Archive for January 2015
Douglas Fairbanks ….
Here lies the resting place of one of America’s most famous swashbucklers … Douglas Fairbanks. The Thief of Bagdad, Robin Hood and too many more to mention. This is a link to his Wikipedia site and you can read all about him here. He died in 1939, so no telling how much this cost back then, but I am impressed and I have never been here! I ran across more negatives from his trips out west and will be posting more in the near future. If you want to share your Douglas Fairbanks memories, please feel free. I love a good Fairbanks story as well as the next person … Thanks for looking and please check back … Frank
PHS Basketball Team …
This is the Pensacola High School Basketball Team from 1956, I believe. I thought that since I had posted some Tate High School images from the 1950’s, it was time to post another from PHS in that era. I left the crop at 10×8 when I posted the image, however I do not know if the photo will show up on the blog as 10×8. If you click on the image, it will pop up in another window by itself ( or rather it should ) and that image should be 10×8. It is funny to me that there can be several negatives in an envelope and one can be all scratched up and filthy, then the other can be clean and look like it was just processed last week. The negative above did not take much Photoshop to get ready to post … the other negative in the same envelope looked like it was driven over by a truck and left out side for more than fifty years. I am not positive that this image was taken in 1956, so if anyone knows the correct year, please let us know. Thanks again for looking and please check back … I still have a lot of high school photos to post from the fifties. I am not sure of what exactly, I know some more basketball photos and some other miscellaneous sports images … You are just going to see what I dig up. As always your comments are welcomed and appreciated … Frank
1940’s Street Scene …
I did not know what to call this photo since I did not know where this street scene is located. The thing that attracted me was all of the old cars on the street … it looks like a movie set to me. I do not know the date, but I would guess that it might be in the 1940’s just from looking at the cars . It could be some street out in California because of the palm trees lining the road. If anyone has any idea where this could be, let us hear from you … Thanks for looking … Frank
The Crestwood Tourist Hotel …
I had seen negative years ago and had thought that it looked interesting, but put it aside and did not run across it again until a few weeks ago. It had to have been made back in the 1950’s in one of my father’s trips out west to visit his sister out west. The first couple of images are of post cards that I ran across when I googled Crestwood Tourist Hotel. Since the image that my father took was at night, I thought that these post card images showed what the property actually looked like. So here are the post cards …
OK, now here is the shot that he made at night …
The negative was filthy and it took me quite a long time to take out all of the dust marks and scratches. I doubt that the hotel is still around … I forgot to mention that this hotel was located in Houston Texas. I did not see the location of the hotel, since the back of these post cards was not included with either of the cards. If anyone recognizes this hotel and knows where it’s location is / was, please let us hear from you. Also, if you have any stories about the place, go ahead and let us hear them. Thanks again and please check back … Frank
One more thing … This place is called a ” Hotel “, but to me it is more of a motel and not a hotel. That’s just my two cents.
Tate High School Football Team …
This is the football team that I had mentioned in the last post. It was in another folder and it was in fairly good shape, so I went ahead and worked it up and posted it. Like I said in the other post, this is from sometime in the mid 1950’s, but not sure of the exact year. These guys would be in their 70’s now. I know that someone out there will be able to tell us … how about that number 17? He has to be a lot tougher than he looks! I do not know if they had enough players to have both a Varsity and a JV team, so Tate might have only one team. I doubt that Tate was all that large of a school back in the 1950’s … the north end of Escambia County was still pretty much a rural area. There was not much north of Nine Mile Road, even if there was a Nine Mile Road in the ’50’s. Thanks for looking …
Tate High School …
This set of photographs was made sometime in the middle 1950’s … not sure of the exact years. If anyone has any idea who any of these people are, feel free to share it with us. I am just going to post all of the images, so here we go …
The last group of the coaches has several guys that look familiar to me, but none of the others do. I know that someone out there will know something about these photos. In the past, I would have broken all of these photos up into several posts. There are still several images from this set that I have not worked-up and I will get around to them in several months. Thanks for looking and please check back … Frank
St. Michael’s Catholic Church …
