Regarding the Drunk and the Light Pole

                  

Along with noted British author and social critic, George Orwell, I have been fascinated by comic postcards — a dying art in the era of political correctness.  In April 2013 on this blog I featured cards that employed beer or whiskey barrels as part of their humorous motif.  Subsequently my efforts have been to collect images that depict inebriated gentlemen and light poles.

The postcard shown right epitomizes the genre.  Two drunks are languishing under a street light, apparently at the edge of a body of water.   Both are depicted as heavily intoxicated, one with a whiskey bottle sticking out of his back pocket, also a frequent image.  One drunk is asking the other in liquor-slurred speech whether the glaring bulb is the sun or the moon.

On this next postcard the drunk, well dressed but with his clothes disheveled, has climbed the light pole and is contemplating the bulb.  So impaired is he that he has mistaken the light as emanating from his bedroom, where his “missus” seemingly is waiting for him.   In the context of these cards, she will have a rolling pin in her hand to whack him.

In this postcard a bowler-hatted gent, who does not appear to be drunk, admonishes the light pole to “lead kindly light.”  The reference is to a favorite Protestant hymn, whose first verse seems entirely appropriate to the scene:

Lead kindly Light, amidst the grey and gloom

The night is long and I am far from home

Here in the dark, I do not ask to see

The path ahead, one step enough for me

Lead on, lead on, kindly Light.

My guess, however, is that the Prohibitionist crowd of the day would have considered the postcard to be sacrilegious.

Postcards did not hesitate to make an object of derision the rich and well-born who had too much to drink.  Shown here is an illustration of a distinguished-looking gentleman in top hat, vest and coat who is holding on to a pole in an attempt to retrieve a cigar that in his alcoholic haze he has dropped.  No words are necessary to convey the humor of this situation.  

The next postcard animates the light poles as welcoming companions to a gentleman who appears to need them to keep upright.  In a world turned topsy turvy all around him, he declares:  “I am making new acquaintances.”  Yet it is only 10 P.M. with many more hours of possible drinking ahead.  He apparently will be moving from light post to light post — going somewhere.

Another drunkard has found his light pole, is proud of the location and apparently sticking with it.  He brags:  “Was at my post early today.”   The clock on the wall behind him confirms that he has had an early evening of drinking.  It registers 8:25 P.M.  Not so long ago such postcards could be found at newsstands, drug stores and souvenir stores all across America.  Today they are a vanishing breed. 

The light pole and the drunk are not just an American icon.  The image exists on comic cards in other countries as well.  Shown here is an example from Estonia, typical of the drunk who must hold tight to the light pole to prevent falling on the pavement.  No, he has not grown a tail.  That is a bottle of whiskey poking from his backside on which he has hung his hat. 

A second overseas postcard comes from Scotland.  Here a bald drunk is pushing a fire alarm on a pole apparently thinking that he thereby can order up two drinks of scotch. Behind him a sign advertises “MacStifenims D.T. Blend Highland Whiskey.”   Presumably it is his drink of choice.  Note that in his alcoholic haze the Scotsman has stuck the tip of his umbrella clear through the crown of his hat.

The French have their own versions of the theme.  Shown here is a French workman who seems to be marveling at the scene around him.  A glow seems to be emanating from the moon, a street lamp and the man’s nose.  The caption at the bottom in translation reads:  “The streets are never so bright as by the moon and the nose of the drunk.”

With the postcard below, we receive not only the image of a highly inebriated man hanging on to a light pole but also his protestation that  that “I’m Not Imbricated” and a semi-rhyming diatribe that ends with “But the drunker I stand here the longer I get.”  The dog in the picture has it right — all this is very silly.  But the genre demanded it.

At least equally silly is the 1909 postcard of a drunk leaning up against a lamp post, smoking a cigar and with keys dangling.  A clipping from the want ad section of a newspaper provides the caption:  “Help wanted. I am up against it.”   Even sillier is the want ad above it:  “Strong boy to drive horses that speak German.  Address Horses.”

