This real photo post card was found at the same estate sale where I found the RPPC's from the previous two days. Other than saying the cards were purchased at a ramshackle house outside Calistoga, California I have no information. Well, I do have what is written on the back, Jessie Blue Light 1910.
Click on image to see it larger.
She fascinates me. There's drama in the photo because of the lighting, but she certainly isn't a dramatic person. She looks melancholy, which doesn't mean she was. I've said before I'm fascinated by the expressions on the old portrait faces only because I try to image them a moment before and after the shot was taken. I want to know if perhaps Jessie bent over laughing after this thinking it all so silly. She certainly doesn't look as glum as my posts the past two days.
Jessie looks like a school teacher, or a music teacher, or perhaps librarian. It's the pose, the stiff back. Perhaps the wife of a minister. But all of this is just me projecting and each of you will do the same. All of the people in these vernacular photographs are just actors in the story we tell. The truth rarely intrudes.
Then there's that name. A very unusual name. There's a story there for sure...lost to history.
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