Book Covers From Shelby Foote …
In an earlier post, I mentioned that my father had gone to school back in the late 1920’s at P.K. Younge School on Palafox Street and that the author, Shelby Foote, was in his class. He wrote Shelby and sent him these book covers, which he graciously signed and sent back. The one above reads, ” For Frank Hardy, in memory of old days at PK Younge … From Shelby Foote ” . Here is another cover …
This one reads, ” For Frank Hardy From his old school mate … Shelby Foote”. I have one more cover from his trilogy on the Civil War …
I am surprised that he titled these books ” The Civil War “, because Southerners never identified the conflict as ” The Civil War ” because there is no such thing as a civil war. Southerners either called it ” The War Between the States ” or ” The War of Northern Aggression “, but very few identified it as ” The Civil War “. But I guess that most people identified the conflict as The Civil War and recognize it as such. And one more thing, it was never fought over slavery, however that is another story in itself. Thanks for looking …. the post previously on Shelby Foote is the one that includes the class photo from my father’s P.K. Younge’s 5th grade class. Let me know what you thing and as always I am interested in your comments … Frank
Talking On The Phone …
I do not know anything about this photo ( as usual ), but I just thought that it and the one below where cute photographs. You can just barely see the black phone on the table to the girl’s left. I would say that these images were made in the early 1950’s. They could have been taken for Southern Bell, since my father used to take a lot of photos for them. You can tell that big sister is trying to ignore her little brothers … her being a teenager and everything. Here is the other photograph …
Those little guys just are not going to leave her alone. You can see the phone better in this photo. How many of you out there can remember seeing a phone like this? I believe that this style of phone was around for twenty or thirty years before Bell Telephone got around to redesigning it and adding color to the units. I have a photo somewhere showing the new style phone and colors somewhere that I will find to post. I am really surprised how long it took the phone company to come up with different styles of phones to offer the buying public … I guess that the public had other things in life to worry about and not the type or color of what phone they had in their house. Not today! You cannot even watch the Oscars without getting bombarded by the new Samsung cell phone. Times have definitely changed! Thanks for looking and please check back … Frank
Pensacola Mardi Gras …
Not sure if this Mardi Gras photo is from the 1920’s or 30’s. All of the people on the float are wearing black masks for some reason, making them even more scarey. The man on the podium is giving someone in the krew the key to the city. I have seen some other photos similar to this one, but not with the key to the city being handed over. The man doing the handing could either be the Mayor of Pensacola or maybe the City Manager … someone important for sure. Who knows, it might even be a relative to Quint Studer or some other mover and shaker back then, If anyone knows anything about this photo or anything from this era, please share it with us. I am curious about this one. I also hope everyone is enjoying their Mardi Gras Tuesday and will make it to church tomorrow for Ash Wednesday, if they are not too hung-over. As always, all comments are welcomed and appreciated and please check back … Frank
One more thing, my father did not take this photo. I just had a copy negative that I scanned for this image. Someone must have brought him the photo to copy and make prints. If anyone has any idea who the photographer was, please let me know. Most photographers from this era put their mark somewhere on the print to identify the photographer / artist, but this print did not. I am sure that it was photographed with a view camera because of the sharpness. The photographers back during this time names could have been ” Bell “, ” Turpin ” and ” Cottrell ” and would have had their names somewhere on the negative or print if they had made the image. Thanks again ….
Escambia County Commissioners …
This is a photograph of the Escambia County Commissioners. The year is unknown … but if I had to guess, I would say sometime in the 1920’s. One of these men was my grandfather, H.B. Hardy’s brother – L.W. Hardy. I do not know which one he was. The purpose of posting this photo is to show how things got done ninety years or so ago … a group of men sat down at an old wooden table, in old wooden chairs talking to one another, face to face. Anyone that wanted to sit in and listen could just take a seat in a line of chairs against the back wall. If you had a question, you asked it… Sunshine Law, you mean they needed a law to let the sun shine in? I bet they would even let a reporter from the paper sit in, and if he brought along a box of cigars, he might even be allowed to ask a question. Doing business with the county commissioners has certainly changed a lot in the last ninety years. No longer is it how can we help you, the taxpayer, but what can you, the taxpayer, do for your county commissioner? What, no cash donation at election time? Money talks … yes, if you want my attention, there is something you can do to get me to pay attention . If anyone knows anything about the photo above, please share it with us. I do not know if this photo is even hanging up down at the Escambia County Courthouse somewhere … so if you can tell me that, also, please do. Thanks for looking and please check back … Frank
And Let The Sun Shine In ….
