Wordless Wednesday

 

Investigation: Disneyland

Ever since my cousin told me that the location of the photo with her, her mother, and me in it was at Disneyland, I have been wondering where exactly at Disneyland.

I was talking with friends a couple of weeks ago, and I realized that one of them, who grew up in Burbank, always talks about Disneyland, which got me thinking about the photo.  And it suddenly occurred to me that Disneyland, being the big multinational conglomerate that it is, has to have a corporate archive.  And it does!

You can find the Walt Disney Archives site at https://d23.com/walt-disney-archives/.  According to the home page, it was "established in 1970 to collect, preserve and make available for research the historical materials relating to Walt and the company he founded."  And it even has a page called Ask the Walt Disney Archives!  So I did!

On May 27, I sent the photo of me with my mother that I posted for Mother's Day.  (The questions page did not allow me to send more than one image, or I would have included the photo with my cousin and aunt.)  I wrote that my cousin had identified the location as Disneyland and that I had estimated the year to be 1963.  I asked where at Disneyland the photo was taken.  And then I waited.

And waited.

And almost two weeks later, I still have not heard anything.  Not even one of those automatic responses:  "We have received your inquiry and will be happy to answer you, blah blah blah."

Well, foo.  I want to know where it was.

And today's brilliant light-bulb moment was that I should try searching for the image online myself.  (Yes, I should have thought of that earlier.  Sometimes I'm a little slow on the uptake, but I get there eventually.)

I ran the photo of my aunt, my cousin, and me through Tineye.  And the answer was "TinEye searched over 75.6 billion images but didn't find any matches for your search image."  So much for Tineye.  But I think it looks for the exact image, and I probably have the one and only copy of that photo (well, a scan of it).  On the other hand, it is posted on my blog, which is public and has been available for more than a month, so Tineye should have found it there.  But it didn't.  (I've had that happen before with Tineye.)

Then I tried searching for the photo using Google Lens.  It started off by wanting to focus on the lower left corner of the photo, which is just some of the flowers.  I didn't look at those results.  Instead, I dragged the search square higher and made it larger, so the search image was the upper left corner of the photo, including the yellow flower cart.

Bingo!

Suddenly I had several images that looked very similar to mine, and they are all identified as being at the Flower Market on Main Street in Disneyland.  Two of them are even from 1963, like mine.  And after seeing two photos where the "Flower Market" sign is not in bright sunlight and the words can be clearly read, I recognized that in my own photos.

One photo from 1963 (which was posted on Found some pictures from my grandparents 1963 Disneyland trip!)

Disneyland, People at Flower Market in 1963 (an original slide for sale at eBay)

The Cook family at Disneyland, 1959 (which has the same yellow flower cart as in mine, plus you can read FLOWER MARKET on the sign)

Flower Market - Disneyland 1950s-1970s (#29) (two yellow flower carts in this one, and again you can read FLOWER MARKET on the sign; no exact year, though)

So I answered my own question.  On the other hand, now I know that Disney has an archive.  And if Disney does get back to me, I'll post here what they say.

Honoring the Nurse in My Family on National Nurses Day

I know of one registered nurse in my family to celebrate on National Nurses Day:  my grandaunt Florence Meckler.  Specifically, she was a pediatric RN.  She was one of my maternal grandfather's younger sisters.

Florence was born December 22, 1915 (coincidentally, the exact same date as my maternal grandmother's oldest brother) in Brooklyn, New York.  I don't know where she attended nursing school or when she graduated, but it must have been before 1939, because on January 1, 1939 there was a photo of her in the newspaper holding the first two children born in the new year at Beth El Hospital in Brooklyn.  I am lucky enough to have the newspaper clipping because my grandmother saved it and had it in her photo album.

Exactly two years after that brush with fame, Florence married Moshe Amine, on January 1, 1941, in Brooklyn.  Florence and Moshe had two children:  Yedida, who was born one year after my mother, also on Armistice Day (now called Veterans Day); and Beth, six years later.  Some years later Florence and Moshe divorced, and 20 years after that Florence married Max Stewart.

I don't know how long Florence worked as a nurse.  I really should ask my cousins about that, shouldn't I?

I never met Moshe, but I knew Florence and Max.  I visited them several times in Las Vegas, where they lived, when I went to conferences and trade shows there.  I continued to visit Florence after Max passed away.  We would usually go out to one of the big buffets in one of the casinos on the Strip.

Eventually, Florence moved to Scotts Valley, California, at the behest of her older daughter.  And then I visited her there, in the Santa Cruz Mountains.  I took her out for lunch and to go shopping.  I drove a cargo van at the time, and I remember she had trouble stepping up high enough to climb in (she was a tiny person), so I started bringing a step stool to make it easier for her.

During all that time, I don't think I knew that Florence had been a registered nurse.  But she definitely fussed over me about health stuff, trying to make sure I was taking care of myself.

And here's a photo of Florence holding me when I was about a year old, proving that we go back a long way.  The teenager next to her is her younger daughter, my cousin Beth, who recognized herself and told me that we were at Disneyland.

Wordless Wednesday

 

Wordless Wednesday

 

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: A Baby or Small Child Photograph

I wish I knew where my photo is for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun with Randy Seaver!

Here is your assignment, if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music):

(1) Do you have baby or small child photographs of yourself or your parents?  Please share one of them.

(2) Share it in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or on Facebook.  Be sure to leave a comment with a link to your blog post on this post.

I know there is a photo of me at about three months, because I've seen it.  My grandmother submitted photos of me and, the next year, of my brother to a newspaper, and they were published.  I think it was the Miami Herald, but I'm not 100% sure of that.  I always wondered why there wasn't a photograph of my sister, but maybe my grandparents had moved from Florida to Las Vegas by then.

Anyway, I have a copy of the newspaper clipping of my photo, but I don't know where it is.  So I'm sharing ths one of my brother, Mark:

It's from July 1963, and he was born in April.  Isn't he adorable?

I do have a photo of my mother, Myra Meckler, when she was only a few months old:

This is from early 1941.  The woman holding her is my grandfather's youngest sister, Elsie Meckler.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday