Harrisburg SHMOO Fan

SHMOOs, droll little creatures in the shape of upside-down light bulbs, were introduced in Al Capp's L'IL ABNER comic strip in 1948.
They became a national craze and I loved them.

Here they are seen on my T-shirt playing baseball. Which is remarkable because they didn't have any arms.

View big to see how they do it.

Somewhere around Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. From an original Kodachrome transparency by Ross J. Care.

T'was the Night Before Christmas

Photo from an original Kodachrome slide by Ross J. Care, my dad.

and Santa might have trouble getting down this chimney.

It's cardboard, one of those quaint late 1940s/1950s Christmas artifacts.

Note also the cardboard "multiplane" (3-D) nativity scene on the "mantle" and the vintage wax candles in the form of snowmen and angels.

If you look really closely you can see (behind the left hand angel) one of those bristly frosted miniature Christmas trees constructed on a metal wire stuck into a yellow wooden base.

And, of course, the stocking "hung by the chimney with care" (and by Care) and the red and green paper chains which I probably made with construction paper and that white sticky paste.

I look all snug in baby blue pajamas and bare feet, if just a tad sleepy.

Small Scholar at the Harrisburg Library, mid-1940s

Harrisburg Public Library, Front St.

I look rather studious here (which I wasn't at this point unless I was studying comics, movie books & other magazines.....).

 

Friends have wondered what the book I'm holding was & so do I.

 

I also love my "winter" ensemble & remember so well this entrance to the basement children's department on Front St. at the Harrisburg Public Library. 

 

You can see part of the entrance sign behind my head and above the door.

 

The Susquehanna river across Front was probably frozen when this was taken.

 

 

 

 

 

I plan to make this the first of a series of Once Upon A Wintertime/Holiday vintage Harrisburg photographs...........

Leaving HARRISBURG

Joe COLLEGE at the BOOK BARN - West Chester, PA. - Early 1960s

Baldwin's Book Barn,
850 Lenape Rd., Rte. 52,
West Chester, PA. USA. 19380

Baldwin's Book Barn was just that: a huge old Chester County stone barn filled to the rafters with used & vintage antique books. The Country Store Museum was an added attraction.
From a Kodachrome Transparency
 

PS: It's still there:
www.bookbarn.com/

I worked at the Book Barn while I was at West Chester University. 

You could walk to the Barn from the WC campus. In those days it was a beautiful rural walk, past old homes and through what then reminded me of the English countryside. I doubt it's still that way today.
 

It was (is?) also a beautiful drive over to Chadd's Ford - Brandywine/Andrew Wyeth country.

From A Friend in Pennsylvania:
The car in your Book Barn photo is definitely a Ford, whose body looks identical to the make that Marion Crane used in driving to the Bates Motel (and which was later sunk in the neighboring bog) in Hitchcock's PSYCHO!

 

 

 

For FATHER"s DAY, 2011

Ross J. CARE, Ross B. Care, Harrisburg, PA. Mid-late 1940s.

My father rarely had his photograph taken because he was always taking them. This was almost certainly taken by my mother, mid-late 1940s.

The location is in front of the grim gray stone, maybe granite, of the State Capitol Building in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

To the far right of this angle would have what was then the State Museum housed in a wing of the Capitol dome. Beyond the museum was Capitol Park.

Note the classic fedora in my father's left hand, and the the little red kangaroo toy in my right.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++


It may be Easter because when I zoomed in on this while I was restoring it I noticed a plush rabbit between my father and I.

This is from a Kodachrome color transparency, so it did not need much work, just a bit of cleaning up.

Note: Unfortunately they did not put dates on slides then.

J. H. TROUP Music House, Market Square

Sheet Music:

Vincent Youmans/Gus Kahn
from FLYING DOWN TO RIO, RKO  (1933)

One of the first vintage sheet music classics in my collection, a beautiful example of '30s deco movie art. 

Found in a bargain bin in the sheet music department of the J. H. Troup music store on Market Square in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The price - $.60! - tells us this is a later reissue edition but the cover art is the same.

I initially had the bad habit of writing my name on some sheet music covers, as many people UNfortunately also did in those days. (See bottom right). I eventually got over this dastardly trait as the compulsive collecting bug kicked in.

FLYING DOWN TO RIO is one of the great musicals and scores of the 1930s and a landmark for the musical genre. There are only four songs (all listed) but they are all excellent. Two, this and "Carioca," became popular standards, and the title song was still being recorded (by artists like Martin Denny and Xavier Cugat) in the 1950s.

Ken Russell parodied the aerial finale with a bevy of chorus girls on the wings of in-flight biplanes in his musical, THE BOYFRIEND. (1971)

The songwriter, Bobby Troup ("Route 66") was related to the Harrisburg Troups.

There was also a Troup store in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The buildings which housed both stores are still standing (as far as I know. I'm now in California).

The Harrisburg store was also my first exposure to a great record department. There were actually TWO, a classical section on the main floor across from the sheet music counter, and a larger pop department in the basement.

Both record departments had listening booths where you could preview your perspective purchases. (There is a key unforgettable scene in a similar record store listening booth in Hitchcock's STRANGERS ON A TRAIN).  

There were also piano booths where buyers could play over sheet music.
Imagine either of those today!

I also took my first piano lessons here in the second floor piano studios. The studio where I studied was in the front of the building with windows overlooking the south end of Market Square.

MORE About The Cool SENATE Theatre & THIS ISLAND EARTH (1955)

 ELECTRIC EYE IN THE SKY

A page from the "Performing Arts Annual 1986" This from my article "Memoirs of a Movie Childhood in Harrisburg's Film Palaces" written for this series of Library of Congress books.

During the 1950s the Senate screened the films of Universal-International which included the new '50s genre, Science Fiction. From left to right in still: Rex Reason, Faith Domergue, and Jeff Morrow.

If you can enlarge this photo you can read in the caption about the impression these films made on me and young movie-goers of the era. (However, the Senate was razed shortly after this article was published).

The small photo is of the Senate's electric eye automatic door which seemed VERY Sci Fi to kids of the period.

Unfortunately, by the time I took these Senate photos the NEON was missing from marquee sign (top).

Excerpt from: PERFORMING ARTS ANNUAL 1986, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Iris Newsom, Editor. Article Text & Captions: COPYRIGHT Ross B. Care