Blog Mirror. A Hundred Years Ago: Raising Chickens in the Yard a Hundred Years Ago. What that says about modern life, agrarianism. . . . and on comfort animals too.
The Powder River and the Red Trail, Montana
Saturday, April 6, 2019
Blog Mirror: A Hundred Years Ago: "Do Houses Need Kitchens? A Hundred-Year-Old Opinion" Oh my!
Soviet "realist" style painting of good old Vlad Lenin enjoying a meal with the good Russian peasantry. Oh, the dinner conversation that such a meal would have had. Right now, we have to imagine Vlad telling the common rural folks about how the Red Army stealing livestock and shooting the neighbors is going to be good for everyone. Satire aside, the Soviets issued a lot of paintings with rural folks, although this is the only one I've ever seen in which Lenin is portrayed with them. This must be a fairly early painting as Lenin accurately wears a tie and this painting was early enough that the perfunctory well endowed Russian woman isn't in the painting. The irony, among others, depicted in such paintings as the rural population strongly resisted Communism and by and large the Communist never managed to grasp the rural mindset, even when they depicted it in romantic terms.
Wow, what a radical question from 1919:
Do Houses Need Kitchens? A Hundred-Year-Old Opinion
Communal kitchens?
No thank you.
Soviet Realism style painting of a rural gathering, this time when Stalin was in power. Next to good looking blonds, heavily bearded old men are a staple of this sort of painting.
The surprising question came from the March 1919 issue of the Ladies Home Journal, a publication that's still around. Perhaps I'm thinking of the Journal incorrectly, but I'd never have guess to find such revolutionary sentiments there.
Indeed, the author knew she was proposing something radical.
Shall the private kitchen be abolished? It has a revolutionary sound, just as once upon a time there were revolutionary sounds in such propositions as these: Shall private wells be abolished? Shall private kerosene lamps be abolished? Shall we use ready-to-wear garments and factory-canned vegetables?
What the heck?
It gets even more radical sounding from there;
In the kitchen alone the primitive, solitary, unorganized labor of our ancestors continues to be maintained. When one thinks in terms of a whole town of, say, a thousand homes, a thousand stoves going, and the unpaid labor of wives and mothers who are themselves cooks, it is to be seen that the centralized system is exactly as logical in its certainty of economy as the centralized system any other business.
Nearly the archetype of Soviet Realism's depiction of rural seen. Hearty, good looking young rustic Russian women at work in piles of harvested grain. Soviet women in these depictions were uniformly attractive, buxom and often blond. I don't know if working in piles of harvested grain requires you to be barefoot or not, let alone if this was Soviet women's work, but the artist saw it that way.
Those commenting on the post have noted that in an odd way, the radical propositions set forth by the author did in fact come true, but in a capitalist sort of way.
In a small town, it means the establishment of a central kitchen, or in a city the opening of many neighborhood kitchens. It means the preparation there of breakfast, lunch and dinner just as in a hotel or cafe. But the main industry would be the taking of telephone orders and the delivery of cooked food, hot, at the doors. Delivery would be made by auto; and, closed vans, with openings at the sides and filled with small electric ovens, heated by the power which supplies the car, are not such a far cry.
Okay, there's no central kitchen, to be sure, but there are a lot of fast food joints and lots of places that deliver. Is Domino's the Central Kitchen No. 1 envisioned by the author?
Probably not.
She seemed to have something more communal in mind.
Well, I'm glad this didn't come to pass.
But it does give rise to an odd thought or two. In March 1919, Zona Gale was imagining women enslaved in their domestic chores being freed by communal kitchens. And of course she was writing in an era when women doing domestic work was not only uniform, but much more laborious than it is today. That was about to change, although not as quickly as it could have, which we've addressed here before in what we think is one of our better posts on this site:
Women in the Workplace: It was Maytag that took Rosie the Riveter out of the domestic arena, not World War Two
A virtual icon of the liberated strong woman, Rosie the Riveter proclaimed "we can do it" to the nation and became a symbol of the working woman. In reality, most Rosie's put the riveter down and actually did return to their prewar lives. This image pales in comparison to Rockwell's stunning original version.
