Once I built a railroad; now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower, up to the sun, brick, and rivet, and lime;
Once I built a tower, now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?" Brother, Can You Spare a Dime by Yip Harburg
Credit for this photo goes to John E. Allen, Inc.
Funny how you find things when you are looking for something else or cleaning and throwing out. I have been doing a lot of that lately. While dumping all the junk in my iPhone, I ran across this photo, taken January 6, 2012. Naturally, this is not my photo, though I did filter it for effect. It is a still I captured while watching a documentary about the Depression. I can't recall the name of the documentary, but Ron Kerber informed me it was taken in Nothern Indiana.
My TV preferences lean towards documentaries. And except for watching some Tivo reruns of the canceled Trailer Park Boys - I think that was a hilarious series (dry-cleaning for the brain), and much better than the dime-a-dozen reality shows, I stick to history (something I can't seem to find much of on the History Channel these days) and an occasional HBO series. I also enjoy the programming on LINK and TCM.
I don't think I have ever used my phone or even my camera to capture a TV image, but something caused me to pause the TV and rewind. Maybe it seemed to portray the direction our economy was/is going, the composition, my admiration for the photographers who covered the Depression, or just the fact that the photo, or clip, is a "stand-alone", meaning that it needs no words. It perfectly captures the era of the Great Depression. With so many people out of work today, could we soon see signs like this cropping up in dying cities across America? I dunno - it is certainly dead in Crisfield. I do know that I liked the image, and I am sharing it with you.
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