I’m surrounded by WordPress Users!
No guarantees that readers of this blog will notice much difference, but, on your behalf, I’m spending a beautiful fall Saturday indoors on the campus of Temple University learning all sorts of WordPress secrets. 
I Love Lucy (the Elephant): It’s contest time!
Hey Boys & Girls!
(and those of you who used to be boys and girls once upon a time…)
It’s contest time!
I recently reminisced about my happy summers frolicking at the Jersey Shore, playing miniature golf along the boardwalk, and hanging out with my favorite pachyderm, Lucy, the Margate Elephant.
I’d still love her today even if she wasn’t a National Historic Landmark and the perfect example of a [white] elephant structure that was saved from demolition by passionate locals.
Now I challenge you to share your own reminiscence. There’s something in it for you!
As the days get shorter, the leaves begin to change color and fall, and the roadside farm stands fill with pumpkins and apples, I ask you to settle into a comfy chair and cast your mind back to one of your favorite summers and share what made it special. (You might have to look back only a few weeks… perhaps several years… perhaps many decades….) I’m especially interested in stories that include a favorite thing (like Lucy or your first car), place (like the boardwalk or mountain cabin), or landscape (might be a town, or summer camp).
Send me your story* about a favorite summer memory related to a thing or place. Zip it right along to me at SABRA at myowntimemachine dot com
If you happen to have a photograph to include, that would be extra fabulous! While I do not consider this a crowd-sourcing attempt to score free content for this blog, based on what I know about some of you, there may be some wonderful tales. Please include in your email a YES or NO answer to the question: May I publish this on My Own Time Machine? (Cuz I’d really like to!) (But I won’t if you don’t want me to…)
A panel of experts (okay, me and my offspring, and maybe someone at work) will read through the submissions and select the winner. What do you win?
Why, Lucy the Elephant, of course! As an adorable mini plush replica. Peanuts included.
DEADLINE: Monday October 15th — NO KIDDING!
*It’s really up to you what a “story” means — whatever you are comfortable writing. I suppose some might send in a paragraph, and others will send in pages. Keep in mind that poems range from haiku to epic — so whether you send a short blurb or short story, both are valuable, and equal, means of expression.
Foto Friday: There was a crooked window, that had a crooked wall…
I went through an elephant, and came out alive
Lucy today. She’s 131, but doesn’t look a day over one hundred.
Happy Belated Birthday, Lucy. Lucy the Elephant celebrated her 131st birthday in July and the old gal is looking pretty great. If you have a look at the slideshow below, you’ll see it hasn’t always been that way. Typical historic preservation story in which the [white] elephant building that’s always been there, that the community has always loved, is suddenly in danger of collapsing or being torn down. A group of committed people combine efforts, rally support, and the treasured structure is either saved or lost. In the case of this Margate, New Jersey, landmark, thankfully the outcome was positive.
According to her National Historic Landmark nomination, Lucy was built by real estate promoter James V. Lafferty in 1882. She is the first and last of three constructed elephants to survive the ravages of time. The others were located on Coney Island, New York (burned 1896), and Cape May, New Jersey. (The photographs for the NHL nomination include some historic reproductions and images by Jack Boucher, the noted Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) photographer who recently passed away.)
Lafferty obtained a patent for his “invention” of zoomorphic structures that gave him exclusive rights for seventeen years. (It is fun to suppose that when the patent expired, there was a sudden rush to construct animal buildings…)
In his patent application in 1882, Lafferty wrote
My invention consists of a building in the form of an animal (i.e. an Elephant) the body of which is floored and divided into 2 rooms, closets, etc., and the legs contain the stairs which lead to the body, said legs being hollow so as to be of increased strength for properly supporting the body, and the elevation of the body permitting the circulation of air below the same, the entire device presenting a unique appearance, and producing a building which is well ventilated and lighted.
A chute communicates with the front of the body and extends to the ground where it may be connected with a sewer or other conduit for conveying slops, ashes, etc., to the sewer or conduit, said chute being of the form of the trunk of the elephant and containing trussing . . . for supporting the front of the body, said trussing being concealed by the covering or wall of the trunk.
The lower end of the chute enters or is connected with a box around which is a seat, said box resting on the ground or proper supports thereon and concealing said lower end of the chute and the connection with the conduit and presenting the appearance of a trough from which the animal is feeding or drinking.
An upper story may be supported on the body, access whereto is had from the floor by means of stairs which are properly located in the walls of the body and sustained in position, said story being in the form of a howdah which completing the semblance of a bedecked elephant, acts as the observatory of the building.
It will be seen that the structure is novel and unique.
Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) has also documented Lucy with photographs and measured drawings. Click image to visit the portfolio
My sons and I attended Lucy’s 125th birthday and ate cake and peanuts. It was a delight for me to share Lucy with my children because she’s a link to my own childhood. And having them there provided the impetus for me to finally take the tour inside the elephant!
