Life — September 21, 1922 — page 24: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

> LIFE - The Aftermath of Vacation A Summer Summary in Camera ERSONALLY, I rate among the first ten as a friend and well- wisher when it comes to wanting to see the young people have a good time. Ifa large percentage of the population wants to spend the Summer,—the “heated term,” I heard someone call it only the other day, and it struck me as being a pretty good way to put it,— fooling around seashore resorts, why, my view of the matter is, that scarcely anything could be fairer. Live and let live, my Aunt Bertha used to say, and I have always thought that there was everything in favor of the idea. * Ok OK But what I say is, when the annual return to the home town occurs on the day after Labor Day, the thing ought to be allowed to drop there. I was always one to hold numerous briefs for letting bygones be bygones. I have no wish to be unfair, and to insist that the returned vacationists do not go into the usual reminiscent details about the number of blankets they were forced to use each night, and about the awfully nice family from South Orange who shared their table in the dining-room. I simply say, what this country needs is a law forbidding any citizen at any time to display any album containing snap- shots which he or she took while stay- ing at a Summer resort. If you could be left alone with the album, there might be considerably less bitter feeling on the subject. You could, while turning the pages at fitting intervals, dream golden dreams of the future, or wander hap- pily in memory’s garden. But the proud owner, of the collected photo- graphs always backs you into a cor- ner from which there is no exit, and with the aid of the album gives you a little informal travelogue, on “Our Summer at the Beach.” Not only is each page turned for you, care being taken that no two stick together and thus cause you to miss some priceless specimen, but each snapshot is pointed to and explained, much in the manner that the Sunday comic supplements are shown to the fam- ily’s young. * * * If, now and then, you saw a vaca- tion photograph that differed in any Concressman Beeswax Tariff Time in Washington “Hello, is this Congressman Beeswax?” “Yes.” “I'm a constituent of yours and a manufacturer of a patent toe-nail clipper. Will you see that a good stiff tariff is put on foreign toe-nail clippers?” “Certainly, I'll try to fix you up. (To the secretary.) Higgins, put down 2 per cent. on toe-nail clippers—ad valorem.” particular from any other vacation photograph that ever passed through development, things might take a marked turn for the better. But, in so many words, no. The album filled with views of Happy Days at Shaggy Beach, which Mrs. Citron so enthu- siastically shows you, is page for page a duplicate of the one crowded with scenes of Vacation Pastimes at Cloudy Cove, that Mrs. Lunt brought to your attention for some three hours and a half only the evening before. Always, among the pages of groups taken on the beach, figures the hu- man pyramid, formed by three young men standing on the sands support- ing on their shoulders two young men of more adventurous tendencies. Then come several snapshots of the beach athlete, standing on his hands —it’s too bad it isn’t very clear of his face, because he is such a nice-look- ing fellow, comes from Montclair, and does something in the adver- tising line. * ok Ox Then comes an assortment of views of young lady bathers drying their hair—Harriet nearly died when she saw that one of herself, she had no idea it was being taken. Then a line- up of young ladies, still in bathing- costumes, with their elbows in the sand and their stocking-clad fect crossed high in the air behind them. Then several back views of the kid- dies, at the water's edge. Then the action photographs of young men and women bathers, playfully snap- ping bath-towels at one another—it's too bad they didn’t come out better, I'll never forget how we laughed when they were taken. * * * Towards the end of this section are numerous views, less animated, perhaps, but no less absorbing to the album’s owner, of groups in shore costume, sitting consciously on the sand. It is drawn to your notice that the letters in the title of the hook which Hazel is holding came out just as clear! Time is here called for a few words on the excellence of the camera’s lens. This fixed up, you get on to the (Continued on page 30) comicbooks.com