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Still on State Street. All these pics seem to have been taken after the actual parade. I wonder what you did then at the carnival. It looks like most of the floats had people sitting in them. So maybe you walked up and chatted with them. The name on the float on the left looks like "?. L. Merkel & S(ons)". And it kinda sorta looks like someone sitting in it that might be playing an organ or a piano maybe. Hard to say.
3 comments:
Merkel's was a store in Hamburg, I think a department store, but maybe in 1914 a grocery. The next float is really nice, with the lattice. These are BEFORE the parade - it was a night parade - more drama that way, in the Halloween spirit. They strung lights across the street in later years, and maybe had torches and gas lights in 1914, but maybe electricity was available already here. People had fun socializing both before and after the parade, parties in homes, dances in various halls, walking the streets in costumes, etc. So they tell me.
Janet
I didn't even think about it being before the parade. A lot of these floats have people sitting in them. So they just "camped out" in the floats in the hours before the parade? Maybe these shots were taken late in the afternoon.
It's hard to imagine the world before computers, before TV, and maybe even before radio. I imagine when those sources of entertainment aren't available, socializing on the streets was a popular thing.
I think radio was a 1920s thing. Hard to imagine, isn't it? I know from reading old diaries that people went out a lot at night, even week-nights, to a local eatery for a coke or ice cream or oysters, etc. I mean LATE at night. They thought nothing of going downtown around 9 or later, to meet with people and have a bite to eat. And they visited back and forth at their homes a lot too. No one had a telephone, so they just dropped in. Then they talked, played cards, did a jig-saw puzzle, sang around a piano, etc. And often had a snack. They were big on cake and pie etc. They also sat out on porches in the summertime, everyone sat out, and they talked back and forth, or watched the kids play. I don't go back that far, you understand. (Ahem!) I have read some diaries. You know, my grandparents could remember when there were no airplanes or cars. My dad often told of when his neighborhood heard its first radio. And I remember when there was no TV, not every family had a car (we didn't), and lots of people didn't have a phone, and those who did were on a party line. (Does that need explaining?)
Well, I guess I'll go find my cane and take the medicine for my rhumatiz.
Janet
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