I have been watching Ken Burns' The War  on PBS this past week. As a History guy, wars aren't my favorite topic (I'm more the Eyes on the Prize  type). But Burns has made some monumental pieces about stuff I like – baseball, Jazz and the West. I've seen none of them.

Frankly, it's an issue of time. Watching a two-parter is easier to arrange than seven parts of two hours over a week and a half. Invariably, I miss the first, half of the third and then the entire last night, only to struggle to see the repeats on Saturday afternoons. I end up on my bicycle instead, or distracted by college football (anyone see the Cal-Oregon  game? That was monumental!). Plus, after the success of The Civil War years ago, all documentaries since have been Burnsian – pans across photos, celebrities reading letters in character voice, slow fades with sad piano that jump to happy photos and barn dance music. It's a little hard to salute the guy who perfected that form when it's the only history you see – good, bad or History Channel .

My impression so far is that Burns' greatest strength is the ability to demonstrate the human experience in all his films. Burns stresses that wars may be necessary, but they're never "good." He records the events, then lets human beings and their feelings provide the last analysis: letters, a chuckle, the wry comment. It's quite effective because it's real. And no matter how zippy Americans were on the home front, or how stoic soldiers acted despite the grim purpose of their job, the reality of wholesale, anonymous death is the final message.

That's the only message, really. Courage, heartbreak, national identity and prosperity all proceed from muddy roads littered with dead bodies.

As I watch, I wonder what motivations may be at work, pro- or anti-war. I think Burns is above that, presenting watchable history that helps us decide for ourselves. But there is something at work, a generational thing  that is, in my estimation, as historical as the events in The War. As Baby Boomers  near retirement age, there is an appeal to reach out to their parents, the same people who experienced the Second World War firsthand.

Baby Boomers were the American dividend after the War. Thousands of GIs returned home expecting payoff for their sacrifices and got it – marriage, family, the GI Bill and a world-driving economy. For 15 years or so after the war, couples with suburban tastes churned out millions of babies who were reared on Ricky Nelson and weaned on the Beatles. They rejected their parents' world in the '60s by pretending to uncover a new consciousness, only to become conservative Republicans in the '80s with a 20-year consumerist mania that made the '50s look positively quaint. Feeling a certain guilt for unparalled social destruction for its own sake, Boomers pine to celebrate their parents' successes.

As Steven M. Levine wrote , many Boomers "have the feeling that back in the Sixties they went a bit too far. Sometimes they even put the Idea of America into question, asking not when America would live up to its ideals but whether America could live up to those ideals." Levine continues:

Dissent meant making America live up to its vision of itself, it did not mean questioning whether America could actually do it and still be another ordinary nation-state. The Sixties mostly did not ask this question either, but it was posed. In posing it, one transgressed the so-called 'rituals of consensus,' as Scavan Bercovitch calls them, which tied together the Idea or Symbol of America. Not only did Boomers transgress these rituals, but they also transgressed them while having a good time. Of course, there were many, many serious young men and women...but there were many other young men and women who mouthed the slogans.... One has the feeling that the Boomers, now looking at themselves retrospectively, don't think this really stood up compared with the trials of their parents, the so-called Greatest Generation (another Boomer obsession).

William Strauss and Neil Howe  have written interesting books on this generational thesis of history (and as Boomers, have also built a thriving business around it). Their first, Generations, is very detailed, well-written, and easy to recommend. If this generational thesis is off the mark, and it's just good ideas entertained on a blog, Burns has done well enough making me think about history and about events that shape my world.

If this thesis is correct, then Burns' film continues a chronicle of Boomer apology.

Posted by Charles at 04:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Found in Baseball, Experts, Films, Misc, Movies, Perspective, Protests, Remember, Wells Fargo Bank

Wells Fargo has been musically inclined since the Gold Rush. In 1855, we advanced money for an Italian opera troupe. However they defaulted, so we seized their trunk of costumes and musical instruments as security.

Actually, we are really kind hearted. In 1869, Madame Camilla Urso   proposed a music festival to benefit the Mercantile Library, featuring school children and musicians from around California and Nevada. Wells Fargo offered to carry sheet music, letters, and other equipment far and wide throughout its lines on the Pacific Coast for free. The successful San Francisco festival ran for five days in February 1870.

If it could be sent by express, Wells Fargo carried it. In May of 1860, a future jazz musician in Columbia asked Wells Fargo to supply copies of Schatzman's Sax Horn Instructor. Up they came from San Francisco.

