am-i-gothic7 - The Monday Morning Memo

I Did Not Make It Up

Sister Nan was so upset that she had been portrayed as the wife of a man twice her age that she demanded her brother begin telling everyone the painting was of a man and his daughter, a myth that persists to this day.

This is the house that appears in the painting.
It stands in Eldon, Iowa, where it was built by Charles and Catharine Dibble in 1881 as a home for them and their 8 children. It contains just 504 square feet. The Dibbles lost the house in 1897 when they were unable to pay the taxes. The family relocated to Portland where we can only hope things turned out better.

“I just found out about Joan. The way she talks, you’d think she was in Who’s Who. Well! I found out what’s what with her. Her husband owns a bank? Sweetie, nor even a bank account. Why that palace of theirs has wall-to-wall mortgages! And that car? Darling that’s horsepower, not earning power. They won it in a fifty-cent raffle! Can you imagine? And those clothes! Of course she does dress divinely. But really… a mink stole, and Paris suits, and all those dresses… on his income? Well darling, I found out about that too. I just happened to be going her way and I saw Joan coming out of Ohrbach’s!

“

- Ohrbach's, 34TH ST. OPP. EMPIRE STATE BLDC. – NEWARK MARKET & HALSEY –"A BUSINESS IN MILLIONS, A PROFIT IN PENNIES" (Written by Bill Bernbach of DDB in 1958)

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