Waving and Seesawing

A Vintage Photos Theme Park photo for the theme of waving (as a greeting or for any other purpose).

When I purchased this small photo at an antique mall in Hershey, Pennsylvania, I thought it showed some men smoking as they sat together on a bench. I liked how the man in the middle is crouching on the bench and waving at the photographer, and I noticed that some of the men have something -- probably cigarettes, as far as I could see -- dangling from their mouths.

But once I took the photo home and had a chance to take a closer look (see a cropped version), I discovered that the men are -- strangely enough -- balancing on a seesaw rather than sitting on a bench. And what I thought were cigarettes are apparently pieces of some sort of food, though I haven't figured out what it might be.

Beyond the men and their seesaw is a road, and a house located on the other side of the road is visible on the right-hand side of the photo. Between the shirtless guy and the fellow next to him, we can barely see the waters of a river in the distance. Some boxcars, almost hidden from view behind the crouching man's knees, reveal the existence of railroad tracks that parallel the roadway.

Although there's no way to identify the exact location of the photo, this combination of waterways, roads, and train tracks surrounded by hilly terrain is typical of the landscape alongside the Susquehanna River and Juniata River in south central Pennsylvania.