Paper Airplanes, part 3

 

It's useful to have a good friend
join you when taking a trip.

A buddy riding shotgun
helps with navigating
through unfamiliar places.

And, of course, conversation with a companion
breaks up the monotony of a long journey. 

And when in heavy traffic
a second pair of eyes
reduces the chances of a nasty accident.

Today I feature four photos of good pals 

who once bravely took to the air
undeterred by the rickety framework
of their aircraft.

My first intrepid duo sit just aft of the wing of a monoplane, apparently balanced by the little inline motor at the front. There is no propellor but I suppose that is because it is spinning too fast for the camera. A sizeable crowd of people are lined up on the airfield below them. The landing gear with its shopping cart wheels does not inspire confidence. But maybe the airplane never flew very fast.

 This postcard was mailed in France to a young woman in Rennes, the capital city of Brittany. Though the postmark is unclear the sender helpfully wrote a date of 4-10-1910 above their message. 

4-10-1910 
Voulant profiter du beau
temps ce nouvel aviateur
a pris  la voie dis airs pour
venir dire mille chosis aima.
bles anx amis de Rennes
De plus les amities du
tant la famille.

~

Wanting to take advantage
of the good weather,
this new aviator took
to the skies to say a thousand
kind things to his friends in Rennes.

Furthermore, to the friendships
of both the family.

The Wright brothers first demonstrated their Wright Flyer on 8 August 1908 at a horseracing course near Le Mans. In the following two years other aviation inventors had demonstrated their flying machines. So in 1910 when the "nouvel aviateur" (I think it is the younger man riding behind the pilot at the front) had a faux photo made of himself and his older companion, the idea of flight in a powered machine had clearly taken hold of the French public's imagination. However, due to the popularity of novelty photo postcards, I think it likely that most people then had seen more pretend aviators than real ones. 

In the case of this postcard the aeroplane was imitating one developed by a celebrated Frenchman, Louis Blériot (1872–1936) one of the great pioneers of aviation. He is credited with designing the first successful single-wing monoplane which he flew across the English Channel on 25 July 1909. Here is a video of a replica of the famous Blériot XI, built and flown by Mikael Carlson at the 2019 Hahnweide Oldtimer Fliegertreffen, a major aviation event that brings together enthusiasts of historic aircraft at the Hahnweide airfield near Kirchheim unter Teck in Germany. This airplane is powered with an original 7-cylinder Gnôme-Omega rotary, 50 hp engine. 

* * *

This second paper airplane photo shows two gallant German army officers in a biplane not unlike the Wright brothers machine, though with questionable construction. They seem to be lost among the clouds with two other aeroplanes, a similar biplane and a monoplane. So it's a good thing one officer has a map and can point out the direction they need to go.

The postcard was sent on 19 June 1913 from Darmstadt, Germany to Fräulein Luise Krimmel of Kostheim, a district of the city of Wiesbaden on the Rhine River. 

Hanging off the frame of the airplane's cockpit
is a chalkboard with the message:  

Beim Höhenweltrekord
auf dem Griesheimer Sand
~

At the altitude world record
on the Griesheimer Sand

The reference is to a place, the German military base of Griesheim, which was near Darmstadt and was the site of the Imperial German Army's first airfield. It was a built on a sandy grassland area, previously used as an artillery firing range, called the "Griesheimer Sand." In 1908 a German aviation pioneer, August Euler (1868–1957), conducted glider flights there and recognized the land as suitable for an airfield. In 1909 he secured a lease on a portion of the site (380 acres) to use as an airfield.

On 31 December 1909, Euler earned the first civil pilot's license in Germany and began a pilot training program. By 1911 he had trained 74 pilots including Prince Henry of Prussia, the brother of the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II. In 1913 the airfield was designated "Flying station Darmstadt-Griesheim" so it's very likely that these two officers were student pilots from the first official class of German military aviators. 

I couldn't find any reference to an actual altitude record set at Griesheim, so it's probably a joke made by the two men. However Wikipedia does provide a list of altitude records and under fixed-wing aircraft records. Orville and Wilbur Wright's first powered flight in December 1903 only flew to a height of 10 ft (3 m), but by January 1910, the French aviator Louis Paulhan set a new record of 4,603 ft (1,403 m). 

