1: Nostalgic collection beginning in the 1880s
You know that inexplicable sense of mood about times past that can sometimes come upon us unaware? Maybe a scent from a perfume forgotten, or the flavor of chewing gun not chewed for decades, or a song from a gone by era will trigger it. As I was perusing this fine collection of black and white photos of early Sacramento I was touched again and again with that inexplicable mood that comes from the remembrance of things past.
For Marcel Proust it was the taste of madeleine cake soaked in lime flowers that aroused the memories and evoked the delicious sense of mood. For many of us something similar happens when we look back at photos of what life was like many decades ago.
I grew up in California--although not in Sacramento. Nonetheless the photos showing Kress's and the Owl Drug Store and a theater marquee announcing the showing of a new Shirley Temple or Joan Fontaine picture show as seen in this book are not different from what I recall on the streets of Long Beach or Los Angeles where I grew up. The men in their fedoras and the women with scarves covering their hair bring back a time and way of life that I knew as a kid. The Armistice Day parades with the bands and the soldiers marching past Florshein's shoe store or Montgomery Ward's are nearly the same in Sacramento as in L.A.
There's one photo per page, 199 in all, the earliest showing the Central Pacific Depot in downtown Sacramento, ca. 1880, and the latest showing Spiro Agnew speaking (with Governor Ronald Reagan watching) on the Capitol steps in 1969. There are photos of fires and flooded streets, and muddy streets and dusty streets and even a pretend train wreck at the state fair in 1917 (p. 65). We see the evolution of transportation from horses and stage coaches to steam engine railroad trains to diesels and the electric red cars of my childhood, and also from model Ts and coupes to the finned sedans of the fifties. The billboards of the times and the signs on the sides of buildings tell us that you could get a room for fifty cents and then a dollar or two a night. We can see ice trucks and brewery wagons with barrels of beer pulled by horses. I was amused to see that the Western Hotel at 3rd and K streets, ca. 1931, offered nightly rates from 35 cents to a dollar and up, along with "Rummy in our large clean card room." "E. E. Todd, prop.," also advised that rummy checks could be "cashed for rooms or merchandise." (p. 107)
The book is beautifully presented with a handsome glossy dust jacket with the photos on heavy, expensive paper, held together with a sturdy binding. All of the photos are from the Sacramento Archives and Museum Collection Center, and the crisp text and captions are by James Scott and Tom Tolley.
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