The final postcard shows a figure who is very familiar to us by now.  He is a well-dressed man in suit and vest who is carrying a partially empty flask of whiskey and along the line has damaged his top hat.  With a different message this might have been another comic version of the drunk and the light pole.  But the message sets a different tone.  It suggests to “U. Boozer” that common sense and will power should lead to abstinence:  “Let it alone.”  The card may well have originated from prohibitionary advocates as an antidote to the comic postcard portrayals of drunks.

Whatever cultural norms once made these postcards an appropriate message to absent relatives and friends have long since disappeared from American life.  We no longer see inebriation as a matter of fun and laughter.  The evils of alcoholism are all too prevalent in society.  As artifacts of a not-so-distant past, however, they recreate a time when humor still could found in a drunk hanging on to a light pole.

Yes, More Beer Trucks

         

In September 2016 I featured a post called “Beer on Wheels Through the Decades,” that featured a number of vehicles used over the years to haul beer barrels and cases.  For reasons not readily explained, I have continued to be fascinated by the subject, continuing to collect relevant images.  Shown here are a dozen examples from the U.S. and elsewhere that mark the versatility of transporting the suds, augmented with information about the companies that got the wheels rolling.

The truck shown here could never hit a bump in on a Cleveland street, so precarious are the empty crates the driver is carrying.  In a city full of ethnic German “beer barons,” an Irishman named Stephen Creedon founded the Standard Brewing Company and gave the city a beer that with “time out” for National Prohibition sold for almost 60 years.  Creedon called his beer “Erin Brew” and for the German population, “Brew Brau.”

One reason beer trucks are interesting is that they often were designed specifically for that purpose and stand out from other vehicles of the time.  A trade card from the Adams Bros. company of Findlay, Ohio, shows a custom made truck made for the Anheuser-Busch brewery of St. Louis.  As early as 1865 and until 1910  Adams Bros. was associated with the foundry business. From 1911 to 1916 they manufactured trucks and a few cars. The company later changed its name to the Adams Axle Company and produced axles for car manufacturers including Durant.

This truck was commissioned in the early 1900s by the Adolph Kress Brewing Company of Sparta, Wisconsin. After the end of National Prohibition, the vehicle luckily fell into the hands of the late Richard Guerrera, a successful trucking company owner, who founded the Golden Age of Trucking Museum in Bridgeport, Connecticut.  He restored the Kress truck to its pristine glory, including the variety of barrel taps and other instruments that were provided.

Although virtually all beer trucks ran on gasoline, this one — said to be “up-to-date in all things” — is an electric wagon.  With the current emphasis on electric vehicles, this truck might seem to be ahead of its time.  The owner was J. Rapp & Sons, a San Francisco bottler and wholesaler who distributed Rainier Beer of Seattle, a brewery founded in 1884 whose beer was very popular throughout the Pacific Coast.

Nothing beats a beer truck dressed up for a parade.  Even better are four beer trucks with American flags appended, even if the character displayed drinking beer looks rather seedy.   This is Salt Lake City after all, where many residents are teetotalers.  The Henry Wagener Brewery opened in 1864 and apparently closed in 1913 after the plant burned down.   A run of almost 50 years in the heartland of the Mormon Church was no small accomplishment.

This trade card from the Adam Scheidt Brewing Company of Norristown, Pennsylvania, shows the raised forward seating for the driver found in other beer trucks.  The roof keeps him and the barrels of Lotos Export (“finest pale beer)

out of the sun and rain. The Adam Scheidt Brewing Company was founded in the late 1870s and was incorporated in 1884.  After Prohibition, the brewery was revived and did well, brewing Valley Forge Beer, Ram's Head Ale, and Prior Beer.  The name was changed to the Valley Forge Brewing Company in 1963 and five years later sold to Philadelphia's largest brewer at the time, C. Schmidt & Sons. 

