Sunday, April 09, 2023

Two Families, Two Sundays

Happy Easter, everybody! Back when I was a kid, I sure loved getting my Easter basket full of goodies. And those were the days when my parents would dutifully take us to church, which would be especially crowded. And then there was Sunday school, full of all kinds of fun stories. And yet I turned out LIKE THIS??

Our friend Sue B. came to the rescue once again and provided two fun vintage scans (not "Lou and Sue" photos) to accompany the occasion. In this case it's pictures of two kids in their Easter best, posing with two different women. This first one has Grandma, I presume, with her car (her TRUE pride and joy), and oh yeah, the kids might as well be in the photo too. It occurred to me that this scan is flopped, but I'm too lazy to fix it, so it is what it is.


And next, here's Mom, who doesn't like having her picture taken, so she hides behind the boys. Maybe they are outside for an exciting hunt for Easter eggs. The patch on the older boy's jacket probably means that he is going to Fauntleroy Academy. "Oh Papa, Easter will be ever so splendid!". Reminds me of myself, to be honest. THANK YOU for these fun scans, Sue!


And now, here are some of my own contributions!

I'm assuming that this was Easter Sunday, based on the store in the background with an advertisement for HAMS in the window - not to mention the purple plush bunny in the little boy's hand. Everyone is dressed in their finest on this apparently still-cool Spring day. I'm frustrated to not have more information, such as the location or exact year. But that's how it goes with vintage slides.


Another family - another Easter? This one's surprisingly similar to the first pic, though I have to give a round of applause to those massive polka-dotted Peter Pan collars on the two girls. It's a look! Grandma accidentally wore a brassier on her head again, but it's easier to just let her keep it on. We'll tell the folks at church that it's the latest style from Milan. I dig the old cars, though I couldn't tell you what they are. Gimme that two-tone station wagon!

29 comments:

TokyoMagic! said...

The most amazing thing about the second pic is, the two cars that are about to collide head-on, and the people posing for the pic are totally clueless about it.

In the fourth pic, I think dad is trying to pose, hold onto his cigarette, and not burn his wife, all at the same time. Meanwhile, there is a photo-bombing dog in the background, sniffing a tree and getting ready to do his "business." And the people posing for the pic are totally clueless about it! :-)

Thank you, Major and Sue! Happy Easter to all!

Nanook said...

Major-
Both of Sue's images are flopped. But, no matter.

CARS:
* 1964 Buick 'Wildcat' - probably in "Desert Beige"
*(l) 1959 Ford 'Galaxie' - maybe in "Inca Gold"; (r) 1964 Ford - maybe
in "Rose Beige"
* 1950 Chevrolet - maybe in "Birch Gray"
* 1949 Ford - maybe in "Colonial Blue". And your coveted 'two-tone'
station wagon might very-well be a 1955 Dodge Suburban Wagon 2 Door
- maybe in "Cameo Red" & "Sapphire White".
* Across the street - all I can get is the 1956 Ford, parked in the driveway.

Love the white, appliquéd leaves, on Grandma's 'double-collar'. Bonus points for the the contrasting 'sisters' Easter outfits. I'm certain they were a standout at the church-!

Thanks, Major (& Sue-!) Happy Easter.

JB said...

Sue pic #1: Fauntleroy's Easter Bucket (not a basket) looks like it has cowboys & Indians on it. What's he holding in his other hand? A little plush bunny? The car looks about 1960-ish; Nanook will know... and the color of the paint job. I'd say it was "mocha latte". [EDIT- Looks like I blew it on the year and the color. ;-) Thanks, Nanook.]

Sue pic #2: Fauntleroy's little plush bunny seems to have gone missing. I think maybe it 'accidentally' fell under a lawnmower. The thing that looks dorkiest about Fauntleroy is his white knee socks. And the dorkiest thing about his little brother is the Eton-style collar. I bet Fauntleroy got beaten up... at least twice, before the day was done.

Major pic #1: Hams.... Something all Junior Gorillas can relate to. Looks like eggs are .45 cents. I'd guess this was about 1950.

Major pic #2: Little sis is lighting up a Lucky Strike. Oh my, those collars... maybe this is a clown family? That would explain the brassier on Grandma's head. And I can't quite make out what's happening with her collar. Are those two white things rabbit's feet? Gardenias? Fuzzy earbuds? Nanook says they're appliquéd leaves, but that's no fun.