In the popular imagination, it was World War Two that took women out of the homes, and into careers. Removed from the domestic scene for the first time by the necessity of the workplace in the greatest war in human history, the story goes, women realized that they could do a man's job and refused to return to their domestic roles. It's a nice simple story.
But there is an interesting irony to all of this. As noted, in 1919 most women were looking at preparing at least two, if not three, full meals a day, on wood fired stoves, and before modern refrigeration. As we previously noted;
Folks who cooled food with an ice box, acquired food everyday. If you wanted fresh food, you bought it that day. Many women went to the market for fresh meat everyday. There was little choice but to do that. And ice was delivered periodically also, by a horse drawn wagon. Both of my parents had recollections of the ice wagon.
Cooking the food was a long precess also. Nothing existed that was already prepared. People didn't have frozen food to prepare. Canned food, of course, did already exist. But by and large people had to prepare everything that day, whatever meal was being considered. And part of that was due to the fact that modern stoves were only coming in during this period.
Refrigeration combined with gas and electric stoves changed all of that.
So the irony?
In 1919, when Zale wrote her article, most people cooked the food or their parents, or more accurately most women cooked the same sort of food that they'd learn to cook from their mothers. For native born Americans of native born American parents, that was one thing. For those of recent immigrant stock, that might be another. In Irish American neighborhoods, that was what we'd regard (perhaps oddly, but not really) as "English Food". Boiled beef and boiled potatoes, for example. Italian neighborhoods probably smelled like one gigantic Italian restaurant after 6:00 p.m. So there would not have been a great deal of variety, but the food in many places would have been good (and in others not so much).
Now, by contrast, we have an incredibly variety of foods and food styles, and we're fascinated by food. People long for the food of their ethnic ancestors, even if they imagine it being fancier than it often really was. And they long for food styles and types that seem authentic. Hours and hours of programming is devoted to such topics on the Food Network, where people can learn recipes that ostensibly feed ranch workers, or which reflect Southern cooking, or which are traditional Italian recipes, and the like. People appear eager to really cook, looking back, perhaps to an imagined era they miss and a real one Ms. Zale was seeking to escape.
And then they order out.
Of course, in modern terms, a community mess hall, or whatever it would be, would be a nightmare for whoever was afflicted with serving food. Vegans would be demanding everyone eat nothing but celery, or whatever they eat. People on the latest diets would be demanding full Keto compliance, or something of the kind. Some would rail against deserts, others demand them.
It'd be awful.
Well, I'm keeping my kitchen, Comrade.
Today In Wyoming's History: The Powder River and the Red Trail, Montana
Today In Wyoming's History: The Powder River and the Red Trail, Montana:
These are admittedly not Wyoming photographs, but from southeastern Montana. When I stopped at this location one afternoon in February I didn't know what the historical marker would entail.
I'm glad that I did. While my sign photos are oddly not quite in focus, it's an interesting looking area.
And while this doesn't depict Wyoming, its a region connected with the state, and on a river which runs through much of Wyoming at that.
The Powder River and the Red Trail, Montana
These are admittedly not Wyoming photographs, but from southeastern Montana. When I stopped at this location one afternoon in February I didn't know what the historical marker would entail.
I'm glad that I did. While my sign photos are oddly not quite in focus, it's an interesting looking area.
And while this doesn't depict Wyoming, its a region connected with the state, and on a river which runs through much of Wyoming at that.
Friday, April 5, 2019
April 5, 1919: Showers, Parades, Shows, Sabers, Ships and Slogans.
On this day in April, 1919 the Saturday Evening Post featured one of J. C. Leyendecker's illustrations, this one of a young woman expecting, but not receiving, April showers.
In the port town of St. Nazaire France, American sailors were on parade.
The Army was conducting shows of its own on this day. In Toul, France, the U.S. Second Army was having a horse show on this Saturday.
