My Papa

My father, we called him "Papa", was probably close to 60 when I was born. He lived from the time when horses were the source of transportation and lived to see a man land on the moon! When he was a boy,he rode on a stagecoach out west with his mother (who's name was Dorrit) because she was a stage actress. In fact, there is a poster held in their archives at the Smithsonian that reads, "Dorrit Ashton, the greatest actress of her time" Of course, it is quite possible that she had it printed up herself and she was no such thing! My father was in Vaudeville and many, many silent movies. When "talkies" came along and, of course, the Great Depression he found it harder and harder to find work and so, by the time I came along, the only thing left wee his stories and his trunk.

Any time I got a chance I would look through his trunk. He had two guns that were given to him by an old cowboy when he was in a Western movie. They were very old even then because he had been a young man at the time and the old cowboy had had them since he was a young man. There was a leather satchel full of "stills" and other pictures from his movie parts. There were newspaper clippings calling him the greatest make-up artist, second only to Lon Chaney. In those days if you were an actor, you not only played the parts but you did your own make-up!

There was make-up in cases and wigs in the trunk, too.
He remembered gas lights being lit in New York City and being afraid of Indians out west. The first movies he did he got first billing but quite soon he became known as a character actor. He always liked those parts better.

In this picture from the original Hunchback of Notre Dame, he played the leader of the gypsy band who was being tortured and the Hunchback brought him water. This picture hung in the front office of Warner Brother's Studio for many years - probably even after most people could not remember who he was.

I was very lucky to be able to learn my first history lessons from my parents. I worry that children miss the first hand lessons now that we have T.V. and the internet with their quick, thorough but very impersonal answers to every question that we have.

Getting to my major point. This is my 730th blip and Blipfoto has brought the personal back into history. When you see pictures of a bridge in New Zealand posted by a blip "friend" and a week later she posts that same bridge after an earhquake. When you have a blip friend in Indonesia and see the flooding there. When you see pictures of the blizzards or the drought or the faces of the people and a little of their stories, it brings the history being made today as close as it was when my parents talked about their experiences as they lived through the history that I would later read about in school!
Thank you, blipfoto, for opening up the world a little bit more for me.