That was surpassed in June 1910 by an American pilot, Walter Brookins, who reached 4,603 ft (1,403 m) flying a Wright biplane. Two months later, at an event in Scotland, another American aviator, John Armstrong Drexel, pushed the record to 6,621 ft (2,018 m) in a Blériot monoplane. By Boxing Day at the end of that year the new altitude record was 11,474 ft (3,497 m) set in Los Angeles by Archibald Hoxsey in another Wright brothers' biplane. Tragically Hoxsey died five days later in a plane crash while trying to set a new record.

In 1913 the high altitude record stood at 18,410 ft (5,610 m) set in September 1912 in a Blériot monoplane by the French aviator Roland Garros (1888–1918).  His heroic legacy is commemorated by the annual French Open tennis tournament held at the Roland Garros Stadium in Paris. 

* * *

 

My third flying duo are high above a military encampment dotted with white tents like so many macaroons. On the lower left is an airfield with a small airplane and hanger.  However the two men are civilians seated in a French monoplane very similar to Blériot's monoplane. On the tail is the number 8 so it may be an imitation of a Blériot VIII which was built in 1908. It won a prize for a flight reaching an altitude of 660 ft (200 m) and a few days later a record for long distance cross country loop flight of 8.7 miles (14 km). Here is a real photo of a Blériot VIII courtesy of Wikimedia. 

 

Blériot VIII, September 19080
Source: Wikimedia

My postcard of the aeroplane and the two fellows in it certainly look French to me. The words along the fuselage are French, "Ruet Frères  déposè ~ Ruet Brothers deposited", and may refer to the photographer. The printing on the back, CARTE POSTALE, is French, too. 

But the message on the back is very German. It was sent via German military post on 16 October 1914. This was not quite three months since the beginning of the Great War. At that time aircraft were still primarily used for observation, but the next four years would stimulate many great and terrible innovations for aircraft and aviation technology.

Here is another short video of a similar monplane.
It is a replica of a Kvasz II built by
the Hungarian aviation pioneer
Andras Kvasz (1883-1974) in the 1910's.
Though the video doesn't show it in flight
it has closeups that show how
these early airplanes were constructed.

* * *

My last pair of aviators are definitely Imperial German soldiers who seem to be waving a white flag of surrender as they fly above a grand city. The sky behind their monoplane has some lighter and heavier-than-air traffic with a zeppelin, a biplane, and another monoplane soaring along with them. 

The single-wing aircraft they are seated in was called a Taube, the German word for dove or pigeon. It was designed in 1909 by Igo Etrich, an Austrian aviation pioneer. His first monoplane flew in 1910 and was soon licensed for  production by several manufacturers, Here is a drawing of one from 1911 which better shows the curved wings which account for its name.

 

Rumpler Taube, 1911
Source: Wikipedia

The two soldiers have a chalkboard attached to their Taube which has a message. Presumably in the decades before radio this was how aviators communicated with each other and the airfield crew. Their note reads:

Mit Donner, Hagel
und Blitz schuf
Gott die Wüste
Döberitz

~

With thunder, hail
and lightning,
God created the
Döberitz desert

Döberitz was a huge military training area west of Berlin, where in 1910, the Döberitz Airfield and Imperial Army flying school was established. It is considered the birthplace of what would later be known as the German Air Force. The two soldiers then are flying above the city of Berlin. 

Google view Berlin, Germany
Source: Google Earth

Here is a bird-eye-view of the city courtesy of Google Earth's 3-D imagery. The large dome on the right is the Berliner Dom, the monumental German Protestant church and dynastic tomb of the House of Hohenzollern. The smaller dome on the left is the Humboldt Forum, a museum dedicated to human history, art and culture. In the foreground right is a park plaza which, I think, must be the former site of the gigantic Royal Prussian Garden Chair which was still in place when these two soldiers flew over the city.

Their postcard was sent as an attachment to a package as there is no address or postmark, only a very long letter. I think the writer is the soldier in front driving the Taube since there is a signature scrawled next to him. Unfortunately the handwriting is too squiggly for my limited German translating skills and there is no date, but I guess the photo dates from the war years 1914-1918.

I finish with a beautiful video of a 1909 Bleriot XI,
described as the oldest flying airplane in the United States.
In August 2023, after a complete restoration,
Chief Pilot Clay Hammond made some practice flights
in the airplane at the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome, 
a living museum in Red Hook, New York,
near the town of Rhinebeck. 

 

I think my title of Paper Airplanes
was not too much of an exaggeration.
For more, check out
Paper Airplanes
and
Paper Airplanes, part 2

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where weather may have grounded all flights.

Sauerkraut Day in Forreston, Illinois

Sometimes it's the little details
that make a big difference.
When choosing
a masquerade costume
pick the funniest hat,
silliest fake mustache
and you can look pretty decent. 
But if you really want to get the laughs
pay attention to your shoes.