Tokyo!, Ha! I didn't notice the dog. It looks like there's a yellow fire hydrant across the street, why doesn't he do his business there?

Thanks to Sue for the Fauntleroy family pics. And to Major for the vintage families.

Hmmm, a second April 5th post has appeared, just above "Randos". I suspect it got mislabeled, or misdated?

MIKE COZART said...

I was way off I guess. The first car I thought was a Oldsmobile Delta 88. The second picture I thought was a 1958/59 Ford Fairlane and the opposite I thought was a Ford Comet.

I think that two tone wagon was a Ford Greenbriar Estate Wagon …. I dunno .

Grandma is wearing her DAGMAR hat …. “Whoa! Look at her dagmars!!”

Happy Easter everyone !

JG said...

These photos are objectively terrible, people obscured by one another, awkward poses, clumsy composition, and I absolutely love them. I’m sure I have a drawer full of similar awkward scenes of my family. Everyone had new clothes, and we posed in the back yard in front of the iris beds which were in full bloom.

I would date the HAM family in gray to late 40’s based on the young couples clothes. Presumably they would be new and they Don’t look 50’s to me, somehow.

The last pic is the best, the dog doing due diligence on the tree, Moms face blocked by daughter no. 1, granny with the goofy hat, just like in the Old Country. I think the blue truck across the street is 47-53 Chevy or GMC, with side panels sporting an American flag, like an election sign or something. Back then it was the rule that grand dad takes all the pictures.

Thank you, Sue and Major for these seasonal shots, now I want HAM.

JG

JG said...

Also, if you haven’t done so yet, go back to yesterdays Midway post and watch GDB collective memory identify all the rides. Just amazing.

JG

Anonymous said...

I thought you misspelled Hamm's, but no.
Happy Easter, all.

(My dog would have 'marked' both)

Zach

Chuck said...

Happy Easter, everybody!

I remember Easter mornings wearing new outfits my mom had made. They were wonderful at the time, but I wouldn’t wear them today. The styles were very much “of the era.” They’re also too small.

We just found an egg the other day left over from last year’s egg hunt. Fortunately, we do plastic eggs nowadays. If they were real eggs, I’m thinking we might have found that one sooner…or at least been aware of its presence.

Zach, now I have that animated bear and catchy jingle stuck in my head. Doesn’t quite go with Easter, but I’ll roll with it.

Melissa said...

Two families, both alike in dignity...

These are awesome windows on yesterday. Everybody gets the Vintage Fashion Award, and extra chocolate bunnies for the matching brothers.

I wish I could lay my hands on one of the 1,001 photos of my sister and me in our matching homemade Easter dresses in the driveway on the way to church. But please enjoy this picture of my Grandma on the Easter Bunny's lap.

Two of the Easter pictures were taken outside the hospital, because my Dad got kidney stones two Easters in a row. Both ties, our Easter candy melted in the car and we ate it with spoons.

Big thanks to Sue & the Major, too, and a happy Easter to all the Junior Gorillas.

K. Martinez said...

Happy Easter to all!

Love these family photos. I especially like the two families on the lawns in front of their homes. So many generations have come and gone. All these kids are now senior citizens. Thanks Sue and Major.

Major Pepperidge said...

TokyoMagic!, sometimes the camera captures a moment in time. Like when I photographed Bigfoot! I’ll bet Dad was quite skilled in holding a cigarette but managing not to burn his “Field and Stream” magazine, or his wife’s shoulder, or the arm of his plaid easy chair. Also, that’s not a dog, it’s a tiny bear.

Nanook, yes, I noticed that the steering wheel was on the wrong side in photo #2. But by then I’d already watermarked it, and I probably had a busy day. Oh well! Love that Ford Galaxie. An I love the names of the colors, as usual!

JB, I miss the days when my siblings and I would wake up and find Easter baskets waiting for us, full of that green plastic grass, and plastic eggs full of jelly beans (I didn’t really like jelly beans, but I liked the presentation). Best of all was the chocolate bunny, those ears didn’t last long. CHOMP. I still pay .45 for a carton of eggs. Those giant spotted collars really make a statement, I wonder if that pattern was in “McCalls” magazine? Maybe mom was trying to be “Eastery”. Thanks for the heads up on the rogue post, I was moving some posts around, and that one “got away from me”, I literally had no idea where it wound up. Now I know! You’ll see it again in September because I have punished it for being bad.

Mike Cozart, “Comet”, “Galaxie”, “Delta 88”, boy they really had good names for cars back then. I have no idea what a Dagmar hat is!

