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| From the files of the Fashion Police |
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Rudolph Valentino, move over
This stylish duo pose along the dirt road that runs past the cottages located on the east shore of Sandy Pond. Ed Smolinski and Buster Major are, as they used to say, a couple of swells. This is what men wore in the days before shorts, t-shirts and designer sneaks. Those trousers are called knickers. I had a pair when I was a boy in the 1940s, but I don't think I wore them more than once. You didn't see them much after World War II, except in period movies or PBS shows set in England.
This photo was taken in the late 1920s or early '30s. But I'm betting that if we took a photo of two guys on this spot in 2009 that the background would look pretty much the same.
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America's next supermodels?
Stella Rydelek and Helen Smolinski Major strike a pose for Helen's husband, Buster Major. We don't know where the picture was taken, though at the time (I'm guessing the very early 1930s) it wasn't difficult to find such open spaces in or around Solvay. It's a pretty scene. When I looked at it in 2009 I thought the fur wrapped around my mother's shoulders was a bit much, but then I saw that Brandon Flowers, lead singer of The Killers, wearing something similar and reconsidered. Mom, you were way ahead of your time. |
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Welcome to our swimsuit issue
Lola Major poses outside an Otisco Lake cottage in what must be a swimsuit, complete with bathing cap and stockings. Looks mighty cumbersome and not at all safe for serious swimming. Ah, but Lola makes it work. I think the photo was taken about 1918.
On the right, it's that dashing, devil-may-care man about Sandy Pond, Buster Major, wearing the latest in men's swimwear and posing in typical Buster fashion, a photo so good that it also appears on another page ... somewhere. Look at this photo long enough and you may suspect his head was Photoshopped onto the body, but it wasn't. The effect is all in the pose. |
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Ready to roar
Mary Doherty Dowling in the Roaring '20s is how this photo was described by her daughter, Pat Dowling Guernsey. Mary Doherty was the daughter of Catherine "Kate" Major, one of the children of William and Mary Anne Major, who emigrated to the United States from Ireland.
Kate Major married William Dougherty, whose family changed the spelling of their last name to Doherty.
This photo of Kate Doherty's daughter, Mary, catches the look of the 1920s, but I can't explain the positioning of her right arm, unless, perhaps, her right thumb is buried in a pocket on the front of her outfit.
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White belt, brown shoes
Alas, I have no photos of me in my leisure suits – yes, I had two of them – but I do have this reminder of those wonderful disco days (this from a guy who doesn't dance). Standing close, despite the belt, the polyester pants and striped shirt, is my cousin Rose Anne Rand.
On the right, another funny reminder ... this one of my reluctance to buy white shoes to go with the drum major's outfit when I marched in front of the Solvay High School band while I was in eighth and ninth grades. (Clinton Atwood, the Solvay school superintendent, who introduced the acts at the annual June Festival, got a big kick out of announcing, " ... and the drum major is Jack Major!") Wiser heads prevailed. I resigned the position and the new drum major, Dick Gosson, looked and performed the way a drum major should. |
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