This is one of those madcap column-every-day weeks that makes me annoyed at the little button on the right. The one that takes you down to the comments so you can see what someone said in response to something you said. Oh, it’s handy, but it means there has to be some words up here in sufficient quantity to keep it from messing up the formatting, because I can’t just start with six words and a picture. I have to do something like this.

There, I did it.

Part Two of the Family Bible. It was embossed, and the cover had a topography that was a half-inch deep:

AND MEN ON EARTH PEACE GOOD WILL TOWARD

The lineage of this edition stretches back the Centennial Commissions which approved Bibles and bestowed the praise and admiration it deserved. Revisions required additional copyrights.

This was the best Bible. This was the Cadillac of Bibles. You had this in your home, it was signaled your piety, propriety, status, and taste.

The illustrations showed you the settings as understood by the Finest Scholarly Minds of the day:

They look Moorish to modern eyes, no? But then, I guess, that was just, you know, Bible-times stuff.

Lots of Jewish mysticism:

Here’s a typical section, remind you that this was the wikipedia / internet of the day. Why, let’s dive deep into the coinage of the era, thanks to Mr. J. L. Rawson:

t’s quite specific:

Indeed:

Aristobulus was not only just the first king from the Hasmonean lineage, but the first of any Hebrew kings to claim both the high priesthood and the kingship title. The Sadducees and the Essenes were not concerned about Aristobulus taking the title of king, but the Pharisees were infuriated: they felt that the kingship could only be held by descendants of the Davidic line (the Hasmoneans were Levites). The Pharisees began a massive rebellion, but Aristobulus died before any attempt to depose of him could occur.

In case you were wondering how the earth filled up after the flood: there was science.

So the Russians and the British are the Kids of Gomer?

Gomer?

Josephus placed Gomer and the "Gomerites" in Anatolian Galatia: "For Gomer founded those whom the Greeks now call Galatians, but were then called Gomerites."[4] Galatia in fact takes its name from the ancient Gauls (Celts) who settled there. However, the later Christian writer Hippolytus of Rome in c. 234 assigned Gomer as the ancestor of the Cappadocians, neighbours of the Galatians.[5] Jerome (c. 390) and Isidore of Seville (c. 600) followed Josephus' identification of Gomer with the Galatians, Gauls and Celts.

According to tractate Yoma, in the Talmud, Gomer is identified as “Germamya".

In Islamic folklore, the Persian historian Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari (c. 915) recounts a Persian tradition that Gomer lived to the age of 1000, noting that this record equalled that of Nimrod, but was unsurpassed by anyone else mentioned in the Torah.

I'm still stuck on the Gomerites.

From Adam to Jesus, they had it all worked out:

There’s a thick section that boils it all down for the children. Here’s God on the first day of Creation:

The plates are all vivid, drawn in the style of a medieval book.

Once only the kings and monks had access to plates like that, but now anyone with the requisite coin could own it.

This was stuck between the pages.

Geo#5:

The coronation of George V and his wife Mary of Teck as king and queen of the United Kingdom and the British Empire took place at Westminster Abbey, London, on 22 June 1911. This was second of four such events held during the 20th century and the last to be attended by royal representatives of the great continental European empires.

This book has to go to some library or institution. Until it's resting in the hands of scholars or collectors, it will pass the years here.

Note: yes, I know, it's not that rare.

Oh, one more thing, but that's for tomorrow.

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

It turns out this is a repeat: sorry! But when I first started doing these, it was short and desultory. Now it's interminable and tasks your patience like nothing else, but at least it's easily skimmable.

Twenty-five hundred souls, a little less than 50 years ago. More than the city had when these structures were built.

City Hall:

 

 

An old Carnegie Library. Lucky is the town that had one; lucky is the town that still does.

 

"Why don’t you name it after my mother, dear? I think ‘Elveenie’ would be a grand name for a perfume.”

“Well, I’ve already got the ads written up, but I have another product that might be good.”

“You’re a dear.” (smooch on cheek)

Did . . . did they just unearth this town?

 

Usually I don’t like restored signs, but for some reason it seems to work here.

1871: lots of money in this one for such a young state.

I’ve never seen that sort of arcade on an old retail building. The glass isn't original, but you get the sense of the Italianate arcade.

“Sir, I’d like to rent that top floor, if I might. I expect the third floor price will be less than the second, considering the extra effort my clients will have to make to get up there.”

“There isn’t a third floor.”

 

“Alright, I shall go down the street, then. Good day to you sir.”

“I’m telling you, Mr. Carver, that was a once-in-a-lifetime flood. They’ve built a dike. It’s not going to happen again.”

“I don’t give a good got-damned, you whelp. You’re the architect and you’ll do as I say.”

That’s a mean wedge of Buckaroo Revival, right there.

The building next door (on the left) was an addition, I think; perhaps the brick was different, but the plan’s the same.

Charming holdover, but I have to ask . . .

 

. . . where is that door on the right going to?

Upstairs?

If we had a category for Obligatory Ugly Post-War Bank, this might be it:

 

Don’t know if it was a bank, but I wouldn’t be surprised. It says it served a sober function. The line of Kasota stone is idiotic, though, and the windows on the second floor seem off. So much forehead!

Another poor fellow stranded with the floodwaters of regrettable renovation up to his hips.

 

 

Those Moorish arches, I’d wager, were once all glass.

The local newspaper has one customer, and they were so grateful they made him a sign:

 

Did the sign once say something else?

It’s been through a lot.

It looks as if it’s getting better. Say, it’s been a while since I snapped these; wonder if the Google car has been back. . . .

No.

Does anyone at Sheldon’s appliances think they would have got less business if they’d restored the entire building, instead of chopping it in half and rendering the top part orphaned?

 

 

Believe it or not, this was the movie theater. The State.

 

 

Do you know how we can tell? Well, old pictures, of course.

But also this.

The Lion’s heads often had steel ropes emerging from their mouths, holding up the signs.

I’m jumping around downtown here, because I went back and took some more. In the early days I would confine myself to 8 or 10, but now we know that rule’s long dead.

Two old friends:

 

They went up two years apart.

 

There’s nothing else this could possibly be. Note: accounting is on the second floor, staffed entirely by elves.

Here in a small town in the middle of the continent in the early days of the 20th century, a model of a late-Medieval palazzo. Why? Because some things persist.

Like I say these days, it seems like a lot of town for 2,000 people.

THERE IS NO SECOND FLOOR ONLY FIRST AND THIRD

Just a space for the bodies. STORAGE! I MEANT STORAGE

NOTE: This site originally had some buildings that belonged elsewhere; apologies.

That'll do - see you tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 
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