Flowers for Memorial Day

Need some flowers for Memorial Day? Well, if you have a time machine you can visit turn of the century Chicago and get some bargains!

Happy Mothers Day!

Part of our long weekend involved one of my favorite hobbies, visiting lonely old cemeteries and taking a look at the stones. This being Memorial Day weekend we were especially lucky to find the grave of a man who participated in the reason for the observance, the Civil War. B. R. Cawthorn was a part of Company B of the 78th Indiana Infantry, a unit mustered in August of 1862 Indianapolis from residents of western Indiana (Putnam, Parke, Hendricks, Wayne, and Clay Counties). They deployed to protect the port of Evansville to combat guerrillas from Kentucky. In spite of its strategic significance, the south never really made an attempt to occupy Evansville. Incursions into Indiana would come to Franklin and Uniontown, but never Evansville.

Still, Mr. Cawthorn served his country with pride and dignity and now he rests in the quiet churchyard of Union Chapel Baptist Church with lichen growing on his simple headstone and an American flag gently fluttering by its side. Thanks for your service, Mr. Cawthorn.

Happy Memorial Day

It all started with the Civil War. More young men died on the battlefields of the Civil War than anyone could have imagined, so many that it inaugurated the creation of the United States' first national cemeteries. After the war, towns and cities across the country began venerating the dead with springtime ceremonies, prayers, and floral decorations of the graves of soldiers. Like most holidays and observances, the birth of what was then called Decoration Day was an organic affair and nobody can be sure where the movement began, but in 1966 the US Government weighed in, declaring Waterloo, NY the birthplace of Memorial Day. The claim is that Waterloo had a tradition of closing businesses and decorating the graves of the fallen with flowers and flags, but I catch a whiff of coastal hubris. Heaven forbid it should be some little town in the hinterlands...how lucky we are to have the stake driven in a nice, respectable, East Coast town. Anyway, I digress...

In 1868 General John A. Logan of Murphysboro, IL leader of a Union soldier's organization called for a national day of remembrance. He selected May 30th because it didn't coincide with the anniversary date of any specific battle, proclaiming "The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land." The holiday would retain its name through World War I and II, though it slowly was morphing from a remembrance of those who fell during the Civil War and becoming a remembrance of American deaths in global conflicts. It would take decades and an act of congress before the name was officially changed.

In 1968 the federal government enacted a bill called the Uniform Monday Holiday Act which, as the name implies, moved some holidays to Mondays in order to create three-day weekends. The date change not only moving Decoration Day to the last Monday in May as well as changing the name to the now familiar Memorial Day.

The change wasn't universally popular, the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW) campaigned to return to the date of May 30 in spite of the arbitrary nature of that date. In a 2002 Memorial Day address VFW stated, "Changing the date merely to create a three-day weekend has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this has contributed a lot to the general public's nonchalant observance of Memorial Day." Still, we celebrate the day with flowers and visits to the cemetery to adore graves with flags or wreaths or, more likely, barbeque with the family. In the end that's what they fought for, isn't it? The freedom and safety to enjoy a warm spring day with the ones you love without fear?

Happy Mothers Day!

Happy Siblings Day

Old Lady: Oh! Shame, little girl! You shouldn't say you hate anyone.

Little Girl: I guess I got a right to hate me own brother if I want to, ain't I?

Life Magazine, January 5, 1922

Happy May Day!

Quote for May

We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

- William Shakespeare

Poem for May

Happy Memorial Day!

Happy Memorial Day! Here's to our brave men and women, thanks for all you've done and I hope you are safe and sound no matter where you are.

Happy Cinco de Mayo

I know, technically it's not a Cinco de Mayo card, but there aren't too many of those floating around so I've got to take what I can get my hands on! Anyway, hope you're having a great Cinco and indulging in a little south-of-the-border fun today!

Poem for May

The Merry Month of May
~ by Thomas Dekker

O the month of May, the merry month of May,
So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green!
O, and then did I unto my true love say,
Sweet Peg, thou shalt be my Summer's Queen.

Now the nightingale, the pretty nightingale,
The sweetest singer in all the forest quire,
Entreats thee, sweet Peggy, to hear thy true love's tale:
Lo, yonder she sitteth, her breast against a brier.

