You can click on the photo under the heading Dad’s Photos in the lefthand frame—& now that really does work, since I corrected the link.
Hope you enjoy these!
In a Street Car (Commonwealth Ave, Boston)
In an antique shop yard (Brattleboro, Vermont)
A border town (Canada & Vermont)
Nightclub outside Springfield, Mass (all that goes up is prices)
North Attleboro, Mass
Over the "damn"
The Night before the 4th (Newport, Vermont)
I always love these voyages in your familial time machine. Wow.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the glimpse into the past.
I love this new collection. What can you tell us about that nightclub? What an interesting idea architecturally!
ReplyDeleteHi Reya & Raquelle:
ReplyDeleteReya: Thank you!
Raquelle: Thanks-- unfortunately, I know nothing about the nightclub, tho I completely agree--it's intriguing. Perhaps Jacqueline Lynch might know-- she seems like she might be the woman for the job!
I look forward to your photos. These are great. I enjoy your poems too although I am not a poet so I don't feel qualified to comment other than to say I enjoy them very much. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteOver the "damn" gave me a chuckle! I always enjoy these wonderful photos of your dad's, John.
ReplyDeleteHi Dragonfly Dreamer & Willow:
ReplyDeleteThanks to you both-- so glad you enjoy these photos!
John, I love looking at old photos, and these are quite intriguing. I'd love to know about that nightclub, too. At first, I thought I was looking at a dirigible.
ReplyDeleteI've been trying to write a poem about a photo my parents used to have of my squatting beside my dad's new car. I must have been less than two years old. Maybe I need to just put into the poem that the photo is lost. Maybe that's an angle for the whole thing. Hmmm. Thanks for the inspiration!
Grrr...should have said "me".
ReplyDeleteHi Karen:
ReplyDeleteThanks-- sometimes it takes a "real" detail to get at the kernel of a poem. Good luck!
More Great Photos ! I especially like the Massachussets ones..(i remember visiting Springfield)
ReplyDeleteHave A Fine Week John.
I'll get back to you on the nightclub photo. Right now I'm stumped. If it's 1938 and "outside" of Springfield, it might have been located by the old Springfield Airport, now a shopping plaza. Since the Hindenburg's firey crash in the previous year of 1937, I have to wonder how really comfortable people were relaxing in a dirigible-shaped nightclub after that.
ReplyDeleteHi Jacqueline:
ReplyDeleteThanks for looking into it. A long time has passed since that photo was taken, so who knows how much info there may be. But I appreciate your interest!
This Just In: Your zeppelin-shaped nightclub was "Toto's Zeppelin Nightclub" located not in Springfield, but across the river in Holyoke. It was built in 1933 and was damaged in a fire in November 1938, (your father's photo may be one of the last pictures) which destroyed the zeppelin structure. It was renovated minus the zeppelin, but was again destroyed by fire in 1961. Speaking of Patti Page (on your "Moon song" post), she was one of the luminaries who visited the nightclub. Pre-Senate John F. Kennedy was another. Too much to relate here, so I'm going to steal this topic and put it up on my New England Travels blog next week. I'll link to your post.
ReplyDeleteYou're right. I didn't see this reply when I poked mine into a smallscreen tablet. Toto's was in the section of Holyoke called Smith's Ferry, over the bridge and up rt5 from Spfld, or down Rt5 from Northampton. It must have been popular with the Amherst/Smith/MtHolyoke college crowd (especially if there actually was a ferry still running -- what a date-night, taking the ferry to the Zep!) Both my folks worked there, maybe in both its incarnations.
DeleteHi Jacqueline:
ReplyDelete& thanks a lot-- that's really great info-- hope Raquelle is getting the feed for this (I also with add an "editor's note" crediting you the info to the post when I get more than half a moment!)
I am sitting here looking at a photo of my mother and father in a paper frame that says; Souvenir of Toto's Restaurant. It mentions, The Bacchante Room- The Eleanardo Room- Interlude Cocktail Lounge and The Terrace Garden- on Route 5 Holyoke, Mass. My mother, my sister and I were all born in Holyoke. I think I also have another picture on the outside of Toto's but I do not remember it looking like a zeppelin. Maybe after 37' they remodeled. Does anyone know?
ReplyDeleteHi Deb: Thanks for stopping by Robert Frost's Banjo. New England blogger Jacqueline T Lynch came up with some info about Toto's on her New England Travels blog after seeing this post. I believe you may find the answer to your question here
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing the photo of what must have been "Toto's Zeppelin" on rt5 along the Connecticut River in the Smith's Ferry section of Holyoke, almost in Northampton.
ReplyDeleteA fire in the late '30s ended what Dad called "theZep." After WW2 both my parents worked at the more conventional looking stucco Toto's nightclub that replaced it.
(Someday I'll have to write something about a rather mysterious picture of my mother singing with a band there. Band members are wearing carpenter's aprons, carrying saws and hammers and such. Maybe she was singing 'This Old House'?)