War prizes were being photographed in northern Russia, where this U.S. Army Captain was displaying a Russian saber taken from a Red Army commander. These men had lately been in action against the Reds.
And the Troopship America docked with solders returning home from France.
Casper was pondering a slogan, which is a headline that's oddly contemporary as Casper just adopted one a couple of years ago, that being "WyoCity". What became of the 1919 effort I don't know, but perhaps we'll learn of it in upcoming editions of the Casper Daily Tribune.
And in southern Wyoming efforts were underway to create a Pershing Highway, in honor of John J. Pershing. The proposed route was on the Lincoln Highway, so what was really contemplated was renaming a stretch of that highway.
Blog Mirror. A Hundred Years Ago: Raising Chickens in the Yard a Hundred Years Ago. What that says about modern life, agrarianism. . . . and on comfort animals too.
This has become a big movement once again:
Raising Chickens in the Yard a Hundred Years Ago
I would never have guessed that we'd see this return, but indeed we have.
100,000 years ago when I was a student. . . well actually it was the 1980s, but it seems like a long time ago, and doesn't so seem at the same time, I had a good friend who lived in West Laramie.
I should say that my friend lived in one of the West Laramie's. There were two. One was formally part of the city, being set apart in that it was literally west of the Union Pacific rail yard. That West Laramie was the Hispanic part of the town, with many Hispanic residents who worked for the UP. One of the town's Mexican restaurants was located there and was regarded as one of the best in town. A grocery store there was also Hispanic. It was sort of another Laramie, not the student Laramie that most of us were part of, but part I tended to intersect with every weekend when I went, as an undergraduate, to St. Laurence O'Toole's for Mass, where they did as well and where they were the majority of the parishioners.
The West Laramie where my friend lived, however, was west of the Interstate highway, and which was also called West Laramie, but which was actually in an unincorporated part of the county.
My friend rented the basement of a house with some other geology students. I can't recall exactly, but I think the owners of the basement lived upstairs in the house. They were likely paying for their house by using it as a rental. Anyhow, catty-corner from the house was a residence on a corner where the owners had chickens and ducks. Sometimes the ducks hung out in the road so you had to watch out for them.
They had at least one rooster, and contrary to the way people imagine roosters (I know very little about chickens), it crowed all day long.
Anyhow, at that time I thought that was remarkably exotic and odd. It showed how odd West Laramie was in a local in which even Laramie itself was a little odd.
But now, that's become common all over.
Indeed, just a few years ago here people started doing it. It was illegal, and the city council soon reacted, but by making it legal and regulating it. Now some people have chickens here in town.
I'm not sure what I make of this, but I suspect that this reflects a strong modern discontent with our modern lives. People look out from their urban lives and imagine a rural past that they imagine to be better, and which in substantial ways, really was.
Indeed, the entire "local foods", localism, and all that entails are part of that. People imagine a rural world they once were in and they want it back, or at least part of it. They're recreating a little agrarian farm in their backyards, as they're discontent with the urban now that people insist we must all live in. It's swimming upstream, but a lot are doing it.
And taking a turn, I think that's what comfort animals are about too.
I'll be frank that I think the entire comfort animal thing, that came out of nowhere and which is now a big deal, is ridiculous. A species that came to be so numerous can't be so fragile as to require people to pack their cats into aircraft.
But maybe everyone missed the point.
We were meant to be in nature and for most of our species existence, we were. And we were always around animals. As hunters, very early in our existence, we had the near wolves that came into the cap to hunt with us. And we soon had the small wildcats that were attracted by the vermin we attract. As farmers we had cats and dogs in spades, and horses and oxen. We raised cattle, sheep, goats and kept fowl of very variety. Teamster had their team and the cart dog that rode along. Drovers had the herding dogs.
We've lost all of it.
And keep trying to find a way back, imperfectly.
Perhaps that should tell us something.
Thursday, April 4, 2019
April 4, 1919. Spring fashions, European Bison, and American Horses.
