Ants in Your Plants of 1941

Well how about that?

2012-01-12T12:47:00.000-08:00

It was just pointed out to me that this will be the centennial of my great-grandfather's trip to Europe - the thing that I was posting here a while ago, under the label "The 1912 Project." I'm still trying to decide if a different venue will be better for presenting the thing, but I think that I've gotten the proper nudge to get back to work on it.

More as it unfolds. Pack your bags!

Three shots

2011-06-25T05:37:00.000-07:00

Untitled

2010-12-14T20:19:00.001-08:00

I am making Posterous more palatable (for me)

2010-11-28T08:31:00.001-08:00

Or at the very least more complex!

Worry of the day

2010-11-26T15:03:00.001-08:00

If I keep posting things that are nothing but me saying "I'm testing something" I will fail a Turing test.

Consolidation blues

2009-11-21T07:28:00.000-08:00

Just a quick note - I'm going to be making the "1912 Project" disappear from this portion of the internet. I won't pull it down until I have it up someplace else.

More news as it happens.

Another menu from a similar voyage

2008-04-16T03:13:00.000-07:00

Dave at Cooking Monster shares the menu from the Titanic, which I link to compare with the menu that I put up from the Oceanic.

I am inspired - now on my far too large list of things I need to do is annotate the Oceanic menu.

White Hall Hotels

2007-10-18T13:12:00.000-07:00

A spiffy little brochure from London:

The cover is a very stiff cardboard and the interior page is a heavy bond. The binding is a goldish yellow ribbon.

Here's the front interior page:

The middle:

The final interior page:

And a spiffy map on the back:

Here's the location in Flashearth.

I will probably have more to say on this in upcoming posts, but I have to notice a personal connection. I've actually stayed in one of these hotels! I spent a night at the 18, 19,& 20 Montague hotel - actually I slept there one morning. The plane was late and I arrived about 4:30 AM. The hotel manager was not terribly happy, and we were gone by lunchtime. That's all I remember about the place. Sorry.

I'm also not sure which, if any, of these hotels Great Grampa stayed in. We'll figure it out.

hold tight

2007-09-08T07:35:00.000-07:00

Due to the delicacy of my subject matter and my cranky scanner, I've been slow to update here.

Hopefully I'll have something in the next week or so.

testing

2007-07-13T17:32:00.001-07:00

Don't mind me

Unused Trunk Sticker

2007-01-19T08:25:00.000-08:00

Great-Grandpa took White Star both to and from Europe, so I'm not sure which trip this tag was for:

I am presuming that the big "Y" in the middle was for the first letter of his last name. A clever trick for identifying baggage - I think it's due for a comeback in this age of colored ribbons on handles.

If you look closely, you can see the fold. This tag has been folded for almost a century. The glue on the back also seems pretty intact - I was worried about the heat from the scanner lamp causing it to get stuck. It all worked out.

Another ticket

2006-12-24T04:55:00.000-08:00

I think that this is for the streetcar system in Budapest. Beyond that, I'm in the dark.

2006-12-22T18:13:00.001-08:00

Technorati Profile

a laundry list

2006-12-20T18:12:00.000-08:00

At least I'm presuming that's what this is:

It was too long for the scanner and folded in half anyway, so instead of trying to fiddle about with joining the two images I just put them both up as they were.

The bottom of the second is a perforated line, I'm not sure what it's for.

Another look at that map.

2006-11-12T19:38:00.000-08:00

So if you look really close at this map that I put up in the last post, you can see that he drew on it. It's hard to spot because it's in mechanical pencil (he was an engineer, after all).

There's a little arrow on the Victoria Hotel and a line that goes up to the Central Station and then along the tram line, finally ending on Oostenberger Gracht.

A business meeting?

Victoria Hotel Amsterdam

2006-11-12T19:13:00.000-08:00

Here's a nice looking receipt:

I can't for the life of me figure out all the added costs beyond the room on this one. But the Victoria Hotel is still there. Here's what it looks like today:

Here's some more info about the hotel.