In my day a vehicle looking like this one was term a “jalopy.”  It operated through the streets blaring music and a Blatz beer commercial.  In 1875, Blatz was the first Milwaukee brewery to have a bottling department to package beer and ship nationally.  It incorporated as the Valentin Blatz Brewing Company in 1889, and by the 1900s was the city's third-largest brewer.  The brewery was noted for its aggressive and unusual marketing tactics.

If Blatz could attract attention by mounting an advertising stein on a truck, Tiger Beer could go one better by featuring an entire beer bottle, as shown here on two vehicles.  Tiger Beer, a lager, was first brewed in Singapore in 1932 as a result of a joint brewing venture between Heineken and a Singapore based conglomerate, now known as Asia Pacific Breweries. Tiger currently is brewed in at least different countries.  When in that part of the world, it consistently was my beer of choice. 

Through the years many brewers have favored the “art deco” streamlined look seen in this Labatt’s truck, clearly an elegant carrier for the suds.  This beer owes its beginning to John Kinder Labatt in 1847 in Ontario Canada.  Although Labatt’s today is the largest brewer in Canada, it now part of an international brewing conglomerate involving Belgium, Brazil, Canada and the U.S. firms, known as  Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV and traded on the New York Stock exchange as BUD.

In the era of the boutique craft brewery, it seems natural that Nancy and Matt Barger in Knoxville, Tennessee, would come up with the idea for a mobile bartending service using antique trucks.  This is farm truck that the Bargers have outfitted with a custom bar box.  Three taps for kegs have been integrated into the design.  A sign directs customers to the beer.  Business has been so good that the couple now have two trucks in service as portable bars. 

The beer truck shown here indicates that the Bargers are not the only ones with a mobile “beerstube.”  It identifies as “Germany” and the background looks European but the other language used is English, making it difficult to place.  Nonetheless, the mobile giant barrel with a huge tap makes an appropriate setting for the beer being dispensed.  I am also intrigued by the world’s largest “church key” fastened to the side.

Finally, if a brewery must transport its suds through city streets, why not attract attention by fashioning the tank in the shape of a beer can.  “Old Style” was the first brand created by the G. Heileman Brewing Company of La Crosse, Wisconsin.  Founded by Gottlieb Heileman in 1858, the brewery survived National Prohibition by selling “near-beer” (less than 0.5% alcohol) and malt syrup.  After Repeal it resumed full brewery operations until 1996 when it was acquired by Stroh’s.

There they are:  A dozen trucks spanning most of the Twentieth Century.  Their purposes differed.  Some were vehicular billboards, advertising their brands as they plied the streets.  Others were mobile barrooms, devoted to bringing the saloon to consumers rather than the consumer to a saloon.  Still others were simply utilitarian motors for the job of carting barrels and bottles.  All of them, however, help make the case for the beer truck as special in automotive history.

Railroader Signs: Choo Choos and Cheesecake

"Cheesecake" to describe a a sexy, attractive woman flaunting her appeal is nowadays is said to be a rather archaic term.  Yet there it seems to be the most appropriate word for the ten signs and posters shown below.  The juxtaposition of scantily clad women with large machinery puts one in mind of the pin-ups that often adorned bomber aircraft in World War II.

Take for example, the metal sign at right, ostensibly a vintage ad from the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia.  Reclining on the cab of Engine 73 is comely damsel in a lepoard skin bikini bathing suit asking coyly:  “Want to Ride My Train?”  Four generations ago she could have been flying bombing raids over Berlin.  By the way, Baldwin Locomotive produced the last of its 70,000 plus engines in 1956 and went out of business in 1972.

Baldwin was preceded in demise by the Schenectady Locomotive Works in 1901.  Before it went, however, in 1868 the factory produced the 4-4-0 No. 60, called the Jupiter, one of two steam engines to take part in the “Golden Spike Ceremony” to celebrate the completion of the first transcontinental railroad, connecting the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads. Jupiter’s celebrity seems to have attracted a lady in red.