JG, sometimes you just have to take what you get when you are dealing with vintage slides. Once my sister married a photographer, our family photos got a lot better, at least the ones that he took. Trouble is, he isn’t in any of them. There were piles of hams at my local Ralph’s, but my mom doesn’t like ham, so I had to walk right by them. Good eye on that American flag, even when you mentioned it I still had a hard time finding it.

JG, luckily I knew that I could depend on the Junior Gorillas to come through!

zach, Hamm’s, with the earworm jingle, but weird lyrics. “Hamm’s, the beer refreshing…”. Was it written by Yoda?

Chuck, aw, I think it’s nice that your mom made clothes for herself and for the kids. Other than a few Halloween costumes, my mom did not make clothing for us. I love Easter egg hunts these days, those little kids don’t stand a chance against me. And they learn an important lesson about life, which is always valuable. “From the land of sky-blue waters!”

Major Pepperidge said...

K. Martinez, well what do you know, we commented a the same time! But I’m not skipping you! I don’t remember my dad ever taking a family photo on Easter, but then again, he was usually at church extra early, since he sang in the choir. I always felt sorry for him having to be there for two services in a row, ha ha. But he loved it!

Grant said...

Great pics Major and Sue!

Speaking of vintage Easter photos...

Here's a 1957 Easter morning photo of me and Tommy Walker's three daughters in front of our house in Anaheim, all dressed up for church. Check out my jacket!

https://youtu.be/zUoaO6YsUN4

Happy Easter to all!

Anonymous said...

Happy Easter to all!

Enjoying the vintage photos. Thanks, Sue, Major & also Grant.

-DW

Anonymous said...

And dittos for a Happy Easter to all. Reading all the comments I think we are indeed from that generation of Easter baskets and dressing up in new fine clothes. So much like the last picture. Just substitute my family and cousins in it and there you go. So vibrant and fresh and can remember so clearly. My vote is that is a 59 Ford Fairlaine 2 door hardtop. KS

MIKE COZART said...

Major: I was being nasty. DAGMARS are the bullet shaped chrome bumper cones on many mid 1950’s automobiles . Buicks … Cadillacs and other car models featured them for awhile. Automotive designers called them DAGMARS after a popular hollywood actress who was well endowed with her own god-given bullet shipped “dagmars”……. These were also what caused the bullet bra craze of the same period …. I’m not aware of the exact actress only that her name was DAGMAR.

Nanook said...

@ MIKE, JG & KS- (and farther down Melissa and Grant)
Thanks for making certain my "telling of tales out of school..." are correct-!

Yes, Oldsmobiles and Buicks often resembled one-another - and you'd think with three, vertically-stacked 'gewgaws', we'd be looking at an Oldsmobile. But, no. The Wildcat model broke away from the Buick 'tradition' of the "porthole design", consisting of various numbers of 'openings', arranged in a horizontal array - which can be seen in both the Electra and Le Sabre models of that year. Also, Comet was made by Mercury, not Ford.

And as far as I know, the 'Greenbrier' name was only used by Chevrolet on their Corvair van (1961-1965), and later (1969-1972) on their Chevelle station wagon. From what little info we can see of that two-tone station wagon, I was using the roof line, wide end pillar, and straight window pillars for the Dodge station wagon ID. It could easily be something else; but I couldn't figure it out.

Dagmar = Virginia Ruth "Jennie" Lewis.

By all rights, that 1959 Ford should've been a Fairlane - as the Galaxie model didn't fully appear until the 1960 model year. BUT... if you notice the 'squared-off' "Thunderbird" roofline, along with 'gold' medallion, and chrome trim underneath it, that indicates the new, 1959½ Top-of-the-Line Galaxie model-! (Oh, whatever happened to those "½ Model Year" models, from the Detroit automakers-?)

I knew that 'pick-em-up truck' was a GMC or Chevrolet 1948-1954, but I was hoping to pickup something that would help pinpoint it better. Only know it's not a 1954, as the rear bumper had a center 'cut-out' to accommodate the license plate, formerly placed above the bumper, on the driver's side.

@ Melissa-
I wonder if that Easter Bunny knew what he (or she) signed up for-! Your grandma looks very content, however. Thanks for sharing.

@ Grant-
A sea of pink. I'm thinking a pink bowtie to bring cohesiveness to the quartet. Too cute, though-! Thanks for sharing.

Anonymous said...

