ShorpyBlog

...it's DeSoto! Specifically, a 1957 DeSoto. "This baby can flick its tail at anything on the road!" In this case, the Mar Monte Hotel in Santa Barbara in 1958. Detail from my brother-in-law's Anscochrome slide. Not his car, though. Full size.

Guernewood Park, California 1952. My sister hanging from a limb of the big cherry tree in the front yard of our summer place. Over on the left, I'm obviously getting ideas, which I still had two years later when she took this picture.

San Francisco c. 1902. Building St. Boniface Church. The monk in the center, holding the roll of plans, is the German-born Adrian Wewer, O.S.F (1836-1914), architect of this and over 100 church and other buildings in the U.S. Next to him on the left, the big strapping guy in the dark hat and holding a cigar stub, is my grandfather on my mother's side. Four years later, the building was reduced to an empty shell in the earthquake and fire. Scanned from a period 8 x10 probably contact-printed from a glass plate. View full size.

"Baghdad By the Bay" was San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen's nickname for The City, and the title of his collection of affectionate essays published in 1949. My sister took this nicely-detailed 120 Ektachrome transparency just 5 years later, before the neighborhood Victorians became gentrified and the downtown skyline Manhattanized. The intersection at the lower left is Hayes and Shrader. View full size.

My brother-in-law at the North Pole, which in February 1958 was in Scotts Valley, California. The second Santa's Village theme park to be built, 1957-1979. 2¼ 120 Anscochrome transparency shot by my sister on her honeymoon. View full size.