My grandparents lived just up the street at 8900 Atlantic Avenue and visiting them in the summertime was one of the few constants of my young life. When you move to a new state and start a new school every couple of years, it’s nice to have one place that stays the same. Summers in Margate meant Lucy, of course, and miniature golf, and the requisite crush on the lifeguard at the beach club, Lebanon bologna sandwiches, Taylor pork roll, grinders from White House, the boardwalk — this back in the days when Steel Pier in Atlantic City still featured musical performances, men who would guess your weight (why would you want them to do that?), a mini-museum with an electric eel that could light up a lightbulb, and none other than the famous Diving Horse. I confess that when I finally saw the Diving Horse, I was disappointed that the creature did not so much dive, as have the floor drop out from under it. (The romance died. I no longer wanted to be that girl on the horse.)
My grandfather took these pictures of Lucy’s Big Moving Day (it is hard to find information on the internet about her move; people seem to think that she’s always been on Atlantic and Decatur…). I was amused to find that Jack Boucher had very similar photographs. I guess there was a particular perspective from behind the barricades, complete with the same guy in a yellow hard hat in view. My grandfather was also able to get some perspective from a second floor, so in some respects, his photos are better than the professional’s!
My Fitzwater Genealogy: Then to now
No real excuses for not posting to the Time Machine for so long, except to say that my attentions wandered. But as there’s been a clamor for the Fitzwater lineage in black and white, here you go at long last. Attached is a pdf that is probably much more than you ever wanted to know about the Fitzwaters (and associated Lukens, Lightkeps, Halloways, Niblocks, etc. and at least one signer of the Declaration of Independence). There are some amazing stories in here from Europe, the Wild West — and good old Philadelphia, of course.
A short cut from Thomas Fitzwater directly down to me and mine looks like this (see at left — note: poor Mary Cheney died in transit from England to Philadelphia).
Then, following from George and Anna White you get to my great-grandfather, Thomas Halloway White (1871-1935) and his wife Anna Elizabeth Mergner White (1878-1966). (I wrote about them and the mill where my grandfather was born in this introductory post and then part 2 and part 3, the dramatic conclusion.)
Then to my grandparents, Paul Mergner White (1905-2002) and Minnie Clair Diefenderfer (1908-2003). To my mother and father, to me, and to my sons. They are the g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-grandsons of Thomas Fitzwater, who tipped a cup with William Penn aboard the good ship “Welcome” in 1682. Pretty cool, huh?
My grandfather was the first in that long line to leave Pennsylvania to live elsewhere. (There’s a magnet under the soil here, I suspect.) And even then, he ended up almost coming back — retiring to the Jersey Shore, which, as we all know, is simply an extension of Philadelphia on summer weekends.
You can download the pdf of the genealogy and read it all for yourself. My dad has dug up lots of little anecdotes from places like the Ambler Gazette, and family letters and ancestry forums. Fair warning — it’s 72 pages.
For example, there’s a wonderful transcription of an August 23, 1912, letter that my grandfather, Paul White, received from his cousin Violet Belz who was traveling in Germany. She describes getting up at 4am, walking two miles to the train station, catching a train and then walking to the parade grounds to see Kaiser Wilhelm (who was, to point out the interconnectedness of European politics of the era, the grandson of Queen Victoria). It must have been quite a sight with a parade ground filled with 25,000 soldiers (Artillery, Infantry, and the Dragoons on horseback) and all the attendant pageantry. Cousin Violet wrote “We had a good view of the Kaiser, he passed very near us on horseback… Papa says we would not go to half that much trouble to see our President of our good old States, but that is the way with people. They are always anxious to see things in other countries.”
Woodrow Wilson hours after his nomination for the 1912 presidential election. (Photo Library of Congress)
The remark about “seeing our President” amused me in this election year. 1912 was also an election year — quite a remarkable one, as it happens — with a rare choice of four politicians in all.
Incumbent President William Howard Taft was the Republican Party candidate. After former President Theodore Roosevelt failed to receive the Republican nomination, he called his own convention and created the Progressive Party (nicknamed the “Bull Moose Party”). Democrat Woodrow Wilson won the highly contested Democratic Party nomination. And Eugene V. Debs was the nominee of the Socialist Party of America. No pop quiz here. Woodrow Wilson won.
- Wilson became the only elected president from the Democratic Party between 1892 and 1932.
- He was the second of only two Democrats to be elected president between 1860 and 1932.
- This was the last election in which a candidate who was not a Republican or Democrat came second in either the popular vote or the Electoral College.
- 1912 was the first election in which all 48 of the contiguous United States participated.
Hmmm…
Tourist season
Cobbles
Would a small town be able to install a bare-breasted fountain in this day and age?
This lovely lady can be found in the little town square in Chestertown, Maryland. Downtown Chestertown is a National Historic Landmark District. On a personal note, we like going to the farmer’s market (where my dad, a master beekeeper, sells honey at the end of the summer, and we visit Paul’s Shoes when it’s back-to-school time. Support small town America, folks!
Moms in History
Here’s to my mother, my grandmothers, my great-grandmothers, and so on and so on. Without all those women, I wouldn’t be here!
Nostalgic for the original Wayback Machine?
My Own Time Machine: Buildings, Places, People & Things 