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June 1942. "Escambia Farms, Florida. Grading eggs in the FSA cooperative. The cooperative hires these men by the day to do the grading." 4x5 inch acetate negative by John Collier for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
Eggsactly!
My first impression on the two gents was that they look like motion capture caricatures such as appear in the movie 'The Adventures of Tintin' (2011)
Very surreal scene in so many ways.
-- do you realize that only fifteen minutes has gone by?"
I hope these guys were allowed to at least sit down for this!!
Is that James Cromwell's father on the left?
It's a General Electric I-30S, with the special odometer-style register found on REA meters. The Rural Electrification Administration needed farmers to be able to call in their meter readings monthly, rather than send a meter reader around a sparsely-populated territory, and these registers were easier to understand than the standard counter-rotating pointer dials. I have one of these in my collection. Just above the number display you can see the faded REA lightning bolt logo, which originally was bright red.
When these guys are done gradin' eggs, they're paddling on the Chattahoochee looking for some fun ...
[Or should that be Chattooga. - Dave]
It's not hard to imagine them amusing each other:
- Weigh to go George!!
- (phone rings) Shell I get that ??
- Crate Scott!!
Once you get on a roll, I guess it's hard to stop ...
Who wouldn't what this job ...
[What? - Dave]
Are these guys mirror images of one another? No wait, one has overalls and the other doesn’t. And their hats are different.
I can easily envision a point at which inspecting each egg would be pointless for me because, the moment it comes off the scale or out of the light I wouldn't remember into which pile that particular egg goes. And yet, I appreciate them being categorized in the store.
My guess is, the reason both men are wearing their hats is because it puts them just one step closer to walking out the door.
I sure hope they rotated jobs from day to day. Even in those tight economic times, there must have other tasks to perform.
The title recalls an old joke about the smiling mystic -- otherwise known as a Happy Medium.
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