The Casper Daily Tribune published two editions on Friday, April 4, 1919. The first one was all news, and with a Communist seizure of Bavaria on this day, the ongoing crisis with Hungary, and Lenin attempting to dictate terms to the Allies, a lot of that news was distressing, to say the least.
The second, edition, however, was on new spring fashions, now that the war was over.
The 1919 fashions didn't look much different than the 1910 fashions actually.
But as we'll soon show all that was about to change, at least for women.
What is claimed by Bavarian radio to be the last finding of a wild wisent, the European bison, was made on this day in 1919. You can read and listen to the story here:
4. April 1919Der letzte Wisent gefunden, Ur-RindBuckel nach oben, Hörner gesenkt. Einem Wisent will man nicht unbedingt in freier Wildbahn begegnen. Wird man auch nicht, weil Wisente so selten sind. Am 4. April 1919 galt das freilebende Ur-Rind sogar als ausgestorben.
FWIW, the "last" claim here is disputed. Others say that Polish wisents were still in the wild in the very early 1920s. There are wild wisents today, actually, in Poland. Their story is similar in a way to that of American bison in that they are in a national park where their numbers have increased, although not to the extent that they have in the United States to where there are so many, they're a bit of a problem where they are. That's why, in the U.S., buffalo hunting has returned.
In Europe the last wisents, if that's what they were, were the victims of the German army like so many other things in Europe. German soldiers at the end of the war killed most of them for food prior to pulling out of Poland.
Closer to home, the Wilson administration was showing its odd predilection for favoring the Carranza regime in Mexico again.
The entire episode of the United States going into Mexico in 1916 arose due the Wilson Administration allowing the transportation of Carranza's troops across southern Texas so that they could go into battle against Villa's forces in northern Mexico. That, as we've already dealt with, lead to the frustrating and inconclusive American campaign against Villa that nearly ended up with the United States and Mexico going to war.
Now, in 1919, the Wilson Administration was at it again as it sold 1,000 cavalry mounts and, according to this article, 5,000 rifles to Carranza's government. Mexico was still in revolution at this point and would continue to be for quite some time thereafter. By providing these military resources, no doubt now surplus to American needs in light of World War One having ended, the US was effectively favoring one side against another.
John Berryman cartoon from April 4, 1919.
Mexico never seriously considered that move, although Carranza did have it studied (governments tend to study everything) and a vague, and very ineffective Mexican fifth column formed in anticipation of such an event along the southern U.S. border with Mexico. Even the heavy handed treatment Mexican civilians and Mexican Americans along the border had received by American law enforcement didn't inspire very many to look at that however. At this point, perhaps Wilson saw U.S. military aid to Mexico as a reward for not acting rashly during World War One, or perhaps he was fixated on Villa, or perhaps he was simply wanting to do something to get the Mexican Revolution over with once and for all. At any rate, it can be questioned how wise that move was.
FDA Finds Breasts Implants Cause Rare Form Of Cancer
So says a headline on the Google news feed. And that's just on the Health news feed that is part of the automatic setting for medicine and health headlines.
Isn't there a "d'uh" element to this?
A long time ago we ran this thread:
Now, there are legitimate reasons for plastic surgery. And some of those reasons have to do with breasts. Indeed, ironically, they specifically have to do with cancer and breasts.
But just making things that nature decided would be smallish bigger?
Of course there's a risk. And why are people doing that?
Isn't there a "d'uh" element to this?
A long time ago we ran this thread:
It's All Natural! Except for us.
Just a second ago, on television, there was an advertisement for a dog food that was "natural". It had no "chicken byproducts".
Now, there are legitimate reasons for plastic surgery. And some of those reasons have to do with breasts. Indeed, ironically, they specifically have to do with cancer and breasts.
But just making things that nature decided would be smallish bigger?
Of course there's a risk. And why are people doing that?
Wednesday, April 3, 2019
Que Sera Sera. Samsung shows us just how absolutely creepy the world has become.
Samsung has been running advertisements featuring the song Que Sera Sera.
They're creepy and disturbing.
