We just had a post on festivals, so I thought I would share this interesting image from the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives. No, this was not a fall festival (the date on the banner is June 1-6, [1936]), but an interesting and scrumptious event nonetheless.
Here’s what we know about the image: “Motorcade at the Wallace strawberry festival”; the image was made from a nitrate negative borrowed from the NC Office of Archives and History in 1978–their call number is N.53.16.2171. The image comes from the Albert Barden Collection.
Here’s a postcard of strawberry picking near Wallace!
http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/nc_post&CISOPTR=1763&CISOBOX=1&REC=3
Patrick Wooten tells me that he always heard growing up that Eleanor Roosevelt supposedly attended the Wallace Strawberry Festival one year. He’s from that part of the world.
Eleanor Roosevelt recounted her visit to Wallace in her June 12 and June 14, 1937, “My Day” columns:
http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1937&_f=md054666
and
http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1937&_f=md054667
This observation from the latter column caught my eye:
“I was struck by the good looks of the men and women in the crowd. This is a part of our country where Anglo-Saxon stock predominates, therefore, fair hair and fair complexions are in evidence.
“The girls are very pretty and do not seem to me to need to accentuate their looks by any very startling use of cosmetics. But I was amused to notice on the fingers of some of the very young girls, very deep red nail polish. It was quite evident that even the younger ones were living up to the tradition of the southern belle!”