YOUNG LOVE in pink

I really don't know about this shot. Brother and sister? Boyfriend and girlfriend? It comes from the Kentucky STRANGEST PHOTO ALBUM I Ever Bought. It's a sweet picture or is it?

Pretty in pink.

Tomorrow will be the final hand tinted photo.

Alas, no time to participate in Sepia Saturday this weekend. I simply don't have the bandwidth required to go around and make comments on other posts. Perhaps next week.

ANOTHER FRIEND of Juanita or Charles

Another image from THE STRANGEST PHOTO ALBUM I Ever Bought. I think that about says it all. Someone really went to town with their colors on this one, including the dress.

FRIEND of Juanita or Charles?

If you've been following this site since earlier this year you might remember the odd photo album I featured that belonged to Chas. E. Thomas from Kentucky. I called it THE STRANGEST PHOTO ALBUM I Ever Bought. If you haven't seen it you might want to go back in time and check out the series of posts that featured one of his wives, Juanita.

Amongst all the duplicate shots of Juanita, her daughter, her former husband, etc. were some photobooth shots that had been hand tinted. This is one of them.

There's no information as to who this woman is. It's all a mystery. Who is she and who applied the color? With the oddness of the album there are a lot of stories that could probably be told about this woman.

The STRANGEST...Part 11: JUANITA Being Taken For a Ride

Two Ponies of Bill's

Mother, Bill, Juanita, & Charles Taken Feb. 5, 1950

Mother's Home

Louisville Road

This caption appears in the middle of a page of photos of Juanita on a horse and a pony.

Click on any image to see it larger.

And the next year Charles is in love with Hattie L. Smith. No photos of Hattie are available.

The STRANGEST PHOTO ALBUM I Ever Bought, PART 10

From the album that just keeps on giving and giving and....

"Juanita + Friend 1943" is certainly a different Juanita from the shot taken with her husband in 1939. This photo is to the right of the photo of the one below showing Juanita with her first husband. This was taken the year before her baby was born.

I don't know about you, but I'm thinking Juanita was a child bride, maybe in her mid-teens. The difference in the eyes between her first marriage, this shot in 1943 with a friend, and the shot below taken in 1949, show she's been through a lot. In the 1943 shot she appears to be a woman seemingly caught in her own world. She looks very alone. By 1949 she was looking out for Juanita.

No doubt about it, Juanita is the star of this album.

The STRANGEST PHOTO ALBUM I Ever Bought, PART 8

For anyone who has been following this weeks posts, Juanita will not be a stranger, but this side of her life will be.

In at least 1949 and part of 1950 Juanita was married to Charles Thomas and they lived in Kentucky. But in 1939 Juanita was married to someone else. And by 1944 Juanita had a little girl named Mildred May or Mae.

This album contains snippet of lives, no cohesive story. What became of Juanita's first husband? Did he die during the war? Did they divorce?

And what of Mildred May who appears twice in the album, each time the same photo? One time her name is spelled Mildred May, the other Mildred Mae.

By late 1950 Charles seems to have married someone named Hattie, though there are no photos. Juanita not only disappears from the album, but everyone disappears. Nothing but captions and photo corners. A mystery that won't be solved. Are we looking at lives that ended tragically or simple dissolution of families?

And before I go, I ask you, do you think this man is Juanita's husband? This photo is in the album to the left of the shot of Juanita with her first husband? Are they the same man? Was her first husband Buddy Brooks?

There's still more to come, but for now this is this weeks Sepia Saturday post.

The STRANGEST PHOTO ALBUM I Ever Bought, PART 7

Charles and Juanita. There are actually three different portraits in this series. They were taken November 1949. By 1950 he's got a new girl named Hattie. This will remain a mystery.

Now, is Charles as you imagined him to be?

The STRANGEST PHOTO ALBUM I Ever Bought, PART 6

"Girl.Friends. in 1946"

I'm finding it fascinating the way periods are used in the captions. They're not there to show an abbreviation of a word. They don't seem to be there for any logical reason.