PK Younge Class Photo …
This is my father’s fifth grade class photo at PK Younge School on Palafox Street. This is the class photo that I mentioned in an earlier post that has the author, Shelby Foote, in the group, but I do not know which one he is. My father is the third boy standing up on the top row, left side. I do not know who the small child standing next to him and I doubt that she is old enough to be in this class. The only thing that I can think of is that maybe she is the teacher’s child and wanted to be in the photo. Having your photo made was a rarity for this time … I would guess that this is 1926 … that they included her for that reason. I do not know if the Escambia County School Board would even have records going back this far. If anyone has any knowledge of this, please let me know. I would be interested in knowing who the rest of these kids are and who the teacher is . I also have a photo of my father’s class out front of the school in Muscogee Florida and I do have the names of the students in that class. There are some names that are familiar to old time Pensacola families like Vaughn, that some of you might recognize. Thanks for looking and if anyone knows about the school board records from the 1920’s, let me hear from you. Please check back … Frank
Cole Wedding …
These images are from a ” Cole ” Wedding that my father photographed back in the 1950’s. I had posted an image of two twin girls standing in a hallway of the San Carlos Hotel in an earlier post. I am trying to catalog all of the negative envelopes that I have left, which is several thousand. I have cleaned my darkroom and I have been looking for some interesting negatives to print, also. I do not know what order I am going to post them in, so we will just have to see what I come up with …. here comes some images:
Here is the bride and groom in the reception hall at the San Carlos. The bride’s last name was Cole, since we usually save the negatives under the bride’s maiden name. The groom must have been Jewish ,,,I can not remember the name of the ” tent ” that the couple gets married under. The bride must not have been Jewish, other wise they would have been married at the Temple. Besides, Cole does not sound Jewish. Here is a couple out in the hallway that my father had photographed the twins in …
As usual, I have no clue these people, but it does not really matter. To me, that wallpaper and carpet really clash, but someone obviously thought that they went together. I would almost say that the decorating ideas came from Las Vegas, but this hotel was built before Las Vegas was even a twinkle in the mob’s eye.
Note my father’s 5×7 view camera is in the background. All of these images were from 4×5 scanned negatives, but he did take a 5×7 camera with him to weddings. I have a handful of 5×7 negatives from most of the weddings that he shot in the 1950’s. I thought that I would include this photo because of that camera in the image.
I can remember going to dances back in this reception area back in junior high school … this room was located on the top floor of the San Carlos and was a fairlly large room. The last one is of the girls standing by a wall-sized mirror out in a hall. You will recognize the two twins from an earlier post of them in the hall-way the couple above was photographed in …
I want you to notice how large the mirror is and the gold moulding used as a frame. When they shut down the San Carlos in the 1970’s, the owners sold off all of the furnishings through out the hotel. I remember someone telling me that he had bought some of the tapestries and ended up selling them to an antiques dealer in New York. I wondered sometimes whatever happened to the mirrors when I think about the tapestries.
That is all for now … if you have any comments about any of this, let us hear from you. Thanks for looking and please check back … Frank
The Maternity Ward at the Old Sacred Heart Hospital …
This photo of my mother and I was made on 14 Aug 53, I was born on 11 Aug 14, so I was 3 days old in this photo. This is the type of photo my father would take of the mother and her new born baby and would sell it to the mother or her family. I posted a folder in a much earlier post that he would insert this photo in … it has a photo of the front steps of the old hospital on the cover. So, he had a fairly lucrative photography ” side-business ” at the hospital while he was the x-ray technician. The next photo shows one of the nuns and several nurses standing around the bed talking to my mother and looking at me ..
Now, looking at this photo, you get the impression that they were in my mother’s room standing around talking and enjoying themselves. Well, back then, there was no such thing as a ” private ” room ,,, you were in a ward with other mother’s and their babies. The next photo shows after everyone had left …
Yes, that is another mother and her baby separated by a cloth curtain. I wish I knew who this mother and her baby are … notice that the mother has her purse sitting on the night stand next to her bed. I wonder how many mothers today would like this arrangement? Yea, I did not think that many would. Back when I had my tonsils taken out in 1959 at the old Sacred Heart Hospital at the tender age of six, I was stuck in a men’s ward with ten other men. It was the worst experience that I had ever had up to that time, but that is another story in itself and I do not have any photos from that time. Also, it would take me forever to give you the full run down and I hate to type anyway so you will be spared that story. I also have a bill that my mother received from her stay at the hospital that I will have to find and scan ,,, you will enjoy the simplicity of the bill. I think they charged her twenty cents for two aspirin was one of the lines on the bill. If you have been in the hospital lately and received a bill, you will wish you were back in the good old days … sort of, for a moment anyway.
