Allie (Alice E. Daniels Bryant) the Artist

Alice E. Daniels, known as Allie, was the pretty younger sister of my dad's maternal grandmother, Louise Daniels. Here are the girls in their teens. (For more info, see Sister Alice.)

Allie was born in Hudson, Michigan in 1870. Her family moved west, settling in Denver around 1900. In just her 14th year, she apparently had an illegitimate child, named Harry. The family kept the child but apparently denied that it was Allie's, due to her age. Her father Colonel Henry Daniels merely listed Harry as his grandson on the census.

 That is not the only mystery ... there are records listing a marriage between Alice and a Robert Mitchell (or, suspiciously, Hale -- Allie's grandmother's surname ... could there be some incest involved?), but despite no record of a dissolution, she nonetheless married again in 1908 to a Delmar D. Bryant, 12 years her senior, in Salt Lake City (despite his listing his home as Michigan on the wedding certificate).

Perhaps, like so many others, Delmar was in the far west to seek his fortune. At any rate the couple appears to have ended up in Los Angeles by 1920, although residing as lodgers at different addresses. (Harry remained with his grandparents.) Her occupation is listed as "artist." After that, the trail petered out.

 But lo and behold, while researching this intriguing relative this evening, I discovered that she had in fact emerged from her reclusive life to become a painter and illustrator, using the name Alice Daniels Bryant!

The pieces below have been up for auction here and there over the recent past and showed up on the Web.

Allie provided six watercolor drawings for this little book by Mary Dale, published in 1916 by Warren T. Potter, "Publisher and Bookmaker."

The following article reveals that Allie apparently studied at the Art Institute of Chicago sometime before 1910.

Allie died in 1944 in Los Angeles at the age of 74. However, her death certificate claims she was born in 1879, not 1870. Various censuses consistently place her as 5 to 10 years younger than reality.

Oddly, her artwork greatly resembles that of my wife's great-grandmother, Mary Wealthy Kimball.

The Scribbler

It's been quite awhile since I had a post synced to the weekly theme of Sepia Saturday, but this week's theme of Reading was an obvious tempter.

Some time back I posted a series based around the lost-and-found unpublished autobiography or "diary" that my maternal great-grandfather, David Blumenfeld, completed in 1920, when he was 65. As I am just about to hit that prestigious(?) age next month, it seems as good a time as any to add this post to the canon.

David B also was the writer of a double handful of unpublished potboiler novels and novellas in his spare time, when he was not haberdashering and tailoring. In fact, his wife (who was not literate in English) often scathingly referred to him as "The Scribbler."

But he also penned several books that actually saw the light of day. The following articles give some more information about them and him.

The book vandal

Triaging my mom's storage unit, I came across an old high-school text book of my father's, circa 1935. He had added his own satiric and quintessentially sophomoric remarks to most of the illustrations of American History. Here are a few choice examples.

Goat

I had always been fascinated by this rather bizarre photo of my mother with her father and brother, taken around 1922 in St. Paul, Minnesota.

In 2009 while visiting her home town, I visited the Minnesota Historical Center.

There was a slideshow going on in the lobby, and as I passed by, to my astonishment I saw pop up a faded photo of another family in a similar contraption.

After a bit of research I came to realize that this was no coincidence.

In pre-"selfie" days, it was a common novelty for children to be photographed by itinerant goatherd shutterbugs! So common that there's now more than one Pinterest page for it!



Though I can't promise more goatcards per se, check out this week's Sepia Saturday for more memories of times past.

Sepia Salesman

This week I cleave to the Sepia Saturday theme of hotels by remembering my maternal grandfather, Art Singer.

Art and a sample suit.

Art was a travelling dress salesman. Twice a year, for the fall and spring fashion seasons, he and a passel of his fellow salesmen would make their way up the coast bearing dozens of dresses to show to the buyers of all the major department stores. In 1960s downtown Seattle, these were Frederick and Nelson, I. Magnin, The Bon Marche, Rhodes, and a few others. The guys would hole up in the Benjamin Franklin Hotel and invite the buyers up to peruse their wares.

Most of the buyers were women, I believe, and for this purpose Art, always had a box of See's chocolates on hand to help soften up his customers.

For the male buyers, and Art's cohorts, there was also a bottle of Johnny Walker and a Playboy magazine.

Anyway, there is oddly a lot of online information about the old Ben Franklin. Built in 1929, it was the second largest hotel in Seattle, with 359 rooms in its 14 stories. 

One of the big draws for the salesmen, as well as others, was the "tiki bar" conveniently attached to the Ben Franklin. Originally named The Outrigger, it soon expanded and transformed into the famous Trader Vic's.

Note the quaint, politically incorrect signage. Our family car, by the way, was a two-tone (banana and battleship) 1950 Chevrolet, named"Uncle Wiggily" and very similar to that one on the right.

(Photo from Seattle's Historic Hotels by Robin Shannon.)

Note the stunningly affordable 1960s prices.

Alas, the hotel closed in the 1980s, although Trader Vic's carried on for some years catering to "Mad Men" and hipsters.

If you're into tiki bars, check out this feature on the Ben Franklin Outrigger at Tiki Central.

My great-great uncle on my father's father's side owned a hotel in downtown Detroit, the Blindbury Hotel. But that's another story!

The Royal Portable

This week's Sepia Saturday theme features typewriters. This is a machine I have not a little familiarity with, having been intimately involved with them from rather an early age.

This model I am experimenting with is a 1948 Royal Poetable. I mean, Portable.

This machine belonged to my mother. Given its vintage, I assume she treated herself to it the year she won the University of Michigan's Hopwood Award for fiction. Here she is around that time, looking literary.

However, she handed it down to me in the early 1970s, as I embarked on my own poetic career at the University of Washington. Here's the site of our "poetry workshop": Parrington Hall, with several of the poetry students taking a break. Summer of '72, I was 18 and most of my friends, from the class, were at least four or five years older.

Jim Mitsui third from left, Kay Deeter standing at center

That's my father at the podium, with the inimitable Frank Maloney eclipsing him.

Reading the announcements

I brought my camera one night. Actually I borrowed it from a fellow student, Daphne. I got arty widdit.

Poet's eye view: under the table 

The lonely cup

Window open: in those days you could smoke in class

The side exit

That's Daphne on the left, with her sister, at one of the three poetry readings held every week (in addition to the two poetry classes -- a full schedule!).

After class at 9 PM, several of the class members would retire to the local pub, actually Woerne's European Pastry Shop. You could smoke in there too.

From left: Unknown, my little sister Julian (!?), Ronnie Church, Anne Pitkin, Jim Mitsui, Charles Webb, Frank Maloney, Linda Engel,  Nick Seguin

And here is the culprit himself, pretending to work on a poem.

Note that my keyboard technique has not changed since toddlerhood.

I have long since graduated to a computer, and have recently returned the Royal Portable to my mother, who no longer can use it but keeps it as an icon of her college days. Amazingly, you can still get ribbons for it!