No Angel: A Seaside Mystery

Here's a modest but intriguing mystery I encountered recently and one that I hope you can help me solve. In 1996, our son Ned was stationed in Hawaii, and his sister, her husband Steve, and I visited Ned on Oahu for a week. During the trip, we took a flight to the "Big Island," the Island of Hawaii, for a one-day volcano tour. Near the end of the trip, I snapped this photograph on a black sand beach not too far from Hilo. 

The photo shows the top of a low wall at the beach's edge where someone had spelled out, "I'M NO ANGEL," with small shells embedded in the mortar on top of the wall, and signed the message, "Mae."

Like so many others, when I travel, I often photograph scenic views, but I also look for the small traces of individual lives and ephemeral moments––window displays, graffiti, folk art––odd things left behind as time passes. 

These things feel like connections or even messages from someone else who passed that way earlier. 

The note left in shells on this wall was certainly intriguing and worth consideration. "I'm no angel." One could imagine a number of stories hidden in that message–lost love, despair, repentance, renewal–any number of possibilities come to mind.  

The mystery of the message seemed to float into my head whenever the subject of Hawaii came up. A few years later, on a whim, I searched the internet for that message and found that Mae West had made a movie in 1933 titled "I'm No Angel," co-starring with a young Cary Grant.  Mae West was a box office sensation at the time, and this ribald, satirical comedy about a woman from the wrong side of the tracks was a big hit.  West wrote both the story and the screenplay. The movie also included the song "I'm No Angel."

Is it possible that Mae West visited Hawaii and left this message, or did a movie fan write this while the mortar was fresh? Our volcano tour guide that day told me that he had never noticed it.

My friend Charlie Dahlberg grew up in Hawaii near Hilo on the Big Island but lives in Connecticut now, and I see him once a year or so when we take kayak/canoe river trips with other friends. I asked him about this message from "not-an-angel," but he knew nothing of it. On his next trip to Hawaii, he searched for this rock wall using my vague location suggestions without success. 

I can't pinpoint exactly where I took the photograph. No one else was on the beach when we visited, and no boat docks nearby.  It seems like it was a semi-isolated stretch of black-sand beach east of Hilo.

I have searched using Google Earth and by following along the roads we drove that day. My best guess is that the site was near Keaukaha Beach Park, Hawaii, but that's only a guess. I recently sent Charlie a scan of the photo, and he passed it along to his relatives in Hawaii. Their suggestions are Hilo Bay or the old Pu'umaile Hospital site at the end of Kalaniana'ole.

Did Mae West put this inscription on the wall?  It seems unlikely, as I find no reference on the internet of Miss West ever visiting Hawaii. (However, see later notes below.) If Mae didn't write it, who did? We may never know, but it is a fun little puzzle to work with.  I would be quite happy if someone else could identify the spot and take a current photo of it if it still exists.  A number of strong storms struck this area throughout the years, including a tsunami in 2011, so it's possible that the wall no longer stands.

So, if you blog readers find anything, have any ideas, or know the answer – "... come on up and see me sometime" –  at least by email.

7/2/12 Note: As you can see by the second comment below, there is a good chance that Mae visited Hawaii in 1934, the year after the movie. Did she leave us this note?

3/20/2021:  Here's a shot of a small advertising poster for "I'm No Angel" from the Paramount Theater in Austin from 1933 or 1934. Note the suggestion at the bottom that the "kiddies" might be better off next door at the State Theater. (In the 1960s, when I was a student at the University of Texas, one could catch the outgoing movie at the Paramount and a "sneak preview" of next week's film at the State Theater for one ticket. Heck of a deal for a student!)

"It's better to be looked over, than overlooked." – Mae West

  

blue

Sometimes, an image and a title are all a poem needs.

Winter on the Blue

This postcard was sent in 1909 from Emma in De Witt, Nebraska, to Mr. Harry Witte in the same town.  


De Witt is on the Big Blue River in Southeastern Nebraska.  Kudos to the unknown photographer and the printer who tinted the postcard.

Dady and Baby

Originally published on Blogger 4/23/2012, this entry's revised and expanded version appears in Snapshots and Short Notes, Kenneth Wilson, University of North Texas Press, 2020.

On October 14, 1908, an oilfield roughneck sent a real photo postcard from Petrolia, Texas, to Lorman, Mississippi, with this message: 

"This is a picture of the rotary well machine on which I am working.  Those are the bits marked dady (sic) and baby.  The large is the one we stidit (sic) with & the small one finishes up the hole.  P. K."   

