After their visit to Yosemite National Park, my relatives apparently found the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco to be something of a let-down. My father only took eight photos (that I know of) in San Francisco, and these were all from a boat ride that they took around Read More …
Since none of these people are still alive, I can’t ask them anything about their train journey from Chicago to San Francisco (and back) in May and June of 1940. So I just have to rely on the photos and captions in my father’s photograph album. The five people in Read More …
In May 1940, my relatives had a few hours in Salt Lake City between trains. They had come from Denver via the Royal Gorge on the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad (often shortened to ‘the Rio Grande’) and would leave the same day on the Western Pacific, on an Read More …
The bookshop La vie du rail has moved. For many years, it was in a tiny shop in an obscure corner of a major Paris railway station, Gare Saint-Lazare, as shown here in my photos from ten years ago. But since my last visit, the bookshop seems to have moved Read More …
No, I did not travel to the Royal Gorge in 1940. But my parents did, along with my maternal grandparents and most of my American aunts and uncles. This was no doubt my grandfather’s idea, to have a train trip to the Royal Gorge, Yosemite and San Francisco (for the Read More …
Everett Mitchell (1898-1990) was the host of a nationally broadcast NBC radio program called (deep breath here): THE NATIONAL FARM AND HOME HOUR. It came on every Saturday at 12 noon and was broadcast live from WMAQ’s legendary Studio A on the twentieth floor of the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, Read More …
In this photo from around 1910, a train has just arrived from Paris and is waiting on the quay in Cherbourg. The photo, much enlarged, is now on display at the spot where it was originally taken over a century ago. The railway line from Paris to Cherbourg was inaugurated Read More …
This welcome poster at the entrance to the parking lot of the Cité de la Mer (City of the Sea) in Cherbourg was probably just intended as a collage showing various elements of the Cité in no particular relationship to each other, but I still find it irritating because it Read More …
This large baggage room in the former maritime railway station doesn’t really have much to do with emigration, since it wasn’t completed until 1933, when the flow of emigrants was already greatly reduced. But it is now used as part of the Cité de la Mer to explain the history Read More …
My recent visit to Cherbourg, France, has reminded me of a minor mystery in my family’s past, namely my father’s eleven-week trip to Europe in 1931. He was 26 at the time, single, living in Chicago and working for a wholesale costume jewelry company called Morris, Mann & Reilly Inc. Read More …