Saturday, May 30, 2015

Random Stuff

I am still dealing with a dead slide scanner, so the "Anything Goes Saturdays" continue to consist of whatever the heck I happened to have already scanned.

This one, from September 1958, shows a little girl (in ear muffs?!?) posing next to a cheerful yellow Mayflower moving van. This photo struck a nerve with me because, as the kid of a Navy man, we moved a LOT for the first 15 years of my life, and we used Mayflower a number of times. It was always weird to leave a place just as we started to feel comfortable, but hey, that's life. I later learned that my dad turned down potential moves to places like Germany and Japan because he thought that it would be too traumatic; maybe he was right, but I can't help wondering how different my life would have been if we had lived in one of those countries!


Next we head to Ontario, Canada, to visit the Seagram Tower near Niagara Falls (the photo is from September of 1963). Throughout the years, various structures had been built to attract tourists and provide a dramatic view of the Falls. In 1962, this 325-foot tower opened to the public (due to its elevation, it actually sits more than 500 feet above the waterfalls). The tower has changed ownership many times since then, and is now the "Konica Minolta Tower Centre".


This next one qualifies as a "mystery slide", though, knowing the GDB readers, it won't be a mystery for long! It is from the 1950's, and shows a lovely old church - I thought it might be the famous "Old North Church" in Boston, but it isn't. When I zoomed in on the street signs, I could see that the church is at the intersection of West (?) Liberty Street and South Main Street.



11 comments:

Nanook said...

Major-

The little girl in the first picture isn't wearing ear muffs. In actuality she was a (very) early test model for the headphones included with the first Sony Walkman-!

I had lunch in the Seagram Tower about four years after this image was shot. Gotta love the Falls.

All three of these pictures just have incredible color. Film, film, film.

Thanks, Major.

TokyoMagic! said...

Ooooh, I wonder what kind of figures were inside the Wax Museum at the base of the Seagram Tower? Perhaps Marilyn Monroe in a scene from the movie, "Niagara"? Or maybe the Three Stooges doing their "Slowly I Turn..." sketch? And how many viewing levels did that tower actually have? Are those people up there on the roof of the tower? If so, it looks like the viewing platform up there was kind of small.

Monkey Cage Kurt said...

I love that Mayflower truck! Except for the dent and big long scrape along the top of the payload I would have thought it had just rolled off the assembly line. What a beautiful piece of engineering!

I agree Nanook; the color really jumps out at you in these shots. If it wasn’t overcast in the first pic that truck’s paintjob would REALLY pop.

Sorry to hear about your difficult childhood Major. I can only imagine how hard that must’ve been. We lived in the same house for the first 17 years of my life. There’s a lot to be said for stability in a child’s life. When we did finally move for the first time it was via a Mayflower rig also, so I do have a somewhat similar memory.

Unknown said...

That first picture recalls how interstate trucks back in the day had to have a license plate for each of the various states they traveled in. Funny how I'd forgotten about that. Thanks, Major, for the memories...

Nanook said...

@ TokyoMagic!

It certainly looks as if those are people standing "on the roof". If you compare today's GDB image with that of a contemporary shot, you can see the Konica Minolta sign was added at the same height as where those people were standing. I think there was always just one Observation level, as I believe it is now. And that level seems to one and the same with the restaurant. There are four floors of hotel rooms in The Tower Hotel - some, obviously, affording spectacular views of the Falls.

TokyoMagic! said...

Thank you for confirming that, Nanook! After I left my comment, I did check a contemporary shot of the tower and started to wonder if some of those levels contained guest rooms or convention rooms.

Anonymous said...

I also was a military brat (dad was Army) and moved 16 times in 18 years. We did the southeast Asia thing living in the Philippines and visiting South Korea, Thailand, (then called) Burma and a few other nations in the early 70s. It certainly is a unique way to grow up, but I don't regret it in the least. Thank you for all you do on this blog. It is one of my daily highlights! Meredith

Major Pepperidge said...

Nanook, I still remember showing up to school with my Sony Walkman and being a hero! At the time they were the coolest thing. I still need to see Niagara Falls, I hate that I haven't been there yet.

TokyoMagic!, I would almost prefer to see terrible wax figures; there's something so awesome about them when they are bad! And yes, it looks like there are people up on the roof.

Monkey Cage Kurt, I didn't mean to make it sound like I had a difficult childhood. Moving regularly was just a fact of life. We didn't love it, but I still had a great childhood with lots of good experiences! And whenever we returned to SoCal, I was excited because we would be close to Disneyland again.

Patrick, I noticed all of those plates, it's kind of amazing! That was one of the things I liked about the photo.

Nanook, thank you for doing the research. Being away from my home computer makes things a bit tricky, especially when I have limited time to check in.

TokyoMagic!, apparently lots of new structures have been built that block the view from the Konica Tower now. Bummer!

Meredith, wow, you had a much more arduous (and adventurous) military upbringing than I did! I am curious if you think that it helped to make you the kind of person you are today (more comfortable in unfamiliar surroundings, a broader view of how the world works, etc)?

Melissa said...

I've been to that tower! I don't remember who owned it at the time but everybody still called it the Seagram's Tower.

And my Dad drove a Mayflower truck before he met my Mom.

Anonymous said...

Fun stuff, Major. Thanks as always.

Hope you are having fun where you are.

JG

Anonymous said...

I believe that church is the Zion reformed church of chambersburg, PA: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zion_Reformed_Church_(Chambersburg,_Pennsylvania)