I'm pretty sure this was taken in the 1920s. I think they're all college kids. I don't know if they're wearing their own clothes or if the photo studio provided costumes. The woman in the middle seems to be wearing a flapper costume, what with that headband, but wouldn't a young person have dressed like this then? The women who are not my grandmother are wearing awfully similar coats, and the men have nearly identical hats, yet my grandmother is coatless. So it seems that everyone but she put on the photographer's costumes. Why didn't she? Maybe she liked feeling of cool air on her skin and maybe she bypassed the costumes to jump in the car first and claim the driver's seat.
The pennants are scattered about haphazardly, and I realize I'm not quite sure if my grandmother went to Adrian College. I do know that she became a teacher, and that after she married my grandfather -- who is not in this picture -- she hid the fact that she was married, because they would have fired her for being married. Did they think a woman who had sex could not be trusted teaching children? Did they think a woman wronged her husband by going to work? Perhaps they thought it was greedy or unfair for a family to have two paychecks.
This picture mystifies me and makes me feel sad. It's not just the poignancy of the distant past, but that I never knew my grandmother when she was anything like this young and confident person. The Geraldine I knew suffered and complained. I never got the whole story out of my mother, but I think she completely changed when her fifth (and last) child was born with a hopeless birth defect and died within one year. So for me this picture represents the most unreachable part of the past. It makes me sad, but it also makes me happy. How charming and mischievous she looks!
Posts
20 comments:
Nice picture. I can see the family resemblance, especially around the eyes.
And I believe the usual rationale for wanting unmarried teachers is so they wouldn't get pregnant and quit (or, worse yet, scandalize everyone by continuing to teach while pregnant). A more cynical reason is that women without access to a second (usually larger) income via their husbands were easier to work like mules and treat like dirt.
I will never forget the first time I saw photos of my grandparents and the relatives in the 1920's.
Better than me seeing a picture of my dad from 1970. He looked like Austin Powers.
That, I didn't need to know about.
Did they think a woman who had sex could not be trusted teaching children? Did they think a woman wronged her husband by going to work? Perhaps they thought it was greedy or unfair for a family to have two paychecks.
1. No.
2. Hmm. Depends.
3. The "unfair" part has a lot of truth to it: Or, at least in so far as the "you're taking away an income someone else actually needs" rationale.
4. Revenant's first reason (the biggie, I think)
5. Revenant's second reason (right up there, too)
I base this not just on logic, or reading, but what my own grandmothers--at least one of whom was likely in your grandmother's cohort, and the other within a decade's spittin' distance--shared with me. And I got to know them very well (I'm very, very, very lucky) before one of them got...vague... and the other entered the full-blown state of suffering and complaining.
I love this picture. I love pictures like this one. I think it's so cool you posted it.
And Revenant is also right about the resemblance, IMO.
Love, but also feel the mix of feelings you express.
My grandmother was the first woman, as I understand it, to lead a strike in the US. 1919 against the Dayton Power and Light Company.
DP&L stills screws people, and grandma died in '89 at ripe old 94.
Hell of a lady. Also happened to found the company where I work.
"Did they think a woman who had sex could not be trusted teaching children? Did they think a woman wronged her husband by going to work? Perhaps they thought it was greedy or unfair for a family to have two paychecks."----Althouse
Or, perhaps they just didn't like someone who lied about being married?
Back then, I would think the sin of lying far outweighs any of the other, above, sins you mention.
Peace, Maxine
No, Maxine. It was an explicit policy, which is why she hid her marriage.
Marc Cohn
The Things We've Handed Down
Will you laugh just like your mother
Will you sigh like your old man
Will some things skip a generation
Like I've heard they often can
Are you a poet or a dancer
A devil or a clown
Or a strange new combination of
The things we've handed down
I wonder who you'll look like
Will your hair fall down and curl
Will you be a mama's boy
Or daddy's little girl
Will you be a sad reminder
Of what's been lost along the way
Maybe you can help me find her
In the things you do and say
And these things that we have given you
They are not so easily found
But you can thank us later
For the things we've handed down
You may not always be so grateful
For the way that you were made
Some feature of your father's
That you'd gladly sell or trade
And one day you may look at us
And say that you were cursed
But over time that line has been
Extremely well rehearsed
By our fathers, and their fathers
In some old and distant town
From places no one here remembers
Come the things we've handed down
Ann,
My scenario: The young man in the passenger seat is pursuing Geraldine, who is interested enough to agree to a date, but not interested enough to go without a friend--the bored and slightly offended young lady in the middle. The other couple are there because the young man is a fraternity brother of Geraldine's prospective beau. They are a couple--bored and a little embarrassed by the spectacle. It's the county fair. The boys are wearing sporty costume caps, and the girls are wearing costume coats, but our heroine is not--for obvious reasons. What fun to be behind the wheel.