But O, I spy the cuckoo, the cuckoo, the cuckoo;
See where she sitteth; come away, my joy:
Come away, I prithee, I do not like the cuckoo
Should sing where my Peggy and I kiss and toy.

O, the month of May, the merry month of May,
So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green;
And then did I unto my true love say,
Sweet Peg, thou shalt be my Summer's Queen.

Quote for May

The world's favorite season is the spring. All things seem possible in May.

~ Edwin Way Teale

Happy Memorial Day!

Indy 500 - Carl E. Rogers Mystery

After having success in unraveling photographic mysteries, I'll admit defeat on this one. This is an image from the archives of the Indiana Historic Society of Carl E. Rogers in the R&B Special car number 20. Supposedly he was a driver in the Indy 500, however I find no evidence of him ever driving in any race. So, if anyone can provide more information, I'd appreciate it!

Indy 500 - Pyroil Scores Again!

Pyroil seems to have a problem with counting. In the ad copy they state "Six of the ten winners of the 500 mile Memorial Day race at Indianapolis kept their racing machines lubricated with the help of Pyroil." The problem? Well, in 1947 when this ad ran in Popular Mechanics there had been 31 winners of the Indy 500, not ten.

There isn't much in the way of history for Pyroil online. My search only turned up more ads and a few MSDS sheets, but nothing in the way of when the company was founded or by whom. We do know it was located in La Crosse, Wisconsin, but not much more. Pyroil products are still available, now marketed under the Valvoline brand.

Jerry the talking dog was sort of the animal equivalent of a side-show act, barking words for the boys in veteran's hospitals around the US at the behest of his Pyroil masters. Didn't find too much on Jerry, either, but I did locate a site with a good (autographed no less) photo of the little whippet!

By the way, I'm not exactly sure how many cans of Pyroil for Aircraft Engines the company sold, but it seems a little strange that they'd run an ad for it in Popular Mechanics. Back in '47 were there that many people with their own planes in need of lubrication?

Full Moon Music - Luna Waltz

Carl Emil Paul Lincke was born in the Jungfern Bridge district of Berlin in 1866, a year that saw Jesse James rob his first bank and Italy go to war with Austria. After his father's death, Lincke was sent to Wittenberge where he joined the Wittenberg City Band and learned to play various instruments. Lincke didn't go into minitary music as a career as his mother thought he would. The nightlife drew him away from the starkness the life of a military musician and he found himself drifting toward the dance halls and berlesques. In 1987 he created the one-act musical play Venus auf Erden which premiered at the Apollo Theater in Friedrichstrasse.

In 1899, after a two year stint with the vaudeville house Folies Bergere, Lincke returned to the Apollo and produced his biggest success the operetta Frau Luna and the Luna Waltz (below) featured in that composition. But, as we all know, a lovely song does not make a lovely person and as the nineteen-teens ebbed into the furious twenties and then the steely thirties, Lincke found himself one of the poster-boys of the Nazi regime.



In 1937 he was awarded the silver cross and made an honorary citizen of Berlin. He departed Germany to conduct Frau Luna in Bohemia in 1943 and returned to find his Berlin home and publisher had been destroyed by allied bombs. After the war Lincke couldn't endear himself to the allies as he had to the Nazis. He moved to Arzberg, Bavaria with the approval of American General Pierce and later to Hahnenklee where he died shortly before his eightieth birthday. To this day his march Berliner Luft remains the unofficial anthem of the city that adopted him and his tune Das Gluhwurmchen (The Glow Worm) was translated into English in a greatly edited version by Johnny Mercer and made a hit by the Mills Brothers in 1952.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there, here's hoping you got the puppy you wanted!

Mothers Day - Buy More Flowers

Okay, so Mothers Day is this Sunday, but stumbling across this ad I felt like I should put it on the blog. I have to say mom looks a bit like Don Knots, and mama Knots doesn't look too impressed with the card...you did get more than a card, right?

The ad comes from the May 1920 issue of Florists' Review hence the emphasis on greenery. Mom expects flowers, mom should get flowers, a good child would have given flowers not just a crummy card...

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Happy Cinco de Mayo!