Nanook, '54 model had three windows in the cab, so can't be newer than a '53.

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=1954+chevy+truck&atb=v135-1&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fst.hotrod.com%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F21%2F2016%2F09%2F1954-chevrolet-3100-pickup-rear-three-quarter.jpg

JG

Nanook said...

@ JG-
I don't know why I wrote 1948; the [shared] design began in the summer of 1947, as you stated, so the date tends to get skewered - at least in my mind.

As for the three windows - that's more confusion. In 1954, the front windshield sported a single pane of glass. And then there's the 'five-window' - which was still available in the 1954 model year... Called Advance-Design, "For the 1947 to 1954 models, stylists conceived the five-window cab, formally known as the Deluxe Cab, to eliminate the blind spots in the rear quarter panels of the cab. This allowed the driver to look over his shoulder to view the rear instead of poking his head out the window". Nu-Vue Rear-Corner Windows. Classy.

Ahhhh. the mysteries.

MIKE COZART said...

Yes : MERCURY COMET ( Ford Falcon) I was going crazy with the Fords this morning. Chevrolet was greenbriar wagon . I think that was a problem for manufactured ( with the confusion of Ford Fairlane) too many of car lines loook too much the same …. holiday coupe … Fairlane …. galaxie … galaxie deluxe … Towne Car … … TOO many accessory levels and trim lines for basically the same car …. I think the zenith of this was the 1966 oldsmobile line … other than the Toronado … all 60 options look like the same car!

It’s funny that art directors for car ads always had the automobiles illustrated with the windows down…. So the glass panes Ave window vents didn’t disrupt the sleekness of the cars look. Or how the “Widetrack” design was illustrated with a misleading extra wide look … sonetimes adding more than a foot to the car’s actual width!

Several years ago at an auto show there was a presentation about automobile market research .. people have no interest in two-tone automobiles …. The most popular car color is WHITE …. And people prefer the look of whitewall tires ( in regards to the study of being re-introduced ) but declined in the interest purchasing them …. Odd.

Anonymous said...

Nanook, I used to drive a '47 GMC and researched it for restoration. The '54 model in both GMC and Chevy was called the "3-Window". I think your source is conflating that design option with the 47-54 "body style", which is appropriate, since the major sheet metal stayed constant, but confusing since the the 3 window pattern was not available till 1954. Taillights and turn signals moved around, both between years and brands, as did license plates, depending on the kinds of bumper options etc. My 47 had only one taillight.

I eventually sold it and bought a '63 which was in better condition and cost less to restore. I still have it.

JG

Anonymous said...

It’s brassiere. Not sure what a brassier is…

Chuck said...

Anonymous, a brassier serves the same purpose as a brassiere but is made out of brass (or, less frequently, cupronickel). Because wearing a metal framework over bare skin can be uncomfortable in such a delicate area, they are usually worn inside a knit covering. I believe the Major is correct in this instance.

Nanook said...

@ JG-
Thanks. First-hand info is always the best-!

"Lou and Sue" said...

Major, I was going to comment that I like your last image the best...but then I saw Melissa's and Grant's pictures. I think they tie to win today's first prize - a lamb cake covered with coconut flakes, and licorice eyes. Melissa, since 'ladies first,' we'll let you choose which half you want - the head or the other.

I hope everyone had a Happy Easter! I've enjoyed all of today's fun comments.

"Lou and Sue" said...

^
...with coconut flakes, and black-licorice-jelly-bean eyes...
(I left out a lot of words, that time, oops.)

Melissa said...

Mmm, I'll take the lamb's head. The black jellybeans are my favorite flavor.

Major Pepperidge said...

Grant, sorry about my late reply! I love that photo of you with Tommy Walker’s daughters, so fantastic!

DW, glad you liked thse!

KS, oh man, you haven’t lived until you saw me in my red, white, and blue plaid jacket (the one I would wear to church)! Wow, was that thing ugly, and yet it seemed totally OK back then. I also had white dress shoes that I remember having to touch when they got scuffed, which was often.

Mike Cozart, ah, now I get it. I have heard the name “Dagmar”, and thought that it had something to do with an actress, or a TV/movie/radio character, but just wasn’t sure. Bullet bras, so weird. But I guess they drove certain guys crazy at the time.

Nanook, you car guys! It’s amazing how much you can know about autos that go back 60 or 70 years (or more). Impressive. I personally would rather be knowledgeable about old cars than sports trivia, but