A date, circa 1925. Little heat, and no fire.
Pogo:
:'''''''
[\o
In rural townships, there weren't many secure gummint jobs to share around (see 'God's Little Acre'), so it was felt that if a woman married, her husband could support her and the schoolma'm pay could go to some family that needed it more -- some of those virginal teachers had dependents, you know.
But it's nice to know that feminists have not given up just making up crap to score points.
Your grandmother is driving- how'd she wrangle the prime seat? And did you ever wonder if you got your love of road trips from her or this picture?
She does look spunky.
The woman in the back has the facial expression of a 60 year-old though, don't you think?
Whenever I see old photos, I still see the people as old, and not they age they are in the photos. Not so with your grandmother. She has a very modern look.
I would suggest that more women of that generation worked than in the next one, the one that Ann's and my parents came from. Or, I should qualify that: a lot of women worked during WWII, but were pushed out of the labor force and into childrearing by the returning vets.
In the prior generation, there were a lot of maiden aunts and the male equivalents. In my family, about half of the kids of that generation got married and had families, and the other half either didn't marry, or married late. And those unmarried or late married women tended to work.
But mothers working was rare then, but not unheard of. My mother's mother didn't get married until almost 30, and worked up until then, after having gotten a college degree. My father's mother met his father in teachers college. She taught accounting at a vo-tech type school through the 1920s, stopping for one year to have my father. Then, she moved to the college level in the 1930s and finished out her career there, again teaching accounting. My father was griping last week about taking classes from other profs at the business school there, and how they pushed him harder than they did anyone else - that is the problem with having a parent on the faculty of the college you are going to.
I see pictures of that set of grandparents in the 1920s, and they were quite sylish. I would almost say, avant guard. My father remembers seances at their house while was growing up. After retirement, they owned a girl's camp, and I never saw them out of that sort of western dress (including pants - and boots) (indeed, I have fond memories of learning to ride from her and my father). But all the pictures we have of them from 1920 up through the late 1940s, they were always very professionally dressed.
My other grandmother couldn't have continued to work even if she had wanted to. My grandfather was during much of that time, an artillary officer. And wives of officers, esp. field grade, didn't work back then. Rather, their "job" was to entertain the other officers' wives, and be entertained by them, etc. Indeed, during WWII, she was often the highest ranking wife on the base, which she loved.
Theo: The photo you remember is of my father's mother. This is my mother's mother.
Think of how few people back then had access to a telephone. Postcards were the way to communicate. Back in the 1970's the 80 year old lady who lived across the street from me, gave me a postcard that showed my farm house shortly after it had been built in 1908. Also, in the picture is the windmill and partially visible, the old log cabin that the owners lived in previously. The driveway was on the other side of the house than it is now, and the original barn burned down in 1925. I love old stuff.
and the last Iraq war widow may still be receiving her pension in 2140.
You mean the war will be over by then?
I love old pictures, and old letters from people long dead. I have some family letters from the 1840s and they are so fascinating to read.
Ann, you should have that picture restored, especially since you look so related to your grandmother!
Here in the South, to quote Shelby Foote, the past isn't dead - it isn't even the past.
My grandad was raised by his uncle, who was a Confederate veteran. His great-grandfather could remember when the rumors of Flora McDonald and Bonnie Prince Charlie were fresh.
I have a picture of my grandad sitting astride a motorcycle taken shortly before he left for France and WWI. He was badly wounded and returned a quiet and introspective man. I wish I could have known him when he was the kind of fellow who rode a motorcycle with a devilish grin on his face.
Heck, my granddad was a refugee from Sherman's army, which burned down the house he was living in. He was 5 years old then, but he died before I was born.
He left us his memoirs. I wish my other grandparents had.
Post a Comment