You Know, For Kids!

From the Grand Forks (ND) Evening Times, December 15th, 1911, a great idea for under the Christmas tree!

guns-gifts-for-boys-and-girls

Accurate .22 rifles — take your pick from Stevens, Winchester, Remington, and Savage brands!

Granted, in 1911 in North Dakota a rifle was a practical tool for farm work — it wasn’t a toy, it was something necessary to getting things done, from shooting pigeons in the barn to hunting dinner…and what kid is going to start taking pot shots at the neighbors?  Well, maybe guns aren’t the best thing to give a kid…but sometimes the kid isn’t the one who shouldn’t be messing around with a gun.  And yet nobody let Ralphie have a BB gun.

“This old world has some d— funny things in it”

We spent yesterday working our monthly dealer day at Exit 55 Antiques, where we found this postcard.

funny things postcard

If interested, you can contact the shop at their official Facebook page — or call the store at (218) 998-3088, between 10 am and 5 pm (central time). Let them know this antique postcard was found in DT’s space, in a small wooden box (like a recipe box).

funny things 1912 postcard

Professional Gianting Is Over

While researching old news, I stumbled across this story of economic hardship and the ever-changing employment market from 1917:

gianting-the-thing-of-the-past

“There’s nothing in professional gianting any more, states R. E. Madson of Norfolk, Neb. , a 20-year-old youth who stands 7-1/2 feet in his stockings…”There isn’t enough money in the circus business any more to attract a real big man,” said young Madson.  “There’s no reason why a man who is a few inches, or a foot or two over the scale, should not use his brains and live like a man and not a freak.  I don’t find it hard to do.”

There’s a certain amount of naivete in Madson’s quote, and not just because he’s promoting his movie in North Dakota.  Here’s Ralph Madsen a couple years later:

ralphmadsen

 

The movie that Ralph Madsen was promoting in ND in 1917 doesn’t show up in his IMDB listing, but Madsen did have other plans to use his intellect and skills.   Madsen was an expert in livestock raising and veterinary care, and being a skilled rancher seemed to be his goal in life.  Based on the picture above and others,  young Mr. Madsen apparently discovered that you can take a giant out of the circus, but you won’t ever completely get the circus out of the giant.

Never Too Late For Santa

You have to post it when you find it.

Photograph from the 1915 Midnight Frolic Ziegfeld Follies production, The Girl from My Home Town:

Most notably in this tableau of feminine beauty is Olive Thomas, seen as “New York Girl” standing beside Muriel Hudson and Margaret Morris, costumes by Cora McGeachy. This important and seductive view which really showcases the fun and allure of the Follies in the 1910s was taken by White Studios, and is a large format hand printed phoograph, never intended for public distribution.

When I Was A Bachelor

When I Was A Bachelor, an odd old nursery rhyme from the Little Verses For Very Little People in The Book of Knowledge, circa 1910.

When I was a bachelor I lived by myself,
And all the meat I got I put upon a shelf;
The rats and mice did lead me such a life
That I went to London to get myself a wife.

The streets were so broad and the lanes were so narrow,
I could not get my wife home without a wheel-barrow;
The wheel-barrow broke, my wife got a fall,
Down tumbled wheel-barrow, little wife, and all.