Don't opt for comfort, style,
or practicality.
Go for foolish authenticity,
even if it makes your feet hurt.
(Of course, still watch where you step.)

That's what will make
a good costume
a great costume.

Wooden footwear certainly worked for these fellas.
They called themselves
"The Little German Band".
It was Oct 2nd, 1913, 
and they wanted
to look their best

for Sauerkraut Day

in Forreston, Illinois.

It was 1913, a time when "boosterism" was taking hold of America's small towns. Towns competed with each other to attract new homesteaders, businesses, factories, railroad depots, and tourists. The folk in the little village of Forreston, Illinois thought that sauerkraut might do the trick. Pickled cabbage makes the perfect condiment for any sandwich. Who doesn't love it? And if it was offered for free and accompanied by a little German band, wouldn't that attract nearly everyone in a hundred miles? The town fathers of Forreston certainly hoped it would.  

The man standing in the middle of the band is likely Forreston's mayor. Extra credit if you can spot the teddy bears.
. 

 

Forreston is a village in Ogle County, Illinois, about 100 miles west of Chicago. It was established in 1854 and named for the vast forests that once grew in this area of northern Illinois. It was settled by predominately German families, so, of course, sauerkraut was in their blood, so to speak. In 1913 it had a population of around 870 residents. The streets were laid out on the flat terrain in a neat grid using the common names of trees: Willow, Pine, Elm, Birch, Cherry, Blasam, White Oak,  Walnut, Ash, Chestnut, Plum, Locust, Hickory.

Evidently birds liked what they saw in Forreston, too. How someone trained a pigeon to operate a camera remains a mystery.   

According to a history of the event, published on 9 October 1930 by the Forreston Journal, the idea for the festival came from a local business man, Justus DeGraff, who, while on a trip out west, happened to stop in Ackley, Iowa during their "Sauerkraut Day". Ackley is about 200 miles west of Forreston and like Forreston was home to many German immigrants. DeGraff was impressed by how this small community celebrated its culture and hospitality by offering visitors a feast centered around this simple German dish. Having started its first Sauerkraut fest in 1902, by 1912 it had earned a national reputation for its generous townsfolk.  

Edwardsville IL Intelligencer 
30 August 1912

In 1912 many newspapers around the country reported on Ackley's Sauerkraut Day where "10,000 visitors" partook of "a dozen barrels of kraut and 1,000 pounds of wienerwurst." And it was all for free. 

Yet those 10,000 visitors translated into a very large number of potential sales for merchants and vendors. Mr. DeGraff surely didn't need much more to convince Forreston's town council to try the same event for their town. And so it was decided that Thursday 2 October 1913 would be their first "Sauerkraut Day". 

In this decade the roads and streets of Forreston were still unpaved and most traffic was horse-powered. The junction of Main Street and 1st Avenue was chosen as the event's center. A simple raised platform was built for speakers and band concerts. There were also booths for vendors and other carnival-like games and entertainments. 

In this photo a throng of men, women, and children gather around a stage where a half dozen men are seated. The photographer helpfully added a caption of Sauerkraut Day, Forreston, ILL. 10-2-13. I expect this unmarked postcard was taken early in the morning that day and then hurriedly printed to sell later that afternoon.

Forreston, Illinois, 1st Ave and Main St. 
Source: Google Maps, 2012 

Today the modern view in Forreston shows the same scene has somewhat changed but still retains the layout of the buildings. Like many small towns in America, careful historic preservation is rare to see because of it is so expensive. It is sadly more common for decaying architecture to be sheathed in plywood siding with cheap vinyl windows. The essence of history is all about entropy. 

In this postcard photo the camera looks back toward the same intersection, but on a normal day instead of Sauerkraut Day. The caption reads "South Side Main St.  Forreston, Ill." (The number is a photographer's reference for the film negative.) On the right we can see Forreston's Central House Hotel, and nest to it on the left is a large brick building where, I think in the second floor right window, the photographer set up his camera for the previous street photo.  

Forreston, Illinois, Main St. and 1st Ave.  
Source: Google Maps, 2012 

In Google's Steet View from 2012, the hotel is gone but the other building remains. Taking a virtual Google walk around Forreston's streets lets us see a commemorative stone in the front peak with the name "Carmon Block 1902". It's a large structure similar to a townhall but I'm not sure what it's original purpose was. Forreston had an "Opera House" in the 1900s but I don't think this was it. It may have been a fraternal society's development which rented out the ground floor spaces to small businesses. Today it is the location of a Subway® sandwich shop.

