I see that you’re looking to make a golem with a pedal board as part of its interface
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We’re getting read for our 40th Anniversary in a few weeks, these were a gift from my wife’s Aunt.
Neither one of us can remember if they were gold or silver and there are no pictures of the toast.
They’ve been sitting on a shelf over our bed for 40 years so they were a little tarnished.
Spent some serious time polishing them today and they appear to be gold or gold plated or they were silver plated and I polished off the plating.
Either way they’re shiny, my wife is happy, and they’re read for another toast.
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a toast!
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Nice job. What polish did you use?
They’re probably silver, since gold doesn’t tarnish— it just stays bright forever, although it won’t be pure gold and some of the other ingredients can tarnish over time. Is the last picture an accurate representation of the colour? This could be another blue/brown dress discussion.
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Yeah, they’re definitely gold in color.
You could see gold color on the inside before I started. I just assumed silver.
I started with Tarn X but that didn’t make a dent.
I had some mild metal polish we use in our business for polishing stainless steel so I used some of that.
Lots of black gunk.
My wife’s Aunt was well to do and very good to us so we know they’re genuine something. They’re very heavy. I wish I could remember the wedding day.
Wanna hear a sad wedding day story and why we don’t have photos of them?
Our photographer was a young photography student at the local community college. We got proofs from a large format camera but we never got prints or negatives because he passed away before finishing.
We rarely look at the few photos we have because it’s sad.
Now I have to dig around in a hot attic looking for flowers, a Bible, and wedding shoes. We lost the dress in a flood.
Memories, light the corners of my mind…
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the concrete in front used to be a driveway when this building was a garage, and was built concave so water would run out when the floor was hosed down. after this pic was taken, my boss made custom pressure treated pieces to fill in the gaps under the thresholds. we also hung drywall over the framing and put in that other door on the wall around the corner
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Sept. 2, 1935: Dark days on the Matecumbe Keys.
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indeed.
2 September is a day of solemn remembrance to this day. we take flowers to lay at the memorial for the observance. it never fails to choke me up. the last survivor died not long ago, but the accounts and stories just gut me to read and hear retold.
that is why i chose this image to close the story of the florida east coast rail key west extension. it was, truly the end of the line.
we’re going for some lighter fare in the next months. i hope everyone will stay with me as we next meet some denizens of the coral reef.
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I wanted more info about this disaster so I did some looking online. Some of the details are unclear to me.
The postcard says “all aboard perished” (other than the engineer and fireman in the locomotive), but you mention in your comment above that the last survivor died not long ago. I’m guessing you mean the veteran and civilian survivors, not the train’s passengers. But…
The Library of Congress caption for this photo says that the rescue train didn’t even reach the Army work camps: “On the day of the storm, officials sent a train to evacuate the men, but it failed to reach the camps located on Lower Matecumbe Key.” So who was on the train?
The Wikipedia article about the hurricane says “Remarkably, everyone on the train survived.” The source for this is Scott Loftin of the ECR: “The train was never able to reach the veterans’ camp on Lower Matecumbe. The crew of the train, with some veterans who had boarded it on its way south, were all saved. If the train had not been delayed at Quarry it appears quite certain that the train, with all of its crew, would have been destroyed and lost. As it is, the train is marooned, badly damaged and unable to return to Miami until the track is restored.”
There’s more confusion to be had. In his article on the Keys History page, author Jerry Wilkinson notes that “…the only things left standing on Lower Matecumbe Key were the two water tanks. All buildings were destroyed. There were no civilian permanent residents on the Key at that time.” Yet the WP article reports the death toll as 257 veterans and 228 civilians (per the Florida Emergency Relief Administration).
Wilkinson goes on: “The 1935 hurricane destroyed 40 miles of railroad track, but all the steel and/or concrete bridges were undamaged. The railroad right-of-way property was sold for $640,000 and was converted into what the author [who? unclear] refers to as the second (1938) Overseas Highway. This highway eventually became a continuous vehicular road from the mainland to Key West with two tollgates.” Ironically / tragically, the veterans were there to help construct the Overseas Highway.
The destruction of the veterans’ work camps led to an investigation by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (precursor to the WPA), which is an interesting tale in its own right. The final report on the investigation was suppressed for decades, again according to WP.
Anyway, thanks for your creative work and the rabbit holes it leads me down. I’m really looking forward to the next series!
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my sources for the information i wrote about were these:
Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean https://a.co/d/iWyFNVp
Storm of the Century: The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 https://a.co/d/e7m9rbx
along with columns in the Keys Weekly by keys historian Brad Bertelli.
that there are discrepancirs in the accounts adds to the mystery of the disaster. as far as i had gleaned, those who boarded the train at Upper Mat[ecumbe] were among the lost. some of the residents did, in fact survive. they were seen after the storm wandering about, dazed, their clothes had been ripped from their bodies by the winds. that last survivor, Bernard Russell gave his last interviews to Willie Dryer, author of The Storm of the Century for that book. his sister had been ripped from his arms in that storm and was lost. there were indeed, survivors, but i am not sure it was any of those onboard the train.
as i said, accounts vary.
i went with the most dramatic, mea culpa.
edit:
the arial image you posted is the image i used for reference for the card. it was made a reverse in photo editing software, simplified and sent to the laser to burn the linoleum block. it is the only one printed that way. all the others were hand etched to the references of each.
edit 2:
i wanted this one to be dark and bleak as a solid black with the lines of the obvious trainwreck in stark reverse. i hope this carried across. this was an emotional card for me to produce and i wanted that sense shared in the treatment of the image.
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First rule of storytelling!
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