For people of a certain age, that song is permanently identified with Doris Day, who sang it in the film The Man Who Knew Too Much.
At that time, it wasn't uncommon for films to include movies, if they featured an actor or actress who could sing, which were nearly complete unrelated to the film in any other fashion. The Man Who Knew Too Much was a Hitchcock thriller, and although the protagonist is a family man, there's really nothing else much that relates Que Sera Sera to the film. That may be why we don't really associate the song with the film much. Indeed, in Hitchcock films, it isn't even one of the first films of his that come to mind.
Maybe that's why Samsung felt free to use the song. It's not associated with visual images, but it is associated with a certain mood and feel.
And that mood and feel is basically one of innocence combined with fatalism. It has a tomorrow is much like today, sort of feeling to it, but one that accepts that "what will be will be".
I'm not sure what feeling Samsung is going for, but it's incredibly creepy and more than a little perverse. In one version, a large adult man sits on a corner, at night, while he lip sinks a young girl singing the song. He looks bombed out and disconnected.
In another, a group of young people use their phones to battle an artificial intelligence holographic monster, which they kill in some sort of a game.
In the most disturbing, however, a group of men playing basketball at night are confronted by a pre teen girl who is wearing skirt, thrusting her hands towards her pelvis, and jerking in an unnatural fashion. I don't know if anyone has called attention to it, but he commercial is not only suggestive, it's pedophilic, clearly sexualizing a young girl in a way that commercials have not since the 1970s, when it caused an outrage. Indeed, it goes beyond that, as its so sick in the way it portrays the girl its worse than the prostitution of young models that was briefly in vogue in the 1970s (and we wonder how depraved prediation on the young came in so strong in the 70s, and 80s, d'uh).
Samsung isn't dense. It knows what it's doing. Its so savvy it managed to overcome a product disaster of just a couple of years ago and reemerge as a major cell phone producer. This add campaign intentionally riffs off of more innocent and accepting age to present a disturbed, perverted and confused one, even celebrating it. Don't like your reality? Imagine a fake one on your phone. Have a weird fetish. . . indulge it on your phone.
Predictions that technology was becoming more than we could handle have been around since day one. It's never come true. But there's good reason to re ask that question now.
And the balance of the current evidence shouldn't leave a person feeling very comfortable.
They're creepy and disturbing.
For people of a certain age, that song is permanently identified with Doris Day, who sang it in the film The Man Who Knew Too Much.
At that time, it wasn't uncommon for films to include movies, if they featured an actor or actress who could sing, which were nearly complete unrelated to the film in any other fashion. The Man Who Knew Too Much was a Hitchcock thriller, and although the protagonist is a family man, there's really nothing else much that relates Que Sera Sera to the film. That may be why we don't really associate the song with the film much. Indeed, in Hitchcock films, it isn't even one of the first films of his that come to mind.
Maybe that's why Samsung felt free to use the song. It's not associated with visual images, but it is associated with a certain mood and feel.
And that mood and feel is basically one of innocence combined with fatalism. It has a tomorrow is much like today, sort of feeling to it, but one that accepts that "what will be will be".
I'm not sure what feeling Samsung is going for, but it's incredibly creepy and more than a little perverse. In one version, a large adult man sits on a corner, at night, while he lip sinks a young girl singing the song. He looks bombed out and disconnected.
In another, a group of young people use their phones to battle an artificial intelligence holographic monster, which they kill in some sort of a game.
In the most disturbing, however, a group of men playing basketball at night are confronted by a pre teen girl who is wearing skirt, thrusting her hands towards her pelvis, and jerking in an unnatural fashion. I don't know if anyone has called attention to it, but he commercial is not only suggestive, it's pedophilic, clearly sexualizing a young girl in a way that commercials have not since the 1970s, when it caused an outrage. Indeed, it goes beyond that, as its so sick in the way it portrays the girl its worse than the prostitution of young models that was briefly in vogue in the 1970s (and we wonder how depraved prediation on the young came in so strong in the 70s, and 80s, d'uh).