Forreston's little German Band also posed for formal group photo in the photographer's studio. Standing in a line are six men dressed in zany rube outfits and holding brass instruments, two cornets, trombone, two tenor horns, and a baritone. Several sport fake beards that give them a real rustic look of German farmers. On the side of the photo is another caption for Sauerkraut Day, Oct 2nd '13. I think this was likely taken earlier in the day as their wooden clogs are fairly clean.  

On the back is a short note. 

The fellow with
the X is
Brother John

Humor in this era used a great many stereotypes, many that would be unacceptable today, and making fun of rural folk was classic mockery. It's likely that several of the men in this little band, if not all of them, were from German families who had immigrated to America in the mid-19th century. Because I have a sizeable collection of German and Austrian postcards of music hall comics from the 1900s, I know that back in the old country the country bumpkin was a standard character in Germanic humor. So it's not surprising that for Sauerkraut Day in Forreston the local jokers would invent a comical German brass band to entertain their neighbors and visitors.

This type of musical clowning was often called a "rube band" and I've featured photos of them a few times on my blog. The Zanesville Rube Band from Ohio was started as a kind of booster club entertainment in 1905 to promote interest in Zanesville. In Trick or Treat? another Ohio brass band posed in crazy yokel costumes for a postcard that was surely a souvenir from a town festival like Sauerkraut Day.    

As I began writing my story this week I discovered three more postcards from Forreston on eBay. I purchased them but they have not yet arrived in time for this story so I am temporarily using the image from the sellers' listings. Next week I will have better scans. 

This photo is labeled Sauerkraut Day, Forreston, Ill. Oct. 2, '13 and looks to be taken during the height of the fest's inaugural event. It shows several hundred people standing around the platform stage seen in my first street photo. The position in front of the Central Hotel was probably for the convenience of visiting dignitaries who were invited to speak to the crowd.  

A couple days later the Rockford Register-Gazette reported on Forreston's big event.  

                                    FORRESTON 

    Forreston, Oct 3. — Sauerkraut day, Tuesday, Oct 2. drew one of the largest crowd that ever was in Forreston.  The program began at 9:30 a. m. with music by the Lanark and Forreston bands.  The address of welcome was given by Mayor Frank Wertz, the response by Hon. C. W. Middlekauff of Lanark, who was born and raised in Forreston. W. V. Geiser of Freeport gave an address in German and Judge A. J. Clarity of Freeport gave the address in English. 

    Sauerkraut, wieners, rye bread and coffee were given to all, free from 12 till 2.  Byron and Forreston ball teams crossed bats.  Free exhibitions were given by the "Ball Family."  Foot races, blind cart races, pillow fights, pie eating contests. 

    Several minor accidents occurred but fortunately nothing serious.  A three-year-old child from Freeport got separated from its mother and got in front of an auto, one wheel passing over him, bruising his hip. Several parties had their pockets picked for various sums.  A Freeport man had $1,000 in certificates taken from his pocket.  He telephoned the Freeport bank not to cash same.  The bands gave an evening concert from 5:30 to 8. A dance in the M. W. A. hall attracted many in the evening.

Forreston's first Sauerkraut Day in 1913 proved such a success that it was repeated in 1914 and again in 1915.  In this photo from 1915 the crowds of people are elbow to elbow and are listening to a band seated on a stage at the back right. 

On 21 September 1915 , a week before Sauerkraut Day, Forrester's town booster club organized an enormous road trip of "fifty automobiles carrying 225 people" to travel to 11 nearby towns for promotion of their event. It included the Forreston band of eighteen pieces and seven members of the Young Ladies Glee Club who sang at concerts in each town accompanied by the band. 

A few years ago I wrote two stories about similar road trips made  by town boosters for a little place in Kansas. In On The Road in White City, Kansas and Street Music in White City, Kansas I presented photos of town bands and boosters' automobiles arranged on streets not unlike those in Forreston. 

In 1915 the Rockford newspaper published a detailed program of Forreston's Sauerkraut Day. Besides the Forreston town band there was another one from nearby Henney, IL as well as Forreston's now "celebrated German band", too. They were all on the schedule performing throughout the day from 9:30 AM when the festival began until it ended with a two hour double band concert from 7:00 to 9:00 PM followed by dance and picture show at the opera house. 