And no, this is not Charles. I don't know who this fella is with all the girl.friends. My next post will be Charles and Juanita together. I'm sure you already have created an image of what he looks like in your mind. You may or may not be surprised.

Click on image to see it larger.

The STRANGEST PHOTO ALBUM I Ever Bought, PART 5

...and the lady on the right, blue dot lady, gets a caption. The lady on the left gets none.

Click on image to see it larger.

THE STRANGEST PHOTO ALBUM I Ever Bought, PART 4

Oh yes, he liked the ladies.

THE STRANGEST PHOTO ALBUM I Ever Bought, PART 3

Charles liked the ladies, even if he didn't know their name.

THE STRANGEST PHOTO ALBUM I Ever Bought, PART 2

I mentioned this photo album in an earlier post. It's strange, not because of the content, but because of the context. Though the pages are all in the album, most of the photos are not. Occasionally there are a few complete pages, all photos in place. Most of the time it's pages with photo corners and captions, no photos at all. But the captions tell a story, though I'm not really sure what it is.

We'll start with this, the front of the generic looking photo album.

Inside the front cover handwritten in white ink it says:

Chas. E. Thomas

Route #1

Bristow, Ky.

Then on the very first page we get these two shots with captions.

(Remember you can click on any image to see it larger.)

This is Charles with his wife . Okay, that's fine. Charles and his wife liked this bridge. Charles liked his wife. And I'm thinking, because of other captions in the album, Charles helped to build this bridge. All fine and dandy. And then we get to the next recto page and we have this:

So oops! the same photo twice. It could happen. But the very next page? He didn't remember it on page 1? That's okay, there's no pattern here. It's a simple mistake. He loved his wife Juanita. He was her second husband. But he loved his little Kentucky wife and couldn't get enough of her so no big deal. He repeated a photo. Won't do it again.

Not so fast. On page 5 we get these lovely shots of Juanita.

And then on page 7 we get...well you can see for yourself.

So it's getting harder to give Charles the benefit of the doubt, though you might be inclined that way. I'm about to convince you to come over to my side. I give you page 7.

We always have to remember when looking at other people's albums that they don't need to make sense to us. We only hope they made sense to the album owner. In this case? Well I sure haven't a clue.

More photos to come from this album, but for now this is my Sepia Saturday submission.

THE STRANGEST PHOTO ALBUM I Ever Bought

Last year at the flea market I bought the strangest photo album I've ever seen. It's not that the photos are particularly odd. People in the photos look perfectly normal. The album is missing probably 2/3 of the original photos and apparently a lot of foreign money that was on the left hand pages. What remains on many pages are the photo corners with captions handwritten in white ink below each empty spot that seem to tell a rather strange story. The real oddness is that the fellow who put the album together often put the same photo multiple times in the album, but each with a different caption. So you look at the first page and you see one of him with his "first wife" and then two pages later the same photo shows up with a different caption. The weirdest of all is the page where he has the exact same photo, one above the other, different captions below each.

I think the only way I'll be able to do any justice to any of it is to actually take photos of some of the pages. There's no way I can scan the pages without doing damage to the album. Some photos I can remove and scan, such as the one below.

When I first saw the album another buyer was looking at it. I moved in close, within his space, wanted him to feel a little uncomfortable. I wanted the album. It worked. He moved on and I grabbed it. It has over 20 photobooth shots, some handtinted. Let's start with this one. The caption below it reads:

Girl. cousin By. marriage

And that is one of the least strange captions. But we'll get to some of the others in time. For now enjoy "Girl.cousin By.marriage" and ponder what the heck was the owner of the photobooth thinking with that backdrop? Seriously, a Nazi plane crashed in the background? And of course it's made even stranger by the placement of the cigarette in the woman's hand next to the flames in the water. Okay, it was war time. I get it, sort of. But was it common to have backdrops showing death and mayhem? I'm not sure I've ever seen anything like this before.

Click on the image to see it larger.