It’s depressing to see this covid scrap break out under the coffin photo, but I suppose it had to happen sooner or later. There is plenty of room for discussion about the measures and responses (It’s a social, political, and ethical discussion), but there’s really no room to question whether it actually happened. My family of six is double-vaxxed but we all got omicron over the holidays, ranging from nasty aches and pains to a runny nose for davidk, the oldest of the bunch. No one went to the hospital, no one died, but we all tested positive on the home test kit. After the passage of a few months, we then all got the booster shot. Please let’s not pretend this isn’t a thing. And please let’s be civil and rational – this is a huge test for us as a community and as a society.

You seriously believe a "pandemic" with a survival rate of %98.6 is comparable to the spanish flu of '18? The BS you spewed about family and friends dropping like flies tells me ALL your dead friends and family were morbidly obese and or elderly. Also, that 1 MILLION covid deaths is also BS. People who believe MSM propaganda are useful idiots, nothing more. Appreciate ya outting yourself.

[I was going to say something here but golly, it looks like I'm due back on Planet Earth for this week's MSM Conspiracy Workshop! - Dave]

Covid has driven that home, at least a little. Remember, the last shirt does not have any pockets. But it is also available in 5XL.

Picking nits, the Spanish flu should rightfully be called the Kansas flu. That's where it reportedly first popped up. Then neutral Spain was just the first country where it was being officially reported from. With the US and much of the rest of Europe being under wartime censorship and the censors not wanting to hamper their respective war efforts by reports about a pandemic.

I second Doug Floor Plan about COVID supposedly just being a glorified cold - not. 1918-1920 they did not have the medical knowledge we have. Or the medical means. Or our general health and wealth. We do not have the starved-out war-worn population they had after WWI. Send COVID back to 1918, and presto, it would do the Spanish flu thing in no time flat.

Just think - no masks, no shutdowns, no remote schooling, no home office, no vaccines, no tests, no quarantine, no oxygen supplements, no anitbiotics against opportunistic pneumonia, no ICUs, no ECMO, no antithrombics, no nothing. Under 1918-1920 conditions Covid would do the Spanish flu thing in 2020-2022 all right.

@mwelch, really enraging comment but I guess it's OK because my father fought in WWII and was wounded to the day he passed at 90yrs old so you can speak. I guess you had no loved ones you couldn't be with as they died alone from covid. Grow up.

I remember Mom saying "they couldn't make coffins fast enough." She was born in 1908.

First of all, mwelch, May 2020 was way early in the pandemic to be taking a poll that you still consider to be valid in March 2022. Just in the United States, nearly a million people have died from Covid19. I probably didn't know anyone who had it in March 2020 either. But today a [unvaccinated] neighbor across the street is dead from it and the brothers of three friends are dead. One friend said her brother's wife and children refused to wear masks at the funeral because "Covid is a hoax". As Dave, I know at least a dozen people, including family and immediate neighbors, who have had Covid. It includes a couple in their 80s who, for some reason decided flying to Chicago was more important than avoiding exposure. The husband spent two months in the hospital after they got back and came home with an oxygen tank. I know two people who suffer from serious long-term effects of Covid; one wakes up with a hangover every morning and cannot concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time.

I'll also point out that asking random people in a line about a potentially deadly disease for which there was no treatment is a really bad approach to collecting information about the disease. I imagine some people told you, "No" because they didn't want to answer the follow-up question to a "Yes" answer. It was also a really rude question to be asking strangers.

Absence of a visual like this made me question the current "pandemic". I had initiated an inquiry in long Covid-lines, ending with cashier or a bank teller.
Not a single case, in their family, circle of friends and friends of a friends "had it".
I am talking as early as of May of 2020.

[Covid-19 is not even half as deadly as the 1918 Spanish flu. On the other hand, there are thousands of "visuals like this." Personally I know around a dozen people who've "had it," including family members. - Dave]

of coffins. An older friend of mine, who was a child at the time, attested to the severity of the flu epidemic. He well remembered coffins stacked 5 high and in several rows in the parking lot alongside an undertaking establishment here. No room inside, of course.

I don't think I've ever seen truss rods on a truck before. They were still fairly common on rail cars - tho rapidly becoming obsolete - but those, of course, are typically a lot longer than a truck.

(A quick search will turn up a like-bodied family member https://www.shorpy.com/node/18816 ...perhaps this something peculiar to the 'Federal' make)

All I know is, a coffin is a box with a separate lid that has to be nailed on; hence the expression, nail in your coffin. A casket is a piece of furniture with hinges and handles and padding and a pillow and whatnot. What can I say? I am a bona fide taphophile with thousands of funeral and cemetery photos (taken by me) to prove it, and I have an intense interest in end-of-life issues. Moving along, I cannot explain it but this wonderful photo of fifty wooden coffins/caskets stacked sky-high instantly reminded me of one of the funniest black-humor scenes I have ever seen on television. It was from the Bruce Willis slash Cybill Shepherd farce, Moonlighting, which aired back in the '80s. As I remember it, they (BW and CS) were driving a hearse in a high-speed chase and somehow they ended up smack dab in the middle of a baseball diamond, stopping the hearse so abruptly that the casket flew out of the back and came to rest on home base where naturally the body slid out, whereupon the umpire loudly pronounced him safe, eliciting markedly unladylike and protracted guffaws from me.

The sign in the front window indicates this photo was taken in front of the headquarters for the San Francisco Casket Company, Inc. (SFCCI) which was at 621 - 627 Guerrero in 1918.