 

In this second postcard, captioned "Eating Sauerkraut, Forreston Ill Sept 20 '15, a large crowd are in a park or maybe a baseball field since there are bleachers in the back. In the foreground left is a wagon with a band seated precariously on chairs. Most of the musicians wear traditional bandsmen's uniforms but one tenor horn on the end looks to be dressed in a hayseed outfit. I wonder if he is tapping his clogs to keep time. 

According to the 1930 Forreston Journal's report of the event, the first Sauerkaut Day in 1913 used just three kettles for cooking the kraut. In 1930 they needed nine. In 1922 over 20,000 people came to Forreston's festival consuming 400 gallons of sauerkraut, 800 pounds of wieners (hot dogs), 700 loaves of rye bread, along with thousands of cookies and hundreds of gallons of coffee. Over several decades the town continued its annual Sauerkraut Festival  tradition with parades, floats, carnival attractions, and, of course, lots of sauerkraut. The only exception was in 1918 at the end of the first World War when the festival changed to a "Barbecue Day" in order to avoid offending returning veterans who had had their fill of kraut. The town continued to advertise its fall festival until sometime in the '60s when it was quietly discontinued. 

 

Forreston, still a small town in 2025 with around 1,400 residents, recently revived its Sauerkraut Day a few years ago though I'm not sure if it is still free or as well attended. It has a lot of competition now. 

In Illinois this past year you could attend the Rhubarb Fest in Aledo; Sweetcorn festivals in Dekalb, Hoopston, and Mendota; a Popcorn Fest in Casey; a Grape Fest in Nauvoo; a Chocolate Fest in Galesburg; and even a Sandwich Fair in Sandwich, Illinois, just to name a few as there are many more.  And in 2023 Ackley, Iowa celebrated the 120th anniversary of its Sauerkraut Day. 

I think I'll pass on having seconds, thank you very much.  

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where everyone is taking to the streets.

The Well-dressed Cellist

 

The cello, or violoncello as it is called in Italian,
is a common string instrument,
but in my collection of antique musician photographs
a portrait of a cellist is very uncommon. 

Compared to its smaller cousin the violin,
a cello is obviously a much larger instrument
which requires true commitment from anyone
who chooses to play one as they are then obliged
to lug it around in a big case and
always reserve an extra seat for it

when traveling on a bus/train/plane.  

Its size also gives the cello a stronger voice
so that an orchestra needs far fewer cellists than violinists
to balance the ensemble's dynamics.
Generally that means
that for every cello there are about four violins.
And so it goes for photo portraits too.

Today I present three well-dressed cellists.
Each man wearing his best concert outfit for the camera.
And each one, I believe, a professional musician.

My first cellist looks directly into the camera lens as he sits for his portrait with his instrument in playing position. It is one of the oldest examples of a cello in my collection and it shows how the early cello did not have an end pin fitted to the bottom of the instrument for support. Instead a player rested the cello's body on the floor or raised it clutched between their knees. This instrument also has geared machine pegs on the scroll instead of tapered tuning pegs. This mechanical innovation was first applied to the double bass and cello around the late 1700's and early 1800's.  It is still used on double basses but is never used on professional cellos today. 

On the back of this small carte de visite is the imprint of the photographer, Gilchrest of 82 Merrimack St. in Lowell, Massachusetts. Mr. Gilchrest also stuck an official blue U. S. Internal Revenue stamp above his business name and drew an X across George Washington's face to record that a 2¢ tax had been paid for this photo. In 1862, during the second year of the Civil War, the Federal government introduced taxes on a variety of goods, services and legal dealings to help finance the war. The recent popularity of photographs like the small carte de visites caught the attention of the Treasury Department and in August 1864 all photographers were required to collect a tax on their sales and affix a proprietary stamp to all photos. The tax stamps came in different denominations and colors depending on the cost of the photo. After the war ended the tax was repealed on 1 August 1866. 

The cellist might have paid 25¢ for a set of four photos and grumbled about the extra expense of the stamp, but here in the future it helps date his portrait to around 1864-66. At this time Lowell, just north of Boston, had a thriving textile industry and was a center for the arts, too. I suspect this musician played in one of Lowell's theater orchestras. Such an ensemble would play serious concerts and accompany theatrical entertainers as well. 

* * * 

My next cellist's portrait is on a larger cabinet card photo mounted on carrot-color cardstock. He sits slightly tilted to one side as if listening to the conductor. His cello rests against his left knee with the bow relaxed. We can't see if it has an end pin, but it does have traditional tuning pegs. His suit is a double-breasted tailcoat buttoned high with wingtip collar and a straight tie. It's a style suitable for a day concert, rather than the more formal white tie used for evening dress.  

