Alan Mays' photos with the keyword: boiling

A Vintage Photos Theme Park photo for the theme of cooking: outside or in . I'm not sure what mama's cooking, but she may be preparing food for a picnic. There appear to be white cloth-covered baskets lying in the grass, with one or two baskets barely visible behind mama and another in the right midground. "Mama cookin' 'em. Catherine Mueller." Sent to Mr. W. S. Osgood, 410 Morris Bldg., New Orleans, La., and postmarked Kansas City, Kans., Aug. 20, 1907. There's no other message on the back.

A strange and inexplicable New Year greeting! An old woman is tossing a young boy, identified as "1889" across his back, into a steaming kettle of soup that she's cooking over a hot fire. The legs of her previous victim are barely visible at the edge of the kettle. Am I missing something here? Is there a literary allusion or proverb or something else that might explain this? Otherwise, it seems a rather cruel and violent way to greet the New Year. In any case, after initially believing this to be a calling card, I finally discovered that it's number 5 ("Old woman holding boy 1889 over soup tureen") in a series of 50 "New Years 1890" cigarette cards issued by Kinney Tobacco Co. See Kinney New Years 1890 Cards - N227 for additonal information about the card series. By the way, some of the other cards in this series also show strange and unsettling scenes: No. 19 - Boy pushing huge snowball over figure of 1889. No. 20 - Duelist 1890 standing over fallen 1889. No. 36 - Boy 1890 skates round 1889 falling through ice. No. 38 - Whale swallowing 1889, 1890 steps on to floating globe. No. 49 - Sun as spider devouring insect 1889, insect 1890 flies away. A checklist for the card series and illustrations of each card are available at Kinney New Years 1890 Cards - N227 .