Union Pacific attracted its own busty blonde, one dressed in trainman garb, who is “Ready to Roll” on “Big Boy 4884.”  This engine was manufactured by the American Locomotive Works in Schenectady from 1941 to 1946.  Union Pacific is a freight hauling railway that currently operates some 8,500 locomotives in 23 states west of Chicago — but not Big Boy.  It retired in 1956.

What is going on here?  Why are pin-ups adorning long retired steam engines?  Some catalogues feature these as reproductions of vintage railroading ads.  Patently absurd.  But are they fakes, as some believe?  No, they are newly created images aimed at a market of men who have elaborate electric train arrays and want something to adorn their walls.  Sometimes even a Santa Fe caboose will do if it has features a lass in a black lace undergarment.

Southern Pacific Railroad was a major railroad system that survived more than a century by incorporating many smaller lines.  It featured a modern looking steam engine.  Its “cab forward” design also was a great excuse to feature a chesty young woman in a green outfit with matching stockings who is striding over a mountain landscape.  The locomotive is billed as “articulated.”  That term also fits the pin-up.

Put yourself in the place of one of these choo choo enthusiasts.  They are accustomed to their friends snickering about men who play with kids’ toys.  What better way to flash the macho badge than to adorn your train room with a picture of an engine pulling “The California Zephyr” of the Denver & Rio Grande Western Line while a shapely cowgirl sits atop the train, apparently wearing only a neckerchief above the waist. “Ride ‘Em Cowboy.”

Of course if the missus objects to semi-clad cowgirls, more demure — and clothed — alternatives are available.  Note this satin-covered brunette, apparently meant to represent the “Southern Belle” route of the Kansas City Southern Line, one of the smallest as well as third oldest Class 1 railroad operating in North America.  Founded in 1887, the railroad in recent years had more than 6,000 employees.

Although these signs are far from antiques and hardly even “vintage,” I consider them works of contemporary art.  As with the Pennsylvania Railroad sign here, lithographed on metal or paper, they feature vivid colors, striking designs and sufficient silliness to make them interesting.  “Hot as coal burning down the lines,” says this one, clearly referring to the buxom beauty and just as clearly making no sense.  A century from now it may hang in a museum as a sign of our times.

The next two images, one from the defunct New York Central System and another from the familiar Amtrak, both urge that we travel home for the Holidays by train.  My wife and I once spent two days and a night on a train going to New Orleans at Christmas.  She says, “Never again.”  For me the signs represent something else.  “What shall we get Dad for Christmas?”  Easy answer — serve up some cheesecake for his train room.

Celebrating the Treasured Barmaid!

     

Over the years of this blog I have highlighted a range of images related to beer and its advertising, including King Gambrinus, tiny angels, women sitting in moons, and motorists imbibing.  Octoberfest 2018 provides an opportunity to review the depiction of the barmaid — she of the dirndl dress and the foaming steins of brew.   You may call it a stereotype of the female, but the reality has brought joy to the hearts of many.

In 1912, for example, the U.S. Brewer’s Association held it 26th annual convention in Cleveland. Conventioneers were given a clothes brush for the men, shown left, and a pocket mirror for their wives, right.   Both items featured an illustration in celluloid of a barmaid balancing on a barrel while carrying eight steins of foaming beer.  These souvenirs were a gift to the brewmasters from the Cleveland Brewers Supply Co. a business that provided breweries with everything from barrel washers, barrel hoops, gauges, hop separators, and keg scrubbers to a range of chemicals, Irish moss and isinglass.

The image of a barmaid dancing on a beer barrel would have been familiar to the beer crowd.  The Fred Sehring Brewery of Joliet, Illinois, commissioned from ceramics merchant Hugo Theumler of Pittsburgh a beer stein for 1900 that emphasized a calendar for the year, flanked by two figures.  The elaborate label includes, as shown here, a woman whose twisted body indicates a flamboyant mood as she lifts high a foaming goblet while straddling a wooden keg. 

