Inscription: Olivia and John, Prattville, Ala.

Finally we can name one of the girls in this collection. Many of the young men -- relatives, neighbors, boyfriends -- are named, but we've only learned one girl's name from this 1920s Anniston collection. And today there's Olivia.

And they're going swimming too.

Anniston and Prattville are about two hours apart by modern travel, so you would have went there with purpose back then. There's a lot of lakes and rivers in the area, so they could be anywhere, but the caption only names the town, so the purpose behind the trip must have been memorable enough to not need further details added on the photograph.

The brief historical accounts of Prattville start around the 19th Century founding, the cotton gins and then skips Reconstruction and begins again from the middle of the 20th Century. The Great Depression, the Great War, the Roaring Twenties are all overlooked, so we'll have to draw our own conclusions.

It's good to know there are at least three men's changing rooms. It might make you uncomfortable to think about wearing this as a bathing suit though, but you begin to understand why your great-grandparents had a bemused outlook on the modern world.

Nice stripes though. Makes the shoulders look broad. There's also a photograph of just Olivia, where she looks a bit perturbed by something off camera, but she's a cute girl.

The sun looks high in the sky; it was probably very warm. Maybe they just wanted to be in the water. Eighty years later we're glad they took the time for the photograph. Keep that in mind when someone asks you to say "Cheese."

Noted: Google Maps

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