Old cylinder recordings and my grandfather

The UCSB Library invites you to discover and listen to its online archive of cylinder recordings; donate to help the collection grow; and learn about how these sounds and songs create an audio history of American culture.

The UC Santa Barbara Library has a digital library of a lot of old cylinder recording from the late 1800s to early 1900s.

They have all types of recordings from music, speeches, sermons, vaudeville etc. I love listening to them and can spend hours just browsing the collection.

Then I came upon this recording:  He'd have to get out and get under (to fix up his automobile).

I then recalled an old photo of my Grandfather, Clyde Lee Webb from circa 1915.

 Clyde is the man under the car. The other person is unknown.

According to the site the song was released about 1913, so it may have been fairly popular back then. I wonder if the writing was a reference to the song. It's seems quite likely. Putting a pop-culture reference on a photo is something I would definitely do.

It's kind of  strange. When I knew my grandfather he impatient and seemed humorless and not much fun to be around. Something as simple as this all these years later kind of makes me feel a little closer to him.

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History: Week 7-Toys

What was your favorite childhood toy? Is it still being made in some form today?


For some reason when I saw this weeks item, the first thing that came to mind was Col. Steve Austin, a man barely alive...

I remember watching the Six Million Dollar Man as a kid and wishing that  I could be in a horrible crash and have various body parts replaced with bionics.  Fortunately one year for Christmas, I got the action figure and suddenly being in a disfiguring accident was no longer on the top of my list of things to do.


A little later Maskatron was added and what made him awesome is that you could give him the face of Steve Austin or Oscar Madison, who never did get an action figure if I recall correctly, and do dastardly things until good ol' Steve showed up to put a stop to it.  He would often kidnap my sisters dolls since we never did get the Jamie Somers figure and they'd end up tied to trees and all manner of objects and wait for Steve to come and rescue her.  In hindsight, all Mascatron needed was a cape and black mustache to twirl, but then the disguises wouldn't really have worked.  

I don't believe any of us got the Bigfoot action figure which in hindsight seems like a terrible oversight on my parents part.