 

A later note on the card says, "Pressley & his work."  Pressley may not have been able to spell very well (no pun intended), but he left us a detailed view of his job on an early rotary drilling rig in the West Texas oil patch. Pressley must be in the foreground nearest to the "named" drill bits.

Looking closely, you will see the smaller bit, "baby," sitting on top of the large "daddy" bit.  The men have stopped work for a quick snapshot, and you can see both fatigue and pride in their poses. We can see the photographer's shadow in the foreground, and the hand tools, the other drill bits, and the rotary rig itself are clearly visible on the wooden rig floor.

In 1901, a rancher in Clay County, just below the Texas-Oklahoma border, attempted to drill a water well but struck oil at 263 feet, thus opening the first oilfield in North Texas.  A small shantytown, Oil City, quickly grew up in the area, but in 1905, most residents moved to nearby Petrolia, located on the new Wichita Falls and Oklahoma Railroad. By late 1905, Petrolia boasted a hotel, bank, drugstore, barbershop, livery stable, dry-goods store, hardware store, furniture store, meat market, lumberyard, ice house, two oilfield-supply stores, and a cotton gin.  Despite these amenities, the town was still a rough-and-ready oil boom town, and alcohol consumption, gambling, and prostitution flourished.

  

In 1908, cable tool rigs still dominated the drilling process, and this cable tool rig was the new technology.  The drilling crew on a rotary rig was generally five in number: driller, derrickman, motor man, and two floor-hands.  All of them except the driller are usually referred to as roughnecks.  In this photograph, perhaps the man in the background, wearing cleaner clothes, is the driller, and the photographer may be the fifth crew member.

In the scan of the back of the postcard, you can see that Pressley left an oily thumbprint just above the Petrolia cancellation mark. Small details like that thumbprint, the lack of hard hats, and the greasy overalls and gloves tell us a lot about a roughneck's job, but they don't convey the cold winters and blazing hot summers of the Texas-Oklahoma border, nor do they tell us of the long hours and the dangers of work on an oil rig.  In that fall of 1908, I hope P. K. went home with good money in his pocket and to someone he could spend it on.

 

No man is born into the world whose work
Is not born with him; there is always work
And tools to work withal, for those who will...
–– James Russell Lowell

What's Up Doc?

 

 

I am intrigued by the enigmatic nature of old real photo postcards) that contain many details. These details often lead to more questions than answers (RPPCs to collectors. Consider this captivating image of two young women in the Creighton, Nebraska Bakery.  The card is postmarked 1909 and addressed to Miss Carrie Chappell in Spirit Lake, Iowa; it contains a message from Etta Travis that reads:

 

Dear Friend, 

Your card rec'd. Many thanks for same.  Will send you a postal of the "Bakery."  No. 1 is Miss Clytie Scott, and No. 2 is Miss Emma Brice, both of Creighton.  My mother's folks live in Leon and Sparta, Wis.  It is north of Madison.  Hoping this will please you and to hear from you soon, 

I remain your E. C. E. Friend, 

                                            Etta S. Travis

 

Okay, Etta gives us a bit of a story­ —it seems that she exchanged postcards with friends, but what is an E. C. E. friend? Perhaps some of you know. I'd also like to know, "What's up (Doc) with that rabbit?"  The card was mailed two days after Easter; perhaps he just decided to hang around.

 

A Return to Vivoin

I found the following two real photo postcards together at a postcard show/sale. They appeared to have been taken in France during WWI, as both had the customary French postcard backs for that time and place. The subjects seemed to be American soldiers in a French village. One of the cards had the word "VIVOIN" written in ink on the front of the card; however, there was no other identifying information.   

Here's a detail from the first photo. Look at the French citizens on the left and note the young girl in the large white hat with the ribbon on it.

And a detail from the second photo:

I really like the pose of the automobile driver––everything about him says, "France, 1918." Do you see the girl with the white hat again, standing beside her mother?  It seems that the soldiers were checking out the town, and the citizens were taking a look at the American doughboys.  Imagine the conversations that took place or were attempted that day! 

The obvious first step toward investigating these images was to look up the name Vivoin. As I suspected, it's a small French village, or more appropriately, in French terms, a commune in western France in the region of Pays-de-la-Loire. Saint-Nazaire, southwest of Vivoin, became a critical WWI debarkation port for US troops, especially in the war's latter stages.

The United States entered WWI in 1917, and American troops began to arrive in France as the American Expeditionary Force in June of that year, but they did not enter the front-line trenches in divisional strength until October. Vivoin is far from the Western Front, but the troops in these photos likely would have been on their way to or from the front. French, British, Canadian, and Russian troops had been engaged in desperate and bloody battles against the Germans since 1914, and the arrival of the Americans provided a much-needed enhancement in troops, equipment, and morale.

