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Thursday 8 March 2012

Cowboys and Coca-Cola

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http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8a26000/8a26600/8a26643v.jpg


West Texans on their cow ponies around the soda pop stand at a polo match, Abilene, Texas
: photo by Russell Lee, May 1939

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8a26000/8a26600/8a26650v.jpg


Activity around the soda pop stand at a polo match, Abilene Texas
: photo by Russell Lee, May 1939

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8a26000/8a26600/8a26639v.jpg


West Texan sitting on his pony while watching polo match, Abilene, Texas
: photo by Russell Lee, May 1939

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8a26000/8a26500/8a26598v.jpg


Cowboy buying Coca-Cola at polo match, Abilene, Texas
: photo by Russell Lee, May 1939

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8a26000/8a26500/8a26597v.jpg


West Texans watching a polo match, Abilene, Texas
: photo by Russell Lee, May 1939

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8a26000/8a26600/8a26615v.jpg


Cowboy sitting on corral fence. Roundup near Marfa, Texas
: photo by Russell Lee, May 1939

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8d17000/8d17500/8d17575v.jpg


Soda fountain in Rushing's drugstore on a Saturday afternoon. San Augustine, Texas
: photo by John Vachon, April 1943

Photos from Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress

6 comments:

vazambam (Vassilis Zambaras) said...

Holy cow, #6 looks like it inspired some scenes from John Huston’s 1961 movie The Misfits!

TC said...

Yes, everything but the girl.

Marcia said...

Wonderful photos, providing many memories. The man on the white horse is wearing a Stetson much like the one my father used to wear. The last photo of the soda fountain brings back memories of my father buying me a coke at a place much like that. He had coffee, saying it actually made him feel cooler on a warm day than a coke. And, Abilene, Texas, was my home for five and a half years, a place where I was reminded of my prairie roots, the cowboys, and the brave people who settled an unsettling land. Thank you for the trip down memory lane.

Nin Andrews said...

I am such a sucker for old photos, old poems, and I remember what a huge treat Coke was once . . .

I am sure it tasted better back then. I guess everything did. Well, not quite everything.

TC said...

Oh Abilene!

Perhaps the memories evoked by such photos have if not a better at least a more bittersweet taste as we grow a little older, into a world that seems more and more every day as though it ought to be old enough to know better. But I suppose that latter bit applies to us as well (and to invoke the royal We always takes more liberties than any cowboy should be allowed).

TC said...

Marcia,

Here's Carol M. Highsmith's photo of one of the three buildings remaining at Fort Phantom Hill, Abilene.