What the Lees Were Selling

Charles and Anna Lee, both hoping to sell things by advertising in the Hobart Gazette of April 16, 1920.


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Rhode Island Red hen and rooster in a 1915 lithograph.
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Birds and Glass

My macro lens doesn't do any better shooting through glass than my other lens. Here I took a photo of stuffed birds under glass in the basement of the Hobart Historical Society museum. I gather this collection belonged mostly to Ed Prusiecki, who owned the Art Theater.


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The birds-and-glass picture below doesn't come from the museum. This was my earliest experimentation with the macro lens.

Emily Rossow

From the Busse autograph collection.


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Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

I would be obliged to anyone who can tell me who Emily Rossow was. I've found plenty of Rossow girls in the 1910 census, but none is named Emily.


This little picture was in the autograph album at this page, but there's nothing on it to confirm that it has anything to do with the elusive Emily, rather than just being stuck into the album randomly.



Two little children playing at the edge of a cliff, and their guardian angel watching over them. Well, judging by all the newspaper reports I've seen of children injured and killed in this general time frame, I have to say that guardian angels of the early 20th century were pretty bad at their jobs.

A Snowy Funeral

The Saturday night after Anna Gernenz died, snow began to fall. As Easter Sunday dawned, the snow was falling heavily and a northeast wind piling up drifts. With a blizzard between the faithful and their churches, morning services were sparsely attended.

Around noon the streetcars became mired in snow.

The afternoon went on and so did the storm. The churches got the word out — evening services were cancelled. By nightfall a passenger train on the Pennsy line was stuck in snow near Wisconsin Street.

Sometime after midnight on Sunday, the snow tapered off. When Monday came, the air was clear, and town and countryside were white. Snowdrifts lay everywhere; at the center of Hobart, at Main and Third, the drifts were four or five feet high. Roads were dotted with stuck cars. The town snowplow had cleared a path along the major streets, but still they were not passable by automobile — people walked, or got out their sleighs and bobsleds and hitched up their horses.

The family and friends of Anna Gernenz had to brave these conditions to attend her funeral on Monday afternoon. She was laid to rest amidst the snowdrifts in Hobart Cemetery.


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This blizzard reminded locals of the one that hit in 1918, but this time there was no local militia volunteering to dig out the stalled streetcars; hired men, probably, got the streetcars moving again by Tuesday afternoon. And this time it was April, not January; the cold was not so bitter, and though the snowdrifts were tall, they would be short-lived. A week and a half later, the News commented that the Easter snowstorm had melted away without any flooding.

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We can guess how some of the snowbound people amused themselves — the same way they amused themselves when they weren't snowbound; the same way people have amused themselves since the dawn of time. As the Gazette remarked:

There seem to be more drunks in Hobart these days than there were before the saloons closed. It is quite common to see young men under the influence of liquor.

Sources:
♦ "Funeral of Mrs. Fred Gernenz Held Monday Afternoon." Hobart News 8 Apr. 1920.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 15 Apr. 1920.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 9 Apr. 1920.
♦ "Obituary." Hobart Gazette 9 Apr. 1920.
♦ "The Worst Storm of the Season." Hobart Gazette 9 Apr. 1920.
♦ "Worst Storm in Two Years Visits Hobart Sunday." Hobart News 8 Apr. 1920.

Maisy (Random Pointless Photo)

This is Maisy. I am fostering her for the Humane Society of Hobart. Note her great big belly. She is about to have kittens.


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Since Maisy will be here to take care of her kittens, this project should not be as difficult as last fall's four motherless kittens, but it still is not good news for the blog.

Every spring, summer and fall, while I'm spending hours and hours working outside, I look forward to the winter when I will be stuck inside the house and have all kinds of time on my hands to fix everything that's wrong with my blog. But it never works out that way!

Hobart Then and Now: Cleveland Avenue

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Here we have another view of Cleveland Avenue. (Sorry about the quality of the historical photo; I did look around for a better version, but in the end I had to scan it from the tiny reproduction on my 1909 road trip postcard.) It's not the most illuminating picture I've ever seen, but it's what I've got.

I'm pretty sure that first house in the old photo is the Melin house, so we're looking eastward along Cleveland from the cemetery corner.

Cap'n Jim's Hobart Memories

Through the miracle of the internet, someone I've never met has volunteered some Hobart memories, thus sparing me, for once, the crushing burden of writing an original post. So today we will hear from Cap'n Jim:

What I will recount below might be of no use in any documentation. But, it might be of some personal interest. If old timers like me don't preserve this stuff who will?

I will recall some unrelated things generally about "The J." I was born and raised within a stone's throw of the railroad.

The property now used by the lumber company on the South side of the old right of way contained no development until the mid nineteen thirties. Then the Blue Ribbon Dairy was built there. When that business was demolished I don't know. It was succeeded by a grocery store whose building still exists.

On the North side of the tracks just west of Main St., about at the end of the lumber company building was a water tank for the locomotives. (As an aside, there was a similar tank on the Nickel Plate just west of Main St. on the North side of the tracks.) From time to time Pennsy engines would use the EJ&E tank.

Moving along a little way, there was a stock loading pen and chute at Lake St. It was on the South side abutting the street and the RR track. Never saw it used. On the other hand, I never saw the hitching post in front of the high school used either

The Main Street and Lake Street crossings were guarded by watchmen. I'm quite sure the Main St. crossing was manned all night. I'm not sure about Lake. (Another aside. The Main St. Nickel Plate crossing was also guarded by a watchman. His name was Tony and he had a badly injured leg on which he wore a heavy brace. Of course, all the school kids knew him and greeted him daily.) All of the crossings had small guard houses with small coal stoves. And no lights!

There were some instances where EJ&E trains stopped for lengthy periods blocking both Main and Lake. This was a potentially dangerous situation because there was only one fire station. It was downtown.

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My former residences [on Main Street and Water Street] haven't changed all that much. What has changed is the corner at Eighth and Water where there was formerly a very awkward grade level crossing. And, the Main St. crossing which has been leveled out.

In 1945 or 46, five veterans just returned from service took that crossing at a high rate of speed and collided head-on with a Gary Railways bus. All five of them were killed. A short time later five others struck an EJ&E train stopped at the Cleveland Ave-Rte 130 crossing. Again all five were killed. Not happy news.

Other memories. In 1936 the WPA worked on what became Brickie Bowl. An endless succession of trucks carried fill down the hill to create the area that became the field. There was a rude bridge across Duck Creek where additional work was in progress. We were told it was to be tennis courts. (And yes, I am that old!)

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[1947] was the year of the centennial and the year Hobart Lumber burned. I was ushering at the theater and we were wearing Indian costumes to celebrate the observance. I ran from the theater to the fire in costume.

Thank you, Cap'n Jim. That's the first I've ever heard of a stock loading pen on Lake Street.