Here is an interior view of St. Michael’s Catholic Church in downtown Pensacola Florida that I made back around 1982 on 4×5 sheet film. This is a few that few people see unless they walk up to see the altar. I do have some altar photos somewhere and when I run across them I will put them up. I cannot tell you how many wedding that I have done here, but I would guess over a hundred. One job that my father and I did here was to photograph each station of the cross and made a photo album for a man’s wife who visited the church and could not get over how detailed each piece was. We also gave an album to the priest at the time which he was thrilled to get, since the only photos he had were a bunch of snap-shots. I put a link to the church that you can click on to take you to the church’s site. I was sitting here thinking how the previous post was about a liquor store and then I followed it up with a church post … that was not a ” Sinner and Saint ” message since we are going into Mardi Gras season this time of year. I just happened to have these two images ready to post and they are in the same folder, so there is no hidden meaning here what so ever. Like I said in the previous post, if you want to share any memories that you have about St. Michael’s – you got married here or attended a wedding in the church or even attended St. Michael’s School and had First Communion in the church … feel free to share them with us. Thanks again for looking and please check back … like I said in an earlier post, I have a few more ready to go and I will get them up in the next few weeks … Frank
PS – I just went to the church’s site and they have a photo gallery that has lots of photos … activities, interior and exterior views, etc, etc. I should have done that before I wrote the post, but you know me …
Bay Lounge and Package Store …
This place was known as The Bay Lounge, but I do not think that I ever heard anyone call it that … it was simply known as ” Cantaloupe’s “. Even though he had been married to lady by the name of Shirley and the lounge’s name was ” Cantaloupe and Shirley’s “, I do not ever remember anyone ever calling it that. There was a package store on the left-hand side of the building that most people would go and hang-out in. That part of the place was known as the ” Stand -Up “. People would go in and buy a bottle and stand – up and drink. This was back in the 1970’s and 80’s … now I bet you would be hard pressed to find a place like Cantaloupe’s any where today. The stand-up went the way of the buggy whip, Walk-man, laser-discs, Falstaff Beer, etc, etc. Now I am not going to mention any names, but you could find everyone from court judges to doctors to builders … you name them, they drank there. The place is now Franco’s Italian Restaurant and has been for years. Here is one more exterior view of Cantaloupe’s and I made these by the way back around 1981 or so …
It is basically the same view, just a little closer. Shot on 4×5 sheet film. Even though I made it, I thought that it went better over on this blog than my personal photography blog. If anyone wants to share their own personal ” Cantaloupe ” story, please feel free … if you are brave enough! Just kidding. I am sure that Cantaloupe is deceased by now, but he was always nice to me and I did a few jobs for him through the years. If we get enough stories, who knows, may there is a book somewhere in the future … naw, I doubt it. Thanks again for looking and please check back … Frank
PS – This place was located on Gregory Street right across what is now McGuire’s Irish Pub, but everyone from Pensacola already knew that …
Suter School Play …
With Suter School being in the news with their new school building completed and open for students this week, I thought that I would post a photo from one of the plays that the school used to put on in the 1950’s. I have several envelopes of negatives from plays back in the 1950’s … maybe ’54, ’55 and ’56 and there are thirty of forty negatives per bag. I have posted some in earlier posts and did not get many comments or looks, so I do not really expect much from this one. One bad thing about these negatives is that they are not in very good shape and take more work in Photoshop to get them ready to post. You can type in ” Suter School ” in the search button on the right hand side of the blog and the other posts should pop up. The more I think about it as I type this up, I might have had four or five comments from people who recognized someone in the play. One side note, the posts that get the most attention are ones from Modesto California … can you believe that? To me, I can not figure that one out. However, I do appreciate all of the people looking for Modesto photos from back in the 1950’s. Another interesting fact is that I never knew anything about the Modesto images until my father died and I ran across them when I was sorting through all of the tens of thousand negatives that I have. In fact, I did not know that a lot of the negatives where of Modesto until people started commenting on them. Thanks for looking and I did not mean to get off on Modesto … Frank
Another One From The Port of Pensacola …
This is one taken in a warehouse down at the Port of Pensacola from back in the 1950’s, maybe around 1955. I had posted another one like it with another man bending over loading a sack with this nitrate in the photo, but I removed him in this image. I have always thought that this photo had an interesting look to it. I ran it through the Lucis Art filter in Photoshop to add some contrast to an otherwise “flat” image. Thanks for looking and please check back … Frank
Frank Hardy Made My Photographs Two 
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