Local Color

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Oh, it’s February. And I hate it.

This last full month of winter has been busy, and it’s passed quickly, and at the end of the month (just a short week and some change away!) brings us to a charming new apartment in a new part of town. I also enjoy a birthday in March. Fresh. Until then, I’m shuffling around like a grumpy, listless hag, an unmovable object of dull anxiety, slight spirits and general boredom.

Today I worked on a service piece for a magazine in Wisconsin about weekend trips to the lake country west of Milwaukee, and whilst irritably Googling “Okauchee Lake rentals,” I found a mesmerizing trove of old postcards, hundreds of them, dating from 1906 to the mid-1930s.

Here are a few favorites. I know it’s a little outside of the area I typically cover on the blog, but I figure you all need a vacation as much as I do.

See more here, or visit the Village of Oconomowoc Lake website and select “Historic Views of the Area” for even more vintage Wisconsin pleasures.

okauchee lake swimmer

Foxy swimmer!

okauchee lake beach resort

Blatz!

okauchee lover's lane

Lover’s Lane

okauchee milk maid

Ethnic joke! Not funny, but sort of funny.

okauchee lake a good catch

A good catch, indeed.

Feel better yet?

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cannon

I found this announcement on the Hometown History Tours blog, which I started following in the lead-up to Monroe’s biggest outdoor festival, General George Custer’s birthday.

Although I genuinely hope these items are retrieved, I also can’t stop laughing. The pilfering of the entire reenactment equipment stash of the present-day Battery B First Michigan Light Artillery is ridiculous on its own, but the bullet-hole decals on the trailer really take the cake:

Cannon, limber and covered 18 foot car hauler was stolen from a private lot at 4218 Pelham, Dearborn Heights, MI. Locked up inside this trailer was the entire gear belonging to Battery B First Michigan Light Artillary.

The trailer has distinctive bullet hole decals running along both sides and giant cannonball splat on the back door.

The owner wants this information out quickly as the more eyes out looking, the better chances of the equipment being found.

Stolen cannon description: US 1841 6pdr cannon mark C.A. & CO on trunnions 298 over W.V. on muzzle.  No. 5 Limber US. 6 pdr.

Trailer is a charcoal grey 2000 Haulmark 18 foot covered car hauler. VIN 16HGB1834YHO65667.

Contact Officer Beaudree of the Dearborn Heights Police Department if anyone tries to sell you a suspicious 6-pounder in the next couple of days.

I think this is why people become police detectives.

february 1960

Well, well. If it isn’t the internet, up to its old tricks!

During my usual late-night internet scrounging — browsing lazily for Detroit Christmas artifacts — I found an incredible Flickr haul of old photos, which had themselves been found somewhere between Detroit and Hamtramck. Besides a lot of great mugging in front of tinsel-draped tannenbaums, there are mirthful ballroom dancing scenes, sexy vintage cars, kids’ birthday parties, coquettes in curve-hugging flowery dresses, army men, saucy diner waitresses and of course multitudinous bridal tableaux.

christmas boys

Who are these people? Someone somewhere in Hamtramck (or anywhere!) has to recognize a face from at least one of these photos. I kept waiting for the specter of a great-aunt on a tacky couch to jump out of the social media sphere and shout something at me in Polish.

And you know what I realized? This is the Flickr set of Hamtramck Mayor Karen Majewski! Whoa!

So who wants to start one big family album blog? I do. Let’s talk logistics.

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