(See 2021 Addendum below. These photos may date to 1919, as American troops were headed     home.)

To confirm that these photos were indeed of Vivoin, France, I turned to Google Earth. I am still amazed by this piece of technology.  I remember standing in the backyard with my Dad in 1957, watching Sputnik cross the sky. In the 1980s, Dad, a pilot, was delighted to show us the LORAN's navigation uses–a recently-available, long-range radio navigation system. He was a fast learner on the home computer in its early days, and he saw the coming development of GPS, but he never saw anything like Google Maps or Google Earth.  


Google Maps and Google Earth allow earth-bound folks like me to fly––as if on a magic carpet––and land almost anywhere. Since Vivoin is a small community, I transported myself to the largest intersection in town and took a look around.


Here's what I found on my first attempt:

Look familiar?  Here's a slightly different view:

Well, okie, dokie then––some details have changed––but look at the roofs, the dormers, the brick details on the top of the corner building, and the placement of windows and doors. It's the same place. We are looking north on Rue de Doucelles in Vivoin, France.


I had one of the photos confirmed as to place, but I wanted to see if I could locate the other one. I turned my virtual self 90 degrees east in Google Earth, and here's what I saw:

This is the church l’Eglise St. Hippolyte in Vivoin.   Here are two more views:  

That's it. We're there.  I can't read any patches or insignia on the 1918 uniforms, so we don't know who these troops were (See 5/7/21 note below) or anything about their war experiences or their lives after the war, but a century later, we can put ourselves on the same sidewalk.   Since the girl in the hat and her mother had moved from one corner to another, we know the photos were probably taken only minutes apart and that the citizens of Vivoin were following the soldiers as they took in the town. (As per the 5/7/21 note below, it is likely that these photos were snapped after the Armistice and that both soldiers and civilians were justifiably jubilant.)

We've now had a trip to France and through time, compliments of the person who snapped the photos in 1918, the soldier who brought them home, and the magic carpet of Google Earth.  I offer special thanks to the person who took a moment to write "Vivoin" on the photo.

If anyone from Vivoin sees this blog, I'd be happy to hear from you.

“I'll just tell you what I remember

 because memory is as close as I've gotten to building my own time machine.”  

― Samantha Hunt, The Invention of Everything Else

May 7, 2021 Addendum:

Many thanks to Patrick Anstead of Fayetteville, NC, who provided the photograph below of Company F, 2nd Battalion, posing in front of the church in Vivoin sometime between November 1918 and February 1919. He notes that the photographs in my blog entry may be of the same unit. If any readers can shed light on that question, please leave a comment.

Company F saw heavy fighting on the Western Front and was part of the Allied Grand Offensive, also known as the Hundred Days Offensive (August to November 1918), which ended the First World War.  Mr. Anstead also provided this link: History, 119th Infantry, 60th Brigade, 30th Division, U.S.A., Operations in Belgium and France 1917-1919.    https://docsouth.unc.edu/wwi/conway/conway.html

Nebrasker Williams and the African Princess

One of the categories of old postcards that I collect is "walkers." Among postcard collectors, the genre of postcards portraying people who trekked long distances for reasons of health, publicity, competition, or personal objectives is known as “Walkers,” whether the journey was made by foot, bicycle, dogsled, goat cart, or other non-motorized means of conveyance. During the early part of the 20th century, "long-distance travelers," as they might be more accurately described, traveled to fulfill personal goals, promote political or social causes, advertise an upcoming event such as a state fair, or simply as a means of livelihood, raising money by selling postcards or pamphlets about themselves along the way. Occasionally, someone walking the highways today supports a religious or social cause.

There are a lot of engrossing stories and images of early "walkers."  Plennie L. Wingo walked from Abilene, Texas, to New York City in 1931 – backward!  In 1910, Fred Vaillancourt, a former railroad brakeman who had lost both legs in a railroad accident, traveled the country by dog cart. The husband and wife team, Mr. and Mrs. D. H. Woolf, walked thousands of miles across the United States in 1909 accompanied by Dolly, a little bay mare who pulled their baggage wagon.

One famous American walker whose story I will save for another occasion was Edward Payson Weston, often billed as the World's Greatest Walker, who was a "professional pedestrian" during the late 19th and early 20th century when long-distance walking was a popular spectator sport. See Kenneth Wilson, Snapshots and Short Notes, Images and Messages of Early Twentieth-Century Photo Postcards, University of North Texas Press, 2020, pages 143-144.