Bock beer often used a winsome bar maid in its advertising, usually in the company of the traditional goat, a symbol for the darker brew.  The dance theme is carried forward in a poster of an 1880s vintage that features a pretty waitress, with overflowing tankards in hand, dancing on a beer barrel with a very attentive goat . No brewery is mentioned.

The dance theme is repeated in an 1880s bock trade card shows a goat dancing with a girl, both of them brandishing beer glasses, while a second goat plays the fiddle. These goats conjure up the image of the satyr, the Roman mythical half man/half goat who frequently is seen in erotic juxtaposition with attractive, loosely clad or nude women.

The final bock card clearly is meant to be humorous as goat bowls over a black waiter who had been carrying a full tray of drinks.  In his charge the animal has missed the barmaid who is carrying a full tray of steins, filled to the brim with foaming dark beer.   The card exhibits the ability of the Baltimore lithographic company that created it to execute a cartoon in many vivid colors. 

Even the Europeans fancy their barmaids on barrel.  Below are labels for two varieties of Holsten Beer, a product of Hamburg, Germany.  This brewery, acquired by the Carlsberg Group in 2004, was found in 1879.  It currently owns seven breweries in Germany.  Early in the 20th Century it made a foray into England by buying the Union Brewery on the south bank of River Thames.  The outbreak of World War One and anti-German sentiment in Jolly Old caused it to fail.

St. Pauli Girl beer traditionally has been represented by a barmaid in dirndl.  The brand derives its name from the fact that the original brewery, which was established in 1857 by Lüder Rutenberg, was located next to the former St. Paul's Friary in Bremen.  Seen below are a vintage label together with a modern version.  Today St. Pauli Girl is located within Beck’s Brewery in Bremen. 

A French version of the barmaid gave her a tall hat.  She appears on a label of  Biere Francaise, apparently brewed in Nantes,  a city I once found by mistake, having been routed off main roads by the Tour de France.  This brew apparently took a Gold Medal at the Paris Exposition of 1900.  It may have been the only beverage in the category since it apparently non-alcoholic.

This field trip to review barmaids of the ages ends with four photographic trade cards of a comely young woman who in series is pouring a beer, lifting a stein, sipping a sample, and raising “Prost” to the crowd.  A saucy lass, she was a feature of the Falstaff Brewery, so named in 1903 after the Shakespearean character, Sir John Falstaff.   Production of Falstaff Beer peaked in the mid 1960s and then steadily fell over ensuing years.  The brand went out of production in 2005.

In ending this tribute to the barmaid, it seems only fitting to devote this post to Mitzi, my favorite barmaid.  Holding forth at the Trail’s End Lodge on Vliet Street in Milwaukee, Mitzi never failed to dress in dirndl and kept the beers coming as my companions and I serenaded her from a rear booth at the venerable watering hole.

Weird Paperweights — The Animals

Anyone looking in on this blog from time to time will recognized my fixation with glass paperweights, particularly those that advertise a product or place from an earlier era.  Recently I have been intrigued with weights that feature animals in unusual — indeed, weird — situations and am happy here to share their images.

A good example is a glass weight that shows an alligator in harness pulling a wagon driven by a small boy.  The caption says “Driving Bessie at the Florida Alligator Farm” in Jacksonville, Florida.  The farm was the outgrowth of an “antiquarian Disneyland”  called Dixieland Park, opened in 1907 as “The Coney Island of the South.”  The venue featured a wide variety of rides, animals and other attractions.   Largely shut down after World War One, the park acquired a large number of alligators and was renamed the Florida Alligator Farm.  By the 1930s the entire collection was sold to what is now the St. Augustine Alligator Farm.

