Curtis Parkinson has been reading my mail.  The image archives at the Tacoma Public Library became the next rabbit hole in my life, the next dragon to chase.

They depict a different time and place.  A different country, almost or even.  There was a time when a city had character.  It had its own businesses, signs, feel, and persnality.  Before franchises and chains conquered and stripped all individuality, leaving any place being just like any place, there was a sense of place in a city.  Today, the chains have demolished the character of America.  I don’t see this as some good and some bad.  I see nothing good in the conquest of the chains.  Nothing at all.

But it was not always so, as these photos of restaurants, taverns, and a few grocery stores in Tacoma show.   I don’t think there’s any going back.  Except with photos and imagination.

I showed the photos my friend.  He is a huge fan of black and white photography.

He has a nice print of Weegee’s 1937 “Summer on the Eastside” in his room.  He was more interested in me than the photos.

“You speak of research rapture?”  Yes, I do, and yes, it would apply to my glorious pursuit of these photos.

He read me from OED:

“Is this the type of rapture you mean?”

 “Or might you be using the term as it used in Christian eschatology?”  He then went back to the OED and read:

“Are we talking about being caught up in the clouds?”

I assured him that I was not talking meeting the Lord in the air.  I thanked him for clearing the air on this and asked what he thought of the Tacoma photos.