Samsung isn't dense. It knows what it's doing. Its so savvy it managed to overcome a product disaster of just a couple of years ago and reemerge as a major cell phone producer. This add campaign intentionally riffs off of more innocent and accepting age to present a disturbed, perverted and confused one, even celebrating it. Don't like your reality? Imagine a fake one on your phone. Have a weird fetish. . . indulge it on your phone.
Predictions that technology was becoming more than we could handle have been around since day one. It's never come true. But there's good reason to re ask that question now.
And the balance of the current evidence shouldn't leave a person feeling very comfortable.
Tuesday, April 2, 2019
An article in the current edition of Annals of Wyoming really gets into the material resource topics we raise here. . .
with that article being A Patron of the Plains and Pine Bluffs:. . . " It's excellent.
Oddly enough, this issue, which just arrived yesterday, involves the town of Hillsdale, a really tiny obscure Wyoming town, which I just posted something about on Sunday:
While undoubtedly nobody would recall it, Hillsdale has been featured here twice now, the first time in 2015. Here's my entry on that occasion, which relates a lot more closely to the the topic of the article, sort of.
The article features a story from the Tribune which dated only back a few months prior to my post, even though I was completely unaware of it at that time. Curtis Bowser had died and bequeath a substantial sum to the museum in Pine Bluffs, and a columnist from the tribune was wondering who he was. The author of the article, from that quarter of the state, sought out to answer that question.
The answer is fascinating and I'll forgo going into it in detail, but rather I'd note here that he was from Hillsdale originally, although he hadn't lived there since graduating from high school.
No, the reason that I'm noting this is that a really good description is given in the article of the history of the Bowser family locating in the region.
They came in during the first decade of the 20th Century, with Mr. Bowser, the father of the benefactor, arriving on an immigrant train after being encouraged to move to Wyoming for "free land" by his sister and brother in law. This is only the second time I've heard of such trains, with the first being an example given to me by somebody whose grandparents had relocated in Wyoming in that fashion. Basically, a single car was loaded up with enough to start a rough homestead and to build a small, one room, house. That was it. That was substantial amount of stuff, but frankly being able to make a go of it being dropped off in that fashion would be difficult in the extreme.
In the Bowser example that didn't even include a stove to heat the one room house he built. When his wife came out, with a baby, that December, he still didn't have one, even tough he'd built a barn and the house, and they lived in his sister's nearby farm house Ironically, his sister was moving to Iowa by that point to teach school. For the first five years of their presence near Hillsdale they hauled water five miles.
Now, keep in mind, the Bowers located in this area in 1908, which means that they were hauling water until 1913. Mr. Bowser, who had previously been employed as an enameler in New York City, and Mrs. Bowser, had four children, not a large family by the standards of the day, two of whom lived in the water hauling era. The last one was born in 1921. Mr. Bowser made a successful go of it and his initial homestead expanded significantly over the years.
Okay, why have I pointed this article out?
Well, for one thing, it's just flat out interesting.
Beyond that, however, this is the era we've been focusing on.
It's so easy to assume that people in the past were just like us, and lived just like us. But they didn't. Mr. Bowser the younger, by the time he passed away in 2014, had apparently done extremely well and hadn't lived in Wyoming for years. As the story makes plain, he never forgot his childhood home, but by the time of his death he wasn't living in conditions anything like that which he had when he was young. For that matter, the Bowser's still in Wyoming weren't either.
That family in 1908 lived a life that was more like 1808 than 2008. Most people today wouldn't be able to endure those conditions. Mr. Bowser put up with no stove until his wife and baby arrived. That means he was living without heat, and Wyoming isn't warm. The Bowser's started off with a one room home. It didn't have water to its location for years.
The younger Mr. Bowser was a Marine during World War Two. People have looked at that generation and been amazed by its toughness. No wonder it was tough, as growing up the way he did wasn't unusual, and it'd make you tough.
But imagine that generation that fought World War One.
Some have noted that the American soldiers of the Great War seemed amazingly unaffected by it in many ways and wondered how that could be.
