Delivering the Saturday Evening Post in Fort Worth, 1910

[Traces]

I don't think that there are words that exist that can describe how much I love this circa 1910 photo, sent in by Traces of Texas reader Terry Bellern.  The photo shows Terry's grandfather Harry in Fort Worth selling/delivering the Saturday Evening Post. He had been born in Naples, Italy a few years earlier, in 1905. That's his brother Billy standing beside him. Years later, Billy  wrote on the back of this photo:  "Do you still have grass growing between your toes? Notice the forks on your bike. They are curved exactly in reverse of the way they should be...the result of my borrowing it while you were gone, and running headlong into a large tree over on Center Avenue, while going like hell! It still rode pretty good!"

Terry's grandfather left Texas for the first time in his life when he was 17 years old. He had been accepted at West Point, was the youngest cadet to graduate, and ended his 30 year career as a full colonel. But he always told the story of how mad he was about how his brother borrowed his bike and wrecked it!

Can you imagine? Here's this man with 30 years in the Army, went to West Point, a retired Colonel ---- and he's still talking about that bike his brother borrowed and wrecked decades before. It's such a human story. I absolutely love it and I love this photo. Thank you, Terry!