Along with the bill I find this delightful Art Nouveau information card:

On the back are the room rates. Looks like Great-Grandpa got the cheapest single room available:

And inside, a spiffy map:

And here is the same area in Google Maps.

Dinner on board

2006-11-12T11:32:00.000-08:00

After the ship that Great-Grandpa was meant to have come back from Europe on was removed from the active fleet, he settled on the Oceanic. Amongst the ephemera related to the Oceanic was this piece of heavy stock cardboard.

At first I thought it was a postcard or some sort of souvenir. But closer examination showed that it flipped open, revealing a menu.

It seems that Great-Grandpa's company set him up with enough of a travel advance to go First Class.

Hotel Belgischer Hof

2006-11-02T05:01:00.000-08:00

Hmmm. From what I can tell, The Hotel Belgischer Hof ("Belgian Yard") is (or was) in Cologne, and seems to be still operational. Judging from the photos on various travel sites, it has either moved locations or had a massive renovation - very possible as the city saw extensive bombing during the Second World War.

Here you can see my Great-Grandfather's first name (Lloyd) on the receipt, but not his last name. If I'm understanding the receipt correctly, he arrived on May 8th and stayed the ninth and tenth (at four Marks a night) and checked out on the 11th (the date on the inkstamp). The additional 6.4 is for "washing" - perhaps laundry service?

Three tickets

2006-10-24T06:33:00.000-07:00

Three tickets for perhaps a streetcar or a train.

I have a feeling that this project is going to be more interactive, as I have more questions about these than answers.

The words in the center are place names in Germany and Austria, so these are obviously mass-transit related. I don't know that area well enough to tell if the places are close together or not.

This is the most complicated punch-card system I've ever seen, but I guess that the punch at the top indicates the value of these tickets, and the lack of other punches would mean that they went unused. I'm also not sure if the rip in the upper right corners are part of the fare taking, or just from being removed from the pad. The fact that the serial numbers are in sequence tells me that they were purchased at the same time.

A boat through New York

2006-10-12T10:36:00.000-07:00

A tour brochure. I already posted this on my main blog, but it's part of the package and already scanned, so here it is again:

At the time of the trip, the Flatiron Building was only ten years old. I have no idea if he actually went on the tour.

The reason why I put this up before is in response to a post on BoingBoing about "poorism" -- tours of slums. The BoingBoing post links to an article that shows a number of tours that are presented as learning experiences ("It's not like we want to peer at them in the zoo, like animals, but the point of the tour is to experience their lives.").

This tour offers no such pretense. I'm sure that the "Bowery Boy and his 'Goil'" stopped "enjoying life in their characteristic way" and took the opportunity to hurl some epithets or perhaps a rock or two at the gawkers on this gigantic contraption.

Sometime when I have a lot more time on my hands, I might sit down with all of the points of interest to see if I can plot out the path that this tour took. Please don't think it will be any time soon.

And now, the 1912 project

2006-10-12T08:52:00.000-07:00

So here's the scoop:

My Great-Grandfather was an engineer who for a while worked for a company that built primitive deep sea diving equipment. In 1912, he was sent on a trip to meet with a number of European companies. This trip holds a special place in family memory for two reasons:

His wife and children were, for reasons lost to time, not allowed to go. The amount of anger that Great-Grandma had about this is legendary.
As part of the itinerary, the return journey was to be on the Titanic. Not the maiden voyage, but one a few months after. The Titanic's maiden voyage was taking place as Great Grandpa was crossing in the other direction, and the two ships crossed within sight of each other.

A few years ago, as my grandparents house was being emptied, I was asked if I would be interested in a package of souvenirs from this trip. I jumped at this chance: he was an excellent and obsessive photographer, and the photos he took on this trip must have been incredible.

Someone else in the family got the photos.

What I got is in some ways even more cool. I got his receipts.

It looks like every piece of paper that he pulled out of his luggage went into big manila envelope. Ticket stubs, train schedules, menus, maps, brochures, whatever. I know those bits because they're the same sort of things that I pull out of my suitcase when I come home from a trip.

Here's the deal. I'm going to scan everything and post it here, with as much commentary as I can manage.

Bon Voyage!