I have seen many postcards and photographs of such travelers, but recently, I came across an old printed blotter that advertised "Mr. and Mrs. Nebrasker Williams and their dog Big Boy."  The couple billed themselves as "World Champion Walkers and Explorers." The image of the couple on this card is striking, even if poorly printed.  For one thing, they were both black, and I am unaware of other photos or postcards of a person of color as a long-distance walker.   

The blotter's information asserts that the couple started from Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1926, intending to walk around the world. They sold blotters for 15 cents and solicited donations to finance their journey. While the printed information does not mention religion, Nebrasker is shown wearing a prominent Christian cross.

A quick internet search revealed very little about Nebrasker Williams and his wife, especially as the search engine kept trying to change "Nebrasker" to "Nebraska." After some time, I found an article in The California Eagle from 1945.  The Eagle was an African American newspaper in Los Angeles from 1879 to 1964.  It was founded by John J. Neimore, who had escaped slavery in Missouri before the Civil War.

The Eagle article was titled "African Princess and Husband Visit in City of Angels." According to that article, Mrs. Williams' name was "Princess Quenda Buranghingtore Williams," and she was from Zulatribi, Cape Town, South Africa. The source further claimed that she and her husband were guests at a turkey dinner at the St. Paul Baptist Church in Los Angeles. 

It was reported that the princess and her husband had been married for six years and that Mr. Williams had walked 37,000 miles and visited 51 countries, 48 states, and 10 islands, during which time he had worn out 840 pairs of shoes. Mr. Williams claimed to have once been the guest of Mahatma Gandhi.  Mrs. Williams described herself as "a native African girl," reported walking 9,000 miles, and said the couple had a collection of 521 scrapbooks.

Now, to me, that's a good story. I found no other references to Princess Quenda and only one more for Nebrasker; on a website titled "These Americans," which described itself as a visual narrative from the archives of American history and pop culture, was a single photo titled "Nebrasker Williams The Walking Preacher." However, this site seems to no longer exist on the web.

Nebrasker Williams, Walking Preacher

http://www.theseamericans.com/religion/press-collection-nebrasker-williams-the-walking-preacher/

(this site may no longer exist)

While we have some answers to the mystery surrounding Nebrasker Williams we don't seem to have all the facts. Is the Mrs. Williams portrayed in the blotter advertisement the same person as Princess Quenda?  The 1945 newspaper article says that he and the princess had been married for 9 years, but the blotter information says that the couple pictured on it started walking in 1926, and "... the history of our lives from 5 years old."   

What happened to the 521 scrapbooks? Where did Nebrasker walk next?  I wish I could have asked Nebrasker what it was like to travel this country on foot as a black man in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s.  So, there are still many unanswered questions to this narrative; if you know some of the answers, let us know.  In the meantime, keep on putting one foot ahead of the other.

2/1/12  Additional Information:
My sister, Joanne, who must be a better researcher than I am, found an article about "Nebraska" (rather than "Nebrasker") Williams, dated March 1, 1930, in The Afro American, a Baltimore newspaper. The article says that Williams passed through Baltimore in 1927 and was again in the city in 1930, along with his wife, a sister, and "Big Boy," his bulldog. The article's author seems to be a bit skeptical about Mr. Williams's walking claims.

In this article, Mr. Williams claimed to have begun his walk in London in 1926, rather than Shreveport, and he also claimed Montreal as a starting place.  The newspaper writer says that despite numerous letters about his walk from various US city officials, Mr. Williams failed to show any evidence of having hiked in any foreign countries as he claimed.   

The Afro American does mention some of the problems that the Williams couple had in the South, including being arrested and forced to work on a prison farm for a month.  Mrs. Williams stated that she made a key out of a spoon and enabled their escape!

So, more questions: Was Mr. Williams a preacher, a "world champion walker," a con man, or a bit of all three?  Was there really an African Princess wife?  So far, we don't have the whole story, but it's an interesting walk through history in any case.

"Home is everything you can walk to." ― Jerry Spinelli

A "Killer" Find

In March 2009, my grandson Nathan and I took our kayaks to the Pedernales River in central Texas.  Despite the Texas drought, this stretch of the river at the U.S. 281 crossing is dammed,  providing a suitable small lake for us to paddle on. Nathan was seven then, but he easily handled his kayak as we explored the river for turtles, fish, and birds and enjoyed the Texas spring sunshine.

For better or worse, Nathan has inherited the "collecting gene."  From almost every outing, he brings home rocks, sticks, and other small objects, and he has been especially successful at finding forgotten change in and under vending machines.  Naturally, when he and I pulled over to the bank for a break, we walked the slope, heads down, looking for small treasures.
  