Conditions had a lot to do with that.
And some have noted how closely they bonded with the rural French during their service, while as in World War Two, they tended to be shocked by the conditions that the French, and the Italians, lived in.
An article like this explains why. The conditions they lived in weren't much different.
So imagine those farm and ranch conditions, for average westerners, in those first couple of 20th Century decades. Remarkably different from those later on, and certainly remarkably different from those we live in today.
Oddly enough, this issue, which just arrived yesterday, involves the town of Hillsdale, a really tiny obscure Wyoming town, which I just posted something about on Sunday:
Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: United Methodist Church, Hillsdale Wyoming
Churches of the West: United Methodist Church, Hillsdale Wyoming:
United Methodist Church, Hillsdale Wyoming
This is the United Methodist Church in Hillsdale Wyoming. Hillsdale is a very small Laramie County town which was probably more viable at some point in the past than it is now, but it's still a town and this church is still an active church is spite of the very small population of that town.
While undoubtedly nobody would recall it, Hillsdale has been featured here twice now, the first time in 2015. Here's my entry on that occasion, which relates a lot more closely to the the topic of the article, sort of.
Evidence of changes in technology and transportation in geography.
The photograph above depicts a United Methodist Church in Hillsdale, Wyoming. Hillsdale is a really tiny town, with a population of under fifty people. It's on the Union Pacific.
By rail, it's less than 15 miles from Cheyenne. It's less than five miles from Burns, another little town, albeit one that's bigger than Hillsdale. Another five miles down the Union Pacific is the town of Egbert. And a few more, maybe eight or so, is the town of Pine Bluff. In Pine Bluff, I know, there's a Catholic Church.
I've been in Hillsdale (as of yesterday) and Pine Bluff, but I've never been in Burns.
Of these towns, only Pine Bluff and Cheyenne on are the Interstate Highway. Hillsdale is probably four miles or so off the Interstate Highway, effective marooned out there in the rolling hills of Laramie County, Wyoming.
I was actually amazed that this United Methodist Church is active. The Catholic church in Pine Bluff also is. So these communities are obviously keeping on keeping on, but what a change this evidences.
All of these towns were built on the Union Pacific Railroad. Only Pine Bluff and Cheyenne are on the Interstate. Coming in from Nebraska, I'm sure that well over 90% of all travelers go right by Pine Bluff. Leaving Cheyenne (and no, not the song, that takes you to Montana), probably nearly 100% of travelers go right by Pine Bluff.
All of these towns, save for Cheyenne, must have been built as farming towns along the Union Pacific. They're not far from each other today, but when founded they would have been just far enough to travel to each other, by wagon, and get back home, which is how they served the area farmers. That is, towns in this area where just far enough from towns so that you could get into one, conduct your business, and go back home. Saturday was traditionally the big "into town" day for farmers and these towns were probably pretty big on Saturdays. I'd guess that their populations swelled during Sundays as well, but how farmers got to services I don't know. In some regions of the country the population prior to World War Two heavily reflected a single faith or perhaps only a couple of faiths (and this is still the case in some regions), and perhaps that was the case in this region of Wyoming, but it wouldn't be the case for Wyoming in general at any single point.
These towns remained viable in the early automobile era, but clear by the 1950s the handwriting must have been pretty visible on the wall. Cheyenne is the dominant city in the area, and it always has been, but for all practical purposes its the only one that is truly fully viable now. That wouldn't have been true at one time.
The article features a story from the Tribune which dated only back a few months prior to my post, even though I was completely unaware of it at that time. Curtis Bowser had died and bequeath a substantial sum to the museum in Pine Bluffs, and a columnist from the tribune was wondering who he was. The author of the article, from that quarter of the state, sought out to answer that question.
The answer is fascinating and I'll forgo going into it in detail, but rather I'd note here that he was from Hillsdale originally, although he hadn't lived there since graduating from high school.
No, the reason that I'm noting this is that a really good description is given in the article of the history of the Bowser family locating in the region.
