Help Identify - Completed Items

Do you remember where this wire basket was used?

CARR’S POOL CLOTHES BASKET

Thanks to Michael Elbert, Marilyn (Miller) McFarlin, Mary Thompson Ingvoldstad, and Louise Thompson Stefanowicz for responding and confirming that this metal basket was once used at Carr’s Pool in Ames.  Summarizing their comments, we are reminded that:

• A numbered metal basket and tag were obtained from swimming pool attendants after paying the admission.
• In the men’s or women’s changing rooms, swimwear was donned and street clothes were placed in the metal basket.
• A round brass tag was worn on one’s wrist with a cord or sometimes pinned to a swimsuit.
• Attendants kept the baskets in numerical order behind the counter in secure rooms adjoining the changing areas. After swimming (and perhaps a lengthy search for a lost tag on the bottom of the pool!), the tag was presented to the attendants for the matching clothes basket.

Donna Carr, who still resides in Ames, recalls that the earliest baskets were made of thin, woven wood strips much like laundry baskets of the day.  Baskets bearing numbers 100s and 200s were reserved for males and were shelved on the south side by the men’s changing area.  Baskets numbered 300s and 400s were for females and were shelved on the north side.  On hot summer weekends several shifts of young employees were needed to staff the basket check-out.  On such occasions swimmers often numbered over 500 and baskets with those numbers had to be stacked in a rear area.  Some swimmers chose to memorize their basket number and thus avoid the tag hassle.  When tags did become lost, many swimmers voluntarily joined in searching the pool bottom.

Do you have one of those Carr's Pool brass tags?  The Ames Historical Society is interested in taking a picture of one (or even acquiring one).

Thanks to Paul Keltner for most of these identities!

Back row from left: Bernard Schmidt, Ben Ross, Burton Schoen, Myrtle Severson, ???, Ralph Sills
Middle row: Mary Sather, Marjory Taft, Mary Thompson, Dorothy Schick, Marjory Shore, ???, Peggy Stafford, Patty Soreghan
Front row: Bonnie Scott, Phyllis Swearingen, Maxine Sutter, Anna Marie Shore, Virginia Swartz, Helen Taylor, Betty Severeid, Dorothy Todd

Thanks to Terry Bird for several identifications.

Back row from left: Arnie Siedelman, Tom Lyttle, ???, Harold Green, Eldon Hand
Middle row: ???, four Iowa Highway Patrolmen, Arlie Schumer
Front row: Ray Truesdale, O.J. Erickson, Pinkey Morris, Harold Olson, Cliff Bates

Judy (Lyttle) Gulliver also provided a number of the needed identities with this message:
I will attempt to identify a couple more people in the picture of the police lineup...   I know the man in the middle of the bottom row is Pinkey (I don't recall his real first name) Morris, the chief at that time.  Also, if Arnie Siedelman was on the force at the time of this picture, he is on the top row, left. AND, if that's him, then there are four who are (or will be) chiefs and the one assistant chief (ever, as I understand it) pictured.
Pinkey Morris
Orville J Erickson
Harold Olson
Arnie Siedelman
and my dad, Thomas Lyttle, the assistant chief for a number of years.  If I think hard enough and, perhaps, long enough, I may be able to come up with the name of the man in the middle, top row.  I will do my best to sort out some pictures to take to our 55th high school reunion this September.  Kudos to all who give of their time and talents to the Ames Historical Society.

Can you identify this mystery item found in our inventory?
It is steel and measures about 2 inches with PAT. APLD. FOR inscription.

Duane Black says, That object was used in the early years before hybrid seed corn.  Farmers would select the nicest ears at  harvest and save them for seed the following year. There were several ways to hang them up to dry. This object was one of them. You just push the jagged edge into the end of the ear of corn and then you would have a hook to hang it up to dry. simple, huh!!