What looks like a signature on the lower left corner is actually the photographer's name, H. S. Mendelssohn of Newcastle in northeast England.

The back of the photo has an odd illustration of two female figures in classic "Grecian" dress. One woman is surrounded by a sunlit halo. A mother figure or a goddess?  The number 13597 refers to the negative number should the cellist wish to order duplicates. The address for H. S. Mendelssohn was on Oxford St. in Newcastle on Tyne. Mendelssohn opened his studio there in the 1870s and later in the 1880s and 90s had studios in London in Bayswater and South Kensington. He earned a reputation for fine portraits and advertised his work as "High Art Photographer to her Majesty the Queen and Royal Family." 

The style of the photo, as well as the man's mustache and suit seems appropriate for a date sometime in the 1870s or 1880s. I have another photo taken in a Mendelssohn studio of a female violinist that has an elaborate imprint with addresses for his studios in London, so I think this simpler style is likely from around 1870-75.

* * * 

My third cellist is seated in a similar way to the Newcastle musician but from his dazed look I think he is no longer listening to the conductor. He is dressed in a formal white tie, waistcoat and tailcoat. He seems a rather thin and perhaps a gangly tall young man with a whisp of a blonde mustache. The photographer was P. H. Rose of Providence, Rhode Island. 

On the back of this cabinet card is a penciled signature. I think it spells "Walter Saugee" but it could be "Sangee" or "Sangel" too. Unfortunately whichever spelling I used I could not find a single match in Ancestry.com or in newspaper archives.   

The photographer's full name was Philip Henry Rose whose "elegantly appointed" studio offered a "specialty in high class portraits from cabinet to life size". It was located in the Conrad Building in Providence and Mr. Rose proudly featured an engraving of this grand 5 story structure noting that his business had opened in August 1886, just a short time after the building was completed. 

375 Westminster St.
Providence, Rhode Island
Source: Google Maps, 2018

The Conrad Building is still standing and is part of the historic business district of downtown Providence. It was designed by the aptly named architect firm of Stone & Carpenter for Jerothmul B. Barnaby. Mr. Barnaby was a self-made millionaire, known as “Rhode Island’s Clothing Prince”, because of his many garment factories in the city. He commissioned the building as a wedding gift for his daughter and named it after his new son-in-law, John H. Conrad, a local businessman and politician.

Providence is a place I have researched before for other photographs in my collection. I discovered that the Conrad Building was an address for numerous other businesses besides the Rose studio. In the 1895 city directory there were nine music teachers listed in the building. One of them was Miss Helen May Butler, a teacher of violin and leader of the Talma Orchestra.

1895 Providence, RI city directory

Helen May Butler (1867–1957) was a celebrated musician and bandleader in the 1900s who established one of the first female professional bands. A native of Providence, her Talma Orchestra became the Talma Ladies Military Band and eventually the Helen May Butler Ladies' Band which toured the country from 1901 to 1912. I've featured her in my stories Helen May Butler and her All-American Girls and Cornets and Apples.

It's very likely that Helen May knew Walter the young cellist, and perhaps they even played in the same Providence orchestra. 

Helen May Butler (1867–1957)
Source: Wikipedia

One of my favorite artists is the cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

Here is a short video of him playing

the Prelude from J.S. Bach's Cello Suite No. 1.

It was filmed someplace in the great forests
of the Smoky Mountains in North Carolina.

In the video caption Yo-Yo Ma explains: 
"In the same way that a river begins far before we meet it,
I imagine this music starting long before I play the first note;
I just have to join it.
Like the river, the music is always flowing,
and like the river, it’s always changing.
All I have to do is picture a river, feel its energy,
get into its flow, and follow it."

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where everyone is posing with the family car.

Dad's Band

 

The band was a mix of young farmers, shop clerks, and tradesmen.
They hadn't been playing together very long
though they were all close friends,
as well as a few brothers and cousins.

Their brass instruments were a new set
that still had a factory fresh shine

that gleamed in the sun.  

After a few weeks of practice
they learned a few tunes
and felt capable enough
to give their town a concert

They couldn't afford proper band uniforms yet

but to mark the occasion
they each bought a new hat.

Folks in town said they sounded pretty good.

But one little fella thought
they were the best band he'd ever heard in his life.

The location where this photo postcard was taken is unknown,

as are the names of most of the men, too.

Except for one.

Dad Played In This Band.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where parking on the weekend can be a problem.