Time Travelling

Oops, I see it's been over a week since I last put in a post here. This will be a quick one just to reassure you that I'm still "around"...

... even if I kind of feel like I've spent the past week "travelling in time" ... From the early 1900s (continuing to explore old inherited postcards), to WWII (reading a new biography about Count Folke Bernadotte) - to about a month into the future (making plans for a little summer holiday trip with my brother again)...

Post Office Letter Carriers - Sepia Saturday 473

My paternal grandfather, born 1904, was a journalist and photographer. I think this photo may have been taken by him in the mid 1920s.
 
The building is the railway station at Fristad (in the province of Västergötland, Sweden). The station house was built in 1900 - the same year my grandmother was born. (There had been an older wooden building before that.) 

The post office was also in the station house; and this photo obviously shows the postmen and coach drivers delivering the post to the village and surrounding countryside.

One of the men in this photo could be my grand-mother's older half-brother Carl. He was born in 1870 and died in 1928. Most likely the driver of the carriage on the right (without uniform).
 
Their father (my great-grandfather) Samuel, born 1835, was a farmer, and also used to deliver post back in the 1890s. The story in the family is that he met his second wife, my great-grandmother Selma, in a country store to which he delivered the post. He was a widower with several grown-up and nearly grown-up children then; while Selma was a younger widow with one daughter from her first marriage. They got married in 1898; and my grandmother Sally was born in 1900.

When Samuel retired from farming in 1903 (he died in 1907), his oldest son Carl took over the farm, and also the delivery of post. 

I posted the same photo on my blog Greetings from the past back in 2013, then linked to Sepia Saturday 182. Back then, I still had the identities of two of my grandmother's older brothers mixed up. But if the one in this photo is Carl, who died in 1928, that narrows down the date of the photo to that year at the latest. And if the photographer was my grandfather (born in 1904) I don't think it can be earlier than 1922 (probably later). 

Maybe... Just a guess, but it suddenly strikes me that 1925 may have been an occasion to have such a photo taken (and perhaps published in the local newspaper?), as that would be the 25th anniversary of the station house.

Below are two postcards published by Swedish Post in 1969, showing postal coaches from the 1880s (owned by the Post Museum since the early 1900s).

Linking to:
Sepia Saturday 473

Swedish National Day Celebration

Sweden's National Day is celebrated on 6 June in honour of two historical events: Gustav Vasa being elected king 6 June 1523, and the adoption of a new constitution 6 June 1809. 

This year offered a really warm and sunny day for it; which  meant that quite a lot of people turned up for our public celebrations in the park. Me & camera included! 

It's a good opportunity for "people watching"... But I try not to get too personal with the photography - taking most of the pictures from a distance or from behind. (Only zooming in on those up on the stage...) 

 

Parade coming from the other side of the river...

 

The children's choir is from the municipal music school.

 

Azaleas and Rhododendron

Spring seemed to realize somewhere in mid May that perhaps it was going too fast. So it slowed down a bit. I appreciate that, as it means we got to enjoy all the beautiful azaleas and rhododendron in the parks and gardens and cemeteries a bit longer...

 Rhododendron just outside where I live, 13th May.

21st May 

31st May 

And some more flower photos from here, there and everywhere:

 More rhododendron.

Horse chestnut trees. Most of them around here have white flowers but some are pink like this.

 Azaleas of all colours. (These grow in the old cemetery.)

Three Cooks (~1904) - Sepia Saturday 472

An unwritten, undated card from my great-uncle Gustaf's postcard album: "The Three Cooks at Highgate, Mont." The card sits in between postcards from 1904 in the album. Gustaf lived in Pennsylvania between 1902-1911. So far, I have not come across any evidence that he himself ever travelled much further west in the US. But perhaps some friend sent him this card with a letter? 

Somehow, the door in the background does not really suggest a first-class restaurant... And yet there is a printed postcard?

From the official website for the state of Montana, I learn that the discovery of gold brought many prospectors into that area in the 1860s; leading to boomtowns growing rapidly - and declining just as quickly when the gold ran out. Later, there was also silver and copper mining. And a lot of cattle and sheep ranches and wheat farming, as the gold-diggers and miners needed to eat... But the gold ran out (and perhaps silver and copper too); and post-WWI droughts and depression meant that a lot of farmers were forced to leave the state as well.

(That reminds me of a novel I recently read & reviewed on this blog: The Practice House. That was about Kansas, not Montana - but drought and depression hit hard there too.)

Anyway. My best guess at the moment is that the "Three Cooks" postcard may be from a boomtown restaurant for miners; and  perhaps sent with a letter to Gustaf from a friend working in that area for a while. Whether he was one of those three cooks, or a miner eating their food, I'm not likely to ever know!

(If anyone has other ideas, feel free to suggest them.)

I'm linking to Sepia Saturday 472. Connections to the prompt picture (below): Restaurant, male bonding, men standing outside a door... And someone must have had a camera, or there would be no photo! Whether the three cooks ever became Famous I don't know, but they may have been dreaming of it.




PS. I have recently revived my Greetings from the Past blog (based on Gustaf's postcard collection + old family photos) and put in some new posts there this week. This post/card may re-appear there as well a bit further on.