Sunday Afternoon on the Porch: Reflections of a Small Town in Iowa, 1939-1942

by Everett W. Kuntz (Photographer), Everett W. Kuntz (Photographer)

In 1939, just before graduating from high school in the small town of Ridgeway in northeast Iowa, Everett Kuntz spent his entire savings of $12.50 on a 35mm Argus AF camera. He made a camera case from a worn-out boot, scraps from a tin can, and a clasp from his mother’s purse. For the next several years, especially during the summers when he worked on his parents’ dairy farm, he clicked the shutter of his trusty Argus all around the quiet town.

Everett bought movie reel film in bulk from a mail-order house, rolled his own film, and developed it in a closet at home, but he never had the money to print his photographs. More than two thousand negatives stayed in a box while he married, raised a family, and worked as an electrical engineer in the Twin Cities. When he became ill with cancer in the fall of 2002—sixty years after he had developed the last of his bulk film—Everett opened his time capsule and printed the images from his youth. He died in 2003, having brought his childhood town back to life just as he was leaving it.

A sense of peace radiates from these images. Whether skinny-dipping in the Turkey River, wheelbarrow-racing, threshing oats, milking cows, visiting with relatives after church, or hanging out at the drugstore or the movies, Ridgeway’s hardworking citizens are modest and trusting and luminous in their graceful harmony and their unguarded affection for each other. Visiting the town in 2006 as he was writing the text to accompany these photographs, Jim Heynen crafted vignettes that perfectly complement these rediscovered images by blending fact and fiction to give context and voice to Ridgeway’s citizens.

Genres: Nonfiction

116 pages, Hardcover

First published June 15, 2007

Reviews

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everett Kuntz was an avid amateur photographer. In 1939 he spent his life savings of $12.50 for a camera. He made a camera case from an old boot along with other scraps of metal. From 1939 to 1942, he took pictures of many scenes in and around the small town of Ridgeway, Iowa (population then about 350). The title and the image on the cover are based on a very common small town tradition in the summer. Church on Sunday morning and then a family gathering on a large, shaded porch.
As is mentioned on page 83, “… cash from Iowa farms increased by 60 million dollars between 1938 and 1939.” Therefore, the Depression was starting to ease in Iowa at that time. People are depicted in many different activities, from a woman milking a cow by hand to outhouses, the kitchen ware for Sunday dinner laid out on the table, work gangs taking a break, children in a classroom, girls and boys in their finest contrasted with girls and boys in their play clothes, outdoor picnics, and sports and other entertainment.
While Kuntz was a good photographer, the fact that he was an amateur makes these images especially revealing. While there is some hamming for the camera, there is none of the stiffness that people often have when in front of a professional. The people in the images are clearly at ease with having their picture taken by someone they know.

[Michell Karnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a wonderful book of photos from a young Iowa Man who spent all of his savings on a camera and then began taking pictures of his hometown between 1939-1942. These pictures were set aside until the young man Everett Kuntz was nearing the end of his life. These pictures were then developed and compiled into a book to share with the world of a world gone by. The pictures are of everyday people, doing everyday things during a period of time when the world was changing.

[Kelsey Worley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love it so much

[Catherine Woodman]

The photographs in this book are gorgeous, they depict an Iowa from 70 years ago, but also an Iowa that isn't that unrecognizable today--the only thing I did not like was the text to go with it--which brought my rating way down.

[Carissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

The photographs provided an intimate look at small town Iowa. I enjoyed the accompanying text provided by the photographer, as he remembered the subject matter in the photograph. The speculative text I could have done without, especially with the photograph of the three boys.

[James Payne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Photographs were great, the accompanying text was composed of cloying liberal tropes re nostalgia for an American arcadia that never existed. Sex and violence didn't magically appear with color television or within our lifetimes, gimme a break dude.

[Andy Kleinschmidt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pictorial of a small Iowa town in the 1940s through a young man's eyes.