Thank you for tuning in and I hope you enjoyed the program … this is sort of like looking at old episodes of the Andy Grifith Show, only minus Barney and Goober. Thanks for looking and please check back. If any of you can remember your stay in a hospital ward, let us hear them … Frank
East Hill in the Snow …
I decided to post a few more of these snow scenes from back in February 1957 to show how much snow Pensacola received …Now on 1/29/14 we have an ice storm and everything comes to a stand-still. The Interstate is shut down and almost all of the bridges in the surrounding counties have been closed, so essentially you cannot travel anywhere between Escambia and Santa Rosa Counties. The photo above is a scan from a transparency of the park on 12th Avenue and Gonzalez Street in East Hill. I have posted other views of this park that my father had made from this time in earlier posts, but I do not believe that I have posted this exact one before. You can see the old Winn-Dixie grocery store at the other side of Gonzalez Street. On the far left side, you see a corner of the old Sacred Heart Hospital … I have recently run across a photo that my father had taken of a group of nurses standing outside in the snow that I have not posted yet, but could not find the folder I placed it in. I will spend a little time looking for it this afternoon later, it is a cute photo of a group of nurses having fun in the snow. Here is one more new snow scene …
This is corner of Cervantes and 14th Avenue, back when Cervantes was a two lane road … the house on the right is still there on the corner, I am not sure about the one on the other side of the street, but I am inclined to say that it is. I have some more photos from California that I will post in the next day or so and I have some other random images that I have worked-up of Pensacola. I hope that everyone made it through the ice storm without any damage. Thanks for looking and please check back … Frank
UPDATE: The white house in the bottom photo is no longer there … this is just a vacant lot now with a huge oak tree what looks to be about the center of the lot. Someone had emailed me about this when I posted these images. There does not appear to be a For Sale sign in the lot, so I guess that the oak tree sits in such a way that you cannot build anything on the lot, but I am not sure. Thanks for the comments … Frank
California Bungalow …
I have found some more negatives recently from one of my father’s trips out to California in the 1940’s and 50’s to visit his sister, Lucille. I have no idea about the history behind these two images, other than the fact that they were made somewhere in California … could be Los Angeles, maybe Modesto … who knows. But it looks like the type of place that you would find Humphrey Bogart walking out of after received a call in the middle of the night from an unknown stranger that said he would find a blond hair starlet lying dead across the bed if he went to this bungalow off of Sunset Boulevard. I guess that I have read too many detective novels or have seen too many black and white films form the 1950’s. Here is one more view …
Maybe someone out there might recognize where this is … I have really been surprised of all of the people from Modesto California that have viewed this site and commented about certain areas in the past. This place just looks like a generic photo of a California motel / apartment from the 1950’s, so I do know really expect much. I is just fun to speculate and imagine some story behind these old photographs. Thanks for looking and please check back … Frank
The Corner of Baylen and Government Streets …
I found this image years ago and just set it aside … it really did not do anything me until it dawned on me that the Professional Building was torn down to make the new Court House Annex / Clerk’s Office. Also, this George’s Grill was popular with the Downtown Crowd. I have no idea why my father made this photograph, but I am sure it was for an insurance adjuster … must have been a bad accident here at this intersection. You are looking east toward Palafox Street and you see Mayes Office Supply and Printing business next to the Professional Building on the north side of Government Street. I can still remember when Mayes and the Professional Building were there in the 1960’s and the 1970’s, but I do not remember George’s Grill.
One more thing, this is my 300th post on this blog. I never made it this far when I had it over on Blogger. I hope to keep this going for quite some time because I still have thousands of negatives and photographs that I can post. One of the most important things that I have learned is that just because an image does not have any “meaning ” to me, someone out there on the internet usually recognizes someone in the photo or the location in the photo and will comment. Making me glad that I took the time to post the image. One such image is the one that I titled ” First Methodist Musicians “. I have received some nice comments and a few calls about that image … and I sat on those images for years before I posted them. So thanks for looking and as usual, all comments are appreciated and I do respond to all of them, even though it might take me a while to getting around to writing. Please check back … Frank
Frank Hardy Made My Photographs Two 
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