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Circa 1897. "U.S.S. Oregon -- the athletes." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative by Edward H. Hart, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.
Looks more like Impetigo. We don't encounter it as much these days but I can recall it being one of the things they checked you for regularly at school (along with ringworm and lice) and can recall kids having gotten it. It's highly contagious and looks exactly like that. We were always warned "Don't put your moth on that! You'll get Impetigo!", usually for putting our mouth on the seat rails on the bus.
Just looking at those boxing gloves makes my face hurt.
I reckon todays photo would show our stranded sailor on the left being seated front row forward.
The Navy doesn't wear hats, they wear covers.
To judge from the bruise under his lip, it looks like the guy sitting crosslegged in front was in a recent bout.
today we learn the proper method of wearing a hat.
Shame we can't follow up and find out what happened to these guys during the rest of their lives. There is the guy on the far left, with his arms crossed, who is in frame, but not really part of the group. And there is the fellow next to him who didn't even bother to glare impatiently at the camera. All we can see are his legs.
To the right of them is a guy who might even have had childhood memories of the Civil War. Was his father a veteran of it? And then there are the four teenagers who seem so young and alive.
Did they go on to have families and die of old age, or were they victims of the flu epidemic later? I know they are all dead by now, but this photo makes them seem so alive. Except that we tend to no longer use black and white, it could have been taken yesterday.
All that is left of the once mighty U.S.S. Oregon is her foremast. That resides in Tom McCall Waterfront Park in Portland Oregon.
Dress uniforms and shined shoes. The thirteen button trousers I wore in the 50's and 60's were much older in style than I knew. The trousers were not bell bottomed, they were bell shaped all the way. Great picture.
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