On occasion, Wells Fargo contributed to the Big Bang Theory  . Mariposa agent Julia Jones delivered a bass drum to complete a brass band at Whitlock's Gold Mine . In the spring of 1897, this band, splendid in their white uniforms, serenaded Mariposans with "Old Folks at Home," "The Man in the Moon," and the "Young Bandsman."

In the summer of 1917, Wells Fargo also carried "several valuable violin bows from Colorado Springs to Chicago. Accompanying these bows in a handsome, sturdy, brass-bound packing case were also a few violins – one made by Nicola Amati   in 1662, another by Carlo Bergonzi   in 1723, and a third, modern one produced by Joseph Guarnerius   in 1731.

Wells Fargo starred in the performance of express service. Meredith Willson drew on his boyhood memories in Iowa to write The Music Man  . That story revolves around the arrival of band instruments on the "Wells Fargo Wagon." The whole town turns out to sing: "O-ho the Wells Fargo Wagon is-a comin' down the street, Oh, Please let it be for me!"

Our relations with opera singers improved through the years — we even starred in an opera. In 1910, when Puccini's Gold Rush opera The Girl of the Golden West   appeared, Wells Fargo's agent was heroic.

Posted by Bob at 09:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Found in Artifacts, Branding, Broadway, Gold, Hollywood, Misc, Movies, Music, Opera, Perspective, Remember, San Francisco, The Music Man, Wells Fargo Bank, Westerns

Sparkletack  features an amazing video. It is the film taken by a tourist in 1941, visiting San Francisco with a movie camera. Sparkletack got the video, as he writes, from the Prelinger Archives . (It continues here.) 

If you're into things San Francisco, as many people are (especially San Franciscans, let me tell ya), you'll appreciate the footage for obvious reasons. John Summers, the filmer (is that a word?), enjoyed a day of brilliant sunshine and fairy-tale blue skies. He rode around on cable cars  and trolleys  (BIG difference) and got remarkable shots of a city before the huge transition resulting from World War II.

Summers was especially intrigued with Chinatown , holding his camera on people a little too long, to their minor annoyance. People see a camera and turn away quick (like me, prince of Unphotogenica). Makes sense in 1941—people were still pretty local in those days, and many had probably only heard of ethnic Americans. It had to be exotic.

For me, the best part of the Chinatown footage is that history of cuisine. What we now know as "Chinese food" used to be known by many as "Chop Suey."  Also, there's a near-collision on Grant and Clay streets about 12:25 into the film. Excitement, thy name is History.

Finally, check out Wells Fargo's world headquarters at Montgomery and Market streets at 6:09. It's this building—in living color!

Posted by Charles at 03:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Found in Artifacts, Films, First-hand Accounts, Holidays, Misc, Movies, Photographs, Remember, Wells Fargo Bank

Today—July 13, 2007—marks 155 years to the date that Wells, Fargo, and Co. opened for business on Montgomery Street in San Francisco. The Corporate Archives is lucky enough to have a picture that documents the event. Ten gentlemen posed in front of a two-story building.

Many are surprised to learn Henry Wells and William G. Fargo are not in the first office picture; they remained back in New York and only received updates via letters and rare visits. We know the names of two gentlemen who worked in that office on opening day, Reuben W. Washburn and Samuel W. Carter. The rest are critical contributors to the story of July 13, but unknown to later generations.

Check out the "Wells Fargo Through the Decades" slide show, and watch for three of my favorite images:

• Five women agents smiling in front of a San Diego office in 1917
• Members of the Wells Fargo Nevada National Bank Club, enjoying a day at Spring Valley Lakes in June of 1921
• The Wells Belles of 1973; ready to defend the name of Wells Fargo through baseball.

They are all part of the fabric of the larger Wells Fargo story and, if not for a remaining image in our archives, nearly lost to posterity.

That brings me to today. We are having festivities in many Wells Fargo locations, including the San Francisco History Museum. Most of the everyday activities of life will not make it into the history books. But, just like those unknown faces in the first office picture, what you do today is making history.

Posted by Anne at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)
Found in Artifacts, At Work, Baseball, Events, Films, Holidays, Movies, Museums, Participate, Photographs, Remember, San Francisco, Wells Fargo Bank

The history of the American West  is a changing field, which makes sense if you follow the history of the environmental West. That is directly concerned with the changes in landscape from human actions. But the West as history has several interesting dimensions.