They came in during the first decade of the 20th Century, with Mr. Bowser, the father of the benefactor, arriving on an immigrant train after being encouraged to move to Wyoming for "free land" by his sister and brother in law. This is only the second time I've heard of such trains, with the first being an example given to me by somebody whose grandparents had relocated in Wyoming in that fashion. Basically, a single car was loaded up with enough to start a rough homestead and to build a small, one room, house. That was it. That was substantial amount of stuff, but frankly being able to make a go of it being dropped off in that fashion would be difficult in the extreme.
In the Bowser example that didn't even include a stove to heat the one room house he built. When his wife came out, with a baby, that December, he still didn't have one, even tough he'd built a barn and the house, and they lived in his sister's nearby farm house Ironically, his sister was moving to Iowa by that point to teach school. For the first five years of their presence near Hillsdale they hauled water five miles.
Now, keep in mind, the Bowers located in this area in 1908, which means that they were hauling water until 1913. Mr. Bowser, who had previously been employed as an enameler in New York City, and Mrs. Bowser, had four children, not a large family by the standards of the day, two of whom lived in the water hauling era. The last one was born in 1921. Mr. Bowser made a successful go of it and his initial homestead expanded significantly over the years.
Okay, why have I pointed this article out?
Well, for one thing, it's just flat out interesting.
Beyond that, however, this is the era we've been focusing on.
It's so easy to assume that people in the past were just like us, and lived just like us. But they didn't. Mr. Bowser the younger, by the time he passed away in 2014, had apparently done extremely well and hadn't lived in Wyoming for years. As the story makes plain, he never forgot his childhood home, but by the time of his death he wasn't living in conditions anything like that which he had when he was young. For that matter, the Bowser's still in Wyoming weren't either.
That family in 1908 lived a life that was more like 1808 than 2008. Most people today wouldn't be able to endure those conditions. Mr. Bowser put up with no stove until his wife and baby arrived. That means he was living without heat, and Wyoming isn't warm. The Bowser's started off with a one room home. It didn't have water to its location for years.
The younger Mr. Bowser was a Marine during World War Two. People have looked at that generation and been amazed by its toughness. No wonder it was tough, as growing up the way he did wasn't unusual, and it'd make you tough.
But imagine that generation that fought World War One.
Some have noted that the American soldiers of the Great War seemed amazingly unaffected by it in many ways and wondered how that could be.
Conditions had a lot to do with that.
And some have noted how closely they bonded with the rural French during their service, while as in World War Two, they tended to be shocked by the conditions that the French, and the Italians, lived in.
An article like this explains why. The conditions they lived in weren't much different.
So imagine those farm and ranch conditions, for average westerners, in those first couple of 20th Century decades. Remarkably different from those later on, and certainly remarkably different from those we live in today.
Monday, April 1, 2019
Some Gave All: Heninel, a ses Enfants.
Some Gave All: Heninel, a ses Enfants.:
Memorial in Heninel, France to the men of the town who died in World War One. This monument is placed next to the village church.
Heninel, a ses Enfants.
Memorial in Heninel, France to the men of the town who died in World War One. This monument is placed next to the village church.
April 1, 1919. Des Moines Waterfront, Rheims in ruins, Concern of Japan. . . in Mexico. And Wars.
Des Moines, Iowa. April 1, 1919.
On this same day in which Des Moines waterfront was photographed, a Red Cross photographer toured the Red Cross facilities in destroyed Rheims.
Scenes like those depicted there demonstrate pretty ably why the French were taking a hard line view in the peace talks in Paris.
Red Cross staff at Rheims, including local volunteers.
Red Cross facility in Rheims for those returning home to find no homes.
Note the boy sailor, seated at table.
Closer to home a scare that had developed over Japanese land purchases in Mexico were abating.
It seemed pretty clear that the early scare, which had been that the Japanese were buying up strategic lands in Baja California were more than a little off base.
A U.S. Senator predicted a future war on the Pacific, however. . . .
Overall, frankly, the news of this early stage of the peace was, well, not very peaceful.
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