A key element of the earlier Dixieland Park was its ostrich farm, the large birds a strange and exotic sight in early 20th Century America.  One could not just ogle the ungainly large birds, but also go for a ride on them.  Show here on a weight unbridled, the novelty of riding an ostrich apparently faded rather quickly.  After all, who wants to ride one twice?  Bring in the alligators!

The Cawston Ostrich Farm was the 1885 brainchild of Edwin Cawston who chartered a ship to take fifty birds from South Africa to Galveston, Texas, where they boarded a train for Pasadena, California.  Of the original fifty only eighteen survived the trip but, nature being as it is, the farm had over 100 ostriches from the survivors.  Shown here is some of Cawston’s flock.

The Cawston Ostrich Farm became a premier Southern California tourist attraction for many years, aided by a trolley line that brought visitors from Los Angeles.  Guests were able to ride on the backs of ostriches, as shown here, be taken for ostrich drawn carriage rides, and buy ostrich feathered hats, boas, capes and fans at the Ostrich Farm store that was connected to the factory.  Although Cawston’s closed in the 1930s, original buildings still stand and are designated South Pasadena Cultural Landmark #18.

Ride an ostrich, why not ride a buffalo?  Bob Yokum, a saloon owner in South Dakota set out to prove that it could be done.  Not known for intelligence, buffalo —The American bison — do not like to be saddled or harnessed and have a mean “buck.”  Determined to find out what a buffalo could be trained to do, over several years Yokum was able to train them to pull a wagon and even to be mounted like a horse.   At his farm near Fort Pierre, S.D., he gave demonstrations, even to racing his buffalo against horses or putting them in a Mexican bull ring.  In each case, his shaggy beasts came out the winners.

While on the trail of the buffalo, here is a more contemporary paperweight, issued by the U.S. West telephone company showing two male buffalo butting out their aggression.  This company was one of a number of firms that emerged from the “break up” of the old AT&T.  The tag line is “Bring on the competition,” a reference to a number of firms vying for the landline business.  U.S. West is a couple of decades gone, the victim of mergers and changes in technology, e.g. cell phones.

  

The Metz Brothers Brewing Company was among the first brewers in Nebraska, founded in 1859 in Omaha and bought by the brothers in 1861.  By 1880 it was producing 12,400 barrels of beer annually.  Claiming they had “no equal in the country,”  Metz issued a number of giveaway items to saloons and restaurants carrying their brew, among them this weight showing a pretty young damsel trying to ride a donkey, with little success.  It has always puzzled me what a picture like this had to do with beer.

The fellow on the next weight had no fear of being bucked off because he appears to be riding a wooden horse.  Established in Cleveland in 1852 and incorporated 30 years later, the Sturtevant Lumber Company. The company seems to have had some imagination in depicting what I imagine was its founder riding this “splinter steed.”  Sturtevant’s yards and mill were located at Central Way, corner of Stone’s Levee.

Talk about weird.  Check out this camel with a Shriner’s hat, swatting down in a shirt and collar.  The city designation provides a clue.  Troy, New York, bears the nickname the “Collar City,” a label that originated in the long-term presence of the detachable collar industry that began in Troy in the 1820s.  In addition to collars and cuffs, an entire shirt industry grew up in Troy.  Making shirts early in the nineteenth century became a factory business with numerous companies being located in Troy’s urban center.  International Shirt & Collar Co., faced with considerable competition even in Troy, went the route of the camel.

Let’s end this litany with an elephant.  This one advertises “Ivorine,” a product whose purpose is only hinted at on the object.  It declares that “Ivorine is a big thing,” and that the animal’s tusks were cleaned with Ivorine.  Nowhere can I find a hint of what this product was and what it did.  The word is generically used for anything resembling ivory and the reason, I presume, that an elephant was chosen to grace the paperweight.

From alligator to elephant, the makers of vintage glass paperweights have employed the odd images of animals to advertise.  They provide a glimpse into a not-so-distant past that, looking at these, can seem eons ago.