We didn't find arrowheads, gold coins, or old bottles, but there were pieces of rusty barbed wire, interesting rocks, raccoon tracks, and deer droppings – also known as "smart pills" – yes, I shared that old joke with the grandsons years ago.  


When he found something else, Nathan was busy filling his pockets with suitable rocks. "What's this, Pops?" he asked as he handed me his most recent find. It was a piece of broken crockery or pottery, and a nice one because it had part of a name imprinted in the clay.   It was about two and one-half inches from top to bottom, and the readable letters were "Wm" on the top line and "CROB" on the second line. The outside was a nice mottled tan glaze, and the inside had a shiny brown glaze.  

Nathan's pottery shard

I told Nathan it was likely a shard from a stoneware jug and perhaps a hundred years old. I thought we might be able to find out more about it from the lettering since there is a lot of recorded history about early Texas pottery. We talked a little about the importance and use of crocks and jugs to early settlers and about their manufacture.  Nathan agreed to let me take the piece home, photograph it, and do some internet research to try to identify it.  


I looked at lists of early Texas potters on the internet, hoping for a hit. I tried to figure out words or names that might fit the letters we had, but I didn't have much luck. Then, I emailed a scan of the piece to two friends:  Fraser Harris, a potter and collector of early crocks, and Larry Jones, another collector.  


It was only minutes later that Larry emailed back and said the piece was part of an old pottery jug that once held Wm RADAM'S MICROBE KILLER, a patent "snake oil" medicine created in the 1880s by William Radam, a Texas nurseryman who had previously invented several potions to kill blight and fungi on plants. Right on the heels of that email came one from Fraser, who had come to the same conclusion and found a similar jug in a book on early Texas pottery. So, the mystery was quickly and efficiently solved, and the story was fascinating –– William Radam had concocted and sold a patent medicine that he claimed would cure almost any human illness.


After working for 20 years at his own nursery business near Austin, Radam contracted malaria. He theorized that he might cure human diseases in the same way he had been curing the diseases of plants. He tried several concoctions and, after six months of drinking the potions, declared himself cured. Radam claimed the potion resulted from a complex process using sulfur, sodium nitrate, manganese oxide, sandalwood, and potassium chloride.


The first Microbe Killer jugs appear to have been salt-glazed stoneware manufactured by Meyer Pottery in Atascosa, just south of San Antonio. Nathan seemed to have found a piece of one of those jugs, and it had probably been thrown into a trash dump on or near the river's bank.


Below is a stoneware jug similar to the one Nathan's pottery shard was originally a part of.

http://drugstoremuseum.com

Other types of bottles and jugs were later used for the "Killer." By 1890, the medicine was being made in a string of factories from coast to coast. It cost about 5 cents a gallon to produce and was sold for 53 cents a jug. Radam also created a very noticeable trademark for his product.

Radam's Microbe Killer label, 1887, Photo by Mary Margret

http://www.flickr.com/photos/double-m2/3938358327/

Radam's Microbe Killer Jugs  

http://www.sha.org/bottle/medicinal.htm

 Radam's Bottle

http://www.bottlebooks.com  

     

In 1888, Radam built the Koppel Building at 322 Congress Avenue in Austin, Texas, which still stands today. Radam became wealthy from the patent medicine business and moved to a luxury mansion overlooking New York's Central Park. He opened factories in London and Melbourne, Australia. Radam died a wealthy man in 1902 and is buried in Austin's Oakwood Cemetery.

Koppel Building, Austin, Texas,  Photo by Larry Miller

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drmillerlg/3590742697/

Radam's heirs continued to make money from sales of the Killer, but in 1912, an amendment to the Pure Food and Drugs Act made deception in labeling illegal. His potion was determined to be mostly water with a bit of red wine and dashes of hydrochloric and sulfuric acids. It was worthless as a medicine, and the lucrative business quickly ended.


Thanks to Nathan's keen eye, we both had something for "Show and Tell." He took the pottery shard and its story to school and allowed me to write about his find in this blog entry.

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.

–– Adam Smith

For more information on Wm Radam's Microbe Killer or early Texas pottery, the following websites might give you a start:


http://www.countryworldnews.com/news/texas-trails/683-texas-trails-magical-microbe-killer.html
http://www.bottlebooks.com/appraisalstories/radams_microbe_killer.htm
http://www.sha.org/bottle/medicinal.htm
http://www.texasantiques.us/meyer.html
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/bcs01