Circa 1910. "Train concourse, Union Station, Washington, D.C." Time exposure capturing hundreds of ephemeral footfalls. 8x10 glass negative. View full size.

Circa 1905. "Street view, Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania." Where the archi­tectural aesthetic seems to be Rustic Twig. 8x10 glass negative. View full size.

Circa 1904. "North veranda, Manhanset House, Shelter Island, N.Y." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.

September 1943. "A Greyhound bus trip from Louisville to Memphis and the terminals. Roberta Locker, going to Chattanooga from Elora, Tenn., to work." Co-starring Roberta's hat, an elaborate construction of netting, fabric and feathers. Photo by Esther Bubley for the Office of War Information. View full size.

April 1955. "Duke Ellington and band members playing baseball in front of their segregated motel while touring in Florida." Who'll be first to locate the Astor? From photos by Charlotte Brooks (who died this month at age 95) for the Look magazine assignment "A Living Legend Swings On." View full size.

September 1943. "Greyhound bus trip from Louisville, Kentucky, to Memphis, Tennessee. This girl commutes daily to Memphis, where she goes to school." Photo by Esther Bubley for the Office of War Information. View full size.

"Burt Lake, 1951." Our young man with color-coordinated Plymouth and travel trailer, and Mama at the wheel. 35mm Kodachrome slide. View full size.

Narragansett Pier, Rhode Island, circa 1910. "Hotel (New) Mathewson." For many years the pre-eminent lodging in the "City of Hotels." View full size.

The Jersey shore circa 1906. "Rolling chairs on the Boardwalk, Atlantic City." Hotel Traymore in the background. 8x10 inch glass negative. View full size.

Here's the Blissmobile with the portable kitchen attached. This looks like it could be Yosemite again, in the mid-fifties. 35mm color slide. View full size.

Bill Bliss and his family again, enjoying a little outdoor cooking sometime in the mid-fifties. I'm not sure where this is but I'm guessing somewhere up the Pacific coast. 35mm Anscochrome color slide. Here's another photo of their trip. View full size.

Here we see the Bliss family with friends in Yosemite. The year is 1940-41 based on the license plate to the right. The guy in the top row on the right reminds me of Richard from Boardwalk Empire. View full size.

Atlantic City, N.J., circa 1910. "Boardwalk, Hotel Marlborough-Blenheim and Young's Million-Dollar Pier." There are a zillion interesting details in this panorama made from four 8x10 inch glass negatives. View full size.

Petoskey, Michigan, circa 1906. "The midway." As the precious days of one's sojourn in Petoskey dwindle to their final hours, keep the magic alive with a unique souvenir. 8x10 inch glass negative, Detroit Publishing Co. View full size.

Once again it's time to head up to the Russian River and some vacation fun with the most awesome toy ever to be placed in the hands of a young boy: mud. This is probably around 1950, so my brother is about 13 and I'm about 4 as we put the finishing touches on our impregnable shoreline fortress. Well actually, even more fun was in store when the River Queen motor launch (think Disneyland Jungle Ride boats) came along and its mini-tsunamis destroyed the ever-loving heck out of it. This shot also reveals the limitations of snapshot cameras everyone had to put up with back then, even a comparatively good one like my sister's Kodak Duaflex: we're not really that close but we're still out of focus, and the slow shutter speed meant additional blurriness from just the jiggle of pressing down the shutter release. But with the standard 3x3 print you got back from the drug store, you probably wouldn't notice. Interesting that, proportionally speaking, my gut is roughly in the same state today. View full size.