It Runs In The Family

On the 24th of August 1907 my great great Uncle Art bought a penny postcard at a railroad post office to send to his older brother Harry---my great great grandfather.

He didn't bother writing a message.  Instead he amused himself by making a rather detailed ink drawing of a scene that perhaps he saw passing by outside his window.  Or maybe a handsome passenger set the scene in the form of a popular joke of the day.

Note Art's monogram on the base of the display window

Your modern sensibilities will cause you to do one of two things when you study his drawing: tsk over the racist caricature of a Jewish shopkeeper---or your jaw will drop a little over the historic idea of A Big Thing In Men's Pants.

At the turn of the 20th century, 'A Big Thing' was a common slang term for any clearance sale.  It was used regularly in big store newspaper advertisements of the era.  It isn't a huge stretch of the imagination that some unwitting shopkeeper might use the term to get rid of an overstock of men's pants, but I suspect there's more going on here.

For one, this post card survived some twenty years of alienation between the two brothers.  So did a fair amount of Art's art, but none of that cache was remotely suggestive.  He left his early creative output behind when he stepped out of the family home.  Harry was mad that Art could never pay into his third of the family farm in Earlimart, California---a farm that Art was sent from North Dakota to scout out in 1918 or early 1919.  Now it was circa 1926 and their mother was dead---and Art had always been sort of a momma's boy, largely raised apart from his older brothers and sister because their mother had a protracted inheritance to deal with in New York state.

My grandfather pestered Harry for years to reconcile with his brother---so apparently Vern had some very fond memories of his Uncle Art.  Eventually it happened, and the occasion made a strong impression on my nine or ten year old mother.

 Arthur Dwayne Gilbert, circa 1907

"He was still very handsome," she recalled.  "Of course I wouldn't have known it then---I don't think any of us knew it---but looking back, he was gay."

Somehow I don't think Harry was so innocent of the possibility.

Harry Mortimer Gilbert, circa 1897

I asked Art's niece for more information. She gave me some photographs of Art and told me a very pretty story about him being engaged to a beautiful woman, but he had to call it off because he had asthma and couldn't support her.  That was true---he did have asthma, which caused him to be only sporadically employed.

"Yeah, right," my eldest aunt joked.  "Every time she'd lean in for a kiss he'd start coughing!"

I discovered Art's illustrated postcard when I was at the height of mailing out my own illustrated envelopes, so I felt a sudden, startling kinship with my great great Uncle Art.  If I didn't inherit his extraordinary looks, at least I inherited his talent and penchant for things in men's pants.