The firm was started about 1900 by George Dillman, and it was originally located at 542 Brannan. Dillman had been working at Samuel Nelson & Co., who were casket manufacturers, immediately before this. About 1903, SFCCI moved to 3120 17th Street for approximately two years, and then to 17th and Shotwell until around 1908. John H. Nuttman (1856 - 1946), who had been the vice-president, became president around 1907. It was circa 1908 that the business address changed to the 627 Guerrero location.

The October 9, 1918 issue of Building and Engineering News tell us this building on Guerrero was partially destroyed by fire causing $75,000 worth of damage. With the ongoing influenza epidemic in the fall of 1918 the fire could probably not have come at a worse time for the firm. The company had suffered another fire in February 1917 causing $15,000 in destruction to the four story structure.

The SFCCI then built a four story and basement brick factory, along with offices and showrooms, at 14th and Valencia for $75,000. The brick work apparently cost $20,800, and the steam boiler system was $3,479. The new factory address is shown as 325 Valencia in the 1919 Crocker-Langley San Francisco Directory, but later it became 321 Valencia.

The building plans, by Etienne A. Garin, were completed in December 1918, White & Gloor's plans for the building brick work were accepted on February 24, 1919, and all construction was completed by April 17, 1919. The building was officially recorded by the city on July 7, 1919. One interesting change is that Garin designed a mill work building, but architect Charles O. Clausen redesigned the plans to be reinforced concrete before the structure was built.

The new "L" shaped building still exists, but it has been heavily modified into residences and businesses. Most of the original brick work has been hidden, but some is still visible down an alley way. The company remained at this new location until 1962, but then it seems to have gone out of existence.

Eventually the president of the company became one of Nuttman's son, John B. Nuttman (1880 - 1960), and finally a daughter Hannah F. Spammer (1895 - 1980).

The snippet from Building & Engineering News below is from October 16, 1918 which tells of the fire. The second piece, from "The Standard," a weekly insurance newspaper from May 17, 1919, relates how the rules of the San Francisco Fire Commission prevented a quick extinguishing of the 1918 blaze. The last article, from the October 20, 1910 San Francisco Call, describes how one of the SFCCI drivers got out of a speeding ticket. The driver is likely William I. Nuttman (1889 - 1973) another one of John H. Nuttman's sons.

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to some Kaiser Permanente associates from the California region. Killing time until all the folks were on the line, I asked where they were calling from, and they said,"Oakland." I laughed and said, "I hope you drive better than some of the long-ago Oakland drivers I've seen on Shorpy.com."

"What's that?" they asked.

"Well, it's mainly a large-format photography site, but the whimsical subject matter and amazing comments of the moderators and readers are what make it a Web addiction. Like the Oakland drivers; for the past couple of months they've had a series of 1950s photos of Oakland traffic accidents. And they have kittens dressed as people and beach scenes from 100 years ago, and . . . and decrepit old buildings . . . and . . . and there are photos of . . ."

"Jim, this is another one of your wild stories, right? There's no such thing as Shorpy.com, right?"
-------------------------------------------------------
Imagine if I tried explaining it today, with people seeing imagery in the woodgrain of caskets from 100 years ago!

        A psychological phenomenon involving a stimulus (an image or a sound) wherein the mind perceives a familiar pattern of something where none actually exists.

        Common examples are perceived images of animals, faces, or objects in cloud formations.

        Pareidolia is the visual or auditory form of apophenia, which is the perception of patterns within random data. Combined with apophenia and hierophany (manifestation of the sacred), pareidolia may have helped ancient Chinese society organize chaos and make the world intelligible. -- Wikipedia

[That would explain it. - Dave]

Coffins are where Vampires sleep, Caskets are what they bury dead people in.

In the lower board of the upper casket, I see a group of well-dressed office workers, circa 1925, at some sort of holiday gathering. One woman has an oil can in front of her.

I never would have noticed that without seeing this high-res enlargement. The lower casket just has a typical beach scene in what appears, to me, to be Galveston, Texas. Two people are walking, two are riding horses.

If you increase the resolution size of the photo you will see scenic views either hand painted scenes, lithographs or photos on the ends of the caskets, not numbers.

[Amazing. I see "The Last Supper" and "Dogs Playing Poker." What do you see? - Dave]

The two top rows are caskets. The bottom three are coffins I believe.

The wood used in these caskets appear to be redwood or cedar likely shipped down the coast from Northern California or Seattle. In 1900 a typical casket was made of wood often covered in cloth. Costs were around $16, about $400 in today's dollars. Mass-produced steel caskets didn't show up until 1918 when Batesville Casket introduced them. These appear to be a bit fancy with all the molding, 3 or 4 different styles. Curious what the numbers stamped on the ends indicate.

Not the most luxurious of hearses, but isn't it commodious, though?

Look at that truck's suspension and talk about a hard ride.

Not that one would care in the first place. On one's final ride.

Considering there are no brakes on the front and probably mechanical ones on the rear, I sure wouldn't want to try to stop that overloaded truck on a San Francisco Hill!

It looks like a scene from a comedy short, where the front of the truck suddenly flies up when they try to start.

Perhaps the 1918 date is not a coincidence. The worldwide outbreak of Spanish Influenza in 1918 killed more people than WWI, and while San Francisco was spared the worst of it, there were still over 40,000 ill and 3000 dead in the city during the later half of 1918.

Considering it killed a disproportionate number of the poor and recent immigrants, a truckload of obviously low end (judging from the unfinished wood and lack of decoration or hardware) would have been a common sight for a few months.

NOTICE -- something about GARBAGE, MANURE, REFUSE and "premises."