First, the West is a place that is hard to accurately plot: Minnesota was way out there in the 1830s. Daniel Boone  made a name for himself leading pioneers West—to Kentucky. St. Jo  was the edge of the earth for most Americans in the 1840s and California was, well, another country entirely, seen only by sailors as a sort of high seas rest stop. California and the Pacific Northwest have their own coastal distinction, and Texas is it's own thing entirely. But all are the West. Count in the Dakotas and the Great Plains, too. And how many of you thought of Nebraska as the West?

Western historians have been arguing for a generation about where the West "begins." One operating consensus is the 100th Meridian , which marks the western reach of moist air. (See also the contentious 98th Meridian .) Westward from there, agriculture relies heavily on irrigation.

After the Civil War, industry in the United States developed rapidly. Corporations, transportation and technologies moved people westward, along with their schemes for getting rich. The West urbanized rather quickly due to the huge migration. The "wide-open spaces" of our national myth is in truth the most urbanized region , and much of the expanse is federally controlled land or possessed by large-scale resource extraction—mining, agriculture, water projects, etc.

The West has experienced the effects of several layers of people and cultures. Effects as real as layers of geography in shaping the region. Humans apparently arrived in the West  between 10,000 and more than 40,000 years ago, following megafauna . These people evolved across the continent; there was a great variety of cultures when Europeans arrived. The West had indigenous empires, French mountain men, British trading outposts, Russian forts, and flourishing Spanish and Mexican colonies. Anglo and African American populations of the United States pressed west from the original colonies. The California Gold Rush  brought the whole dang world to the West. Asian populations crossed the Pacific to the Wild, Wild East.

Many people still imagine the West as a mythic thing, a point in fancy where white men ride tall and silent, women long to serve them, and diverse peoples don't exist unless they're outlaws or corrupt officials. But it ain't so and, frankly, never was. Even Western stories have changed, from simplistic cowboy heroes on the silver screen to the trenchant cowboy fiction of Cormac McCarthy . The West is still in transition because it's a vital, changing place.

Posted by Charles at 02:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Found in Animals, Experts, Hollywood, Latin America, Misc, Movies, Perspective, Remember, Westerns

Found this in the archives. It is Silver City, Idaho, and there's a band on Wells Fargo's deck.

There's probably a good reason for it—notice the building houses a photograph gallery. Meaning, a photographer trying to find a "hit" shot that will sell his work. In them days  (1880s), photographers were in the portrait biz, but the technology was improving. It was possible to start doing the photography we know today—find a subject and take a picture.

If you found a good shot, a nice picture resulted. A nice picture is something we all want to look at, so an admirer might hang it on the wall. Voila! Photography as art form . And Wells Fargo is, uh, on the ground floor of the innovation.

Another possibility is "The Music Man"  factor. Some guy actually pulled off the Harold Hill  caper, sold a bunch of instruments and uniforms to the excited folks in Silver City, and got this pic to use in the next town. Just a thought ...

If there are better explanations out there, let me have 'em. The zanier the better.

Posted by Charles at 09:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Found in Artifacts, Films, Hollywood, Misc, Movies, Photographs, Remember, The Music Man, Wells Fargo Bank

Wells Fargo's role in the history of the West  was a heroic story—frontier, stagecoaching over lonely roads, bandits. The lore fit easily into Hollywood  storytelling. Wells Fargo not only starred in Hollywood films, it helped ensure the popularity of motion pictures in the industry's early days.

In 1855, Wells Fargo opened an office in Los Angeles. As Southern California grew rapidly after 1880, Pacific Electric streetcars  brought Wells Fargo express services to nearly every community. Wells Fargo Express delivered feature films and newsreels to eager audiences nationwide from the company's special express depot in Universal City.

In 1937, Paramount Pictures  produced "Wells Fargo," a Western starring Joel McCrea and Frances Dee. The "Wells Fargo Wagon" brought something special to River City, Iowa, a generation later, in the 1962 film version of Meredith Willson's Broadway hit "The Music Man." 

On television from 1957 to 1962, Dale Robertson fought hard to uphold Wells Fargo's good name in the series "Tales of Wells Fargo." The popular show reached audiences worldwide through syndication.

Posted by Charles at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Found in Artifacts, Broadway, Films, Movies, Perspective, Remember, Stagecoach, The Music Man, Wells Fargo Bank, Westerns