Category: Sepia Saturday

For this week’s Sepia Saturday theme, the prompt image reminded me immediately of this set of photos.  While the prompt image clearly shows a group of women  taking on the traditional role of men and vice versa, the images here are not clearly about mixing roles, but there appears to be some non-traditional costuming and casting going on.  It’s clearly of some sort of theatrical production, though I have no idea what exactly the play/theme was.  The two people standing on either side of the piano appear to be male even though they’re done up with cute bob haircuts (wigs maybe?) and makeup.  The three on the top of the piano are in  similar overalls (one even with a tie) yet appear to be girls (note the rings on the left ring finger of all of them).  Even the boy on the piano bench in the cap may be a girl, and it’s possible that the girl with the violin may be a boy – it’s awfully hard to tell!

There are very few cues about date/place in the photos.  The piano is a Beckwith from Chicago, and appears to be a player piano (the large sliding doors on the front are usually a dead giveaway, looks similar to the one in this video), so the photos were likely taken in the USA.  I can’t zoom in with enough detail to figure out what the music is, but if someone wants to have a go at playing it, I can provide a zoomed-in image of the music.  My best guess for date, since the clothing is costume and it’s hard to pin a date onto costumes, is somewhere around 1930, give or take 5 to 10 years.  There’s a seated figure painted up in blackface which is a sign of the times as well.  None of the children look familiar and there are no names/dates on any of the photos which are pretty dirty and in poor condition.  Basically,  I have another batch of wonderful photos with no names or dates that remain an absolute mystery for the time being.  I have a hunch that these may be from Earl Powis Jr’s  cousins in Chicago, perhaps via his mother, Anna Plansky.  I don’t have any other identified photos of them, and even if I did, with the makeup and clothes, it might still be difficult to figure out who’s who.

While I have plenty of photos of the coal industry for this Sepia Saturday, I thought this would be a great chance to explore a ‘cleaner’ industry through three photos of factory workers.  Two of my grandmothers (biological and step) worked in various sewing factories over the years.  Rolled up in paper tubes, I found these great panoramic photos of the factory staff – they were a little bit of a trouble to scan and piece together (three scans for each, then stitched up in photoshop), but the result is worth it!  All three were taken in the 50s and 60s at the Phillips-Jones (Van Heusen) Corp in Patton, PA.  The first one is labelled as being taken in September 1955.  In that particular photo, both grandmothers are present!  In fact, my biological grandma is about 6 months pregnant with my father at that point.  The second photo has no date but may have been taken prior to 1955, best guess, since my step-grandma looks younger in that one.  However, I had found a written work history that Romayne (Greenaway) Kitko compiled at some point in her life.  She lists having worked at the Van Heusen Co of Patton, PA from 1955-1966.   The last photo is dated September 1961 (very faintly, in white), at the same location.  It’s interesting that they took a sort of ‘class photo’ for every year at the factory.  I have to imagine that this was in part to boost employee morale by making everyone feel like they were part of a large team, and in part to show off at headquarters.

The Phillips-Jones company eventually became the Van Heusen company we know today.  Here’s a good link containing more information on the history of the company.  The factory employed many women during a time when women were just starting to go to work right after World War II.  You can see the company was still run by the men standing up front, but women were in the workplace, in a factory even.  There’s a wide age range to the women in the photos too – from young gals straight out of high school to women who look to be in their 60s and 70s.  They appear to be of differing ethnicities, but I couldn’t find a single black woman in any of the groups.  Whether that was purposeful discrimination or just the fact that the region was largely caucasian, I can’t be sure.

I found a great newspaper article detailing a little history of the plant.  It was built in 1947 and employed 250 people.  After the expansion (article dated i1954) which you can see in the third photo on the right and left of the original building, they planned to employ over 400 people, mostly women.  While the article was dated 1954, the plant either underwent another expansion after that for the 1961 photo or the second photo was on or after 1954.  The trees appear to be smaller, but not by much, so it has to be slightly earlier than the first photo, but the buildings appear the same.  I’m not sure exactly when the factory ceased operation, but another company was in the same location by 1994, so it was well before then.  You can click any of the above photos to see a larger version, but as for me, I’m working industriously towards the next Sepia Saturday.

I had a hard time with this week’s Sepia Saturday theme since I had no football players (we’re less of an athletic family, more musical), and of course the older cameras weren’t really capable of taking action shots without a ton of motion blur.  However, if we take the theme down to “play,” I have a great set of photos of my grandpa, Leon Kitko, when he was a young boy, posed in front of what is probably a pedal car with his teddy bears.  He was probably about 3 or 4 when the photo was taken, so that makes the date about 1936-1938 or so.  The back of the photos are only labelled with his name, abut the right photo has an extra note, “Leon J. Kitko and his 2 bears.”  The bears are actually still around, wrapped up in a cedar trunk that my grandpa moved with him over the years.  The front of that pedal car has, “Bud,” painted on the side.  As the story goes, he was called buddy growing up and when he went to school, the teacher called, “Leon Kitko,” during roll call.  Confused when he didn’t respond, she looked at him directly and asked him why he didn’t respond.  He said  that Leon was not his name, it was Buddy!

It’s a darling set of photos taken in the yard at the house where he grew up.  While he’s not in a football uniform or tackling anyone, he’s a young boy playing  with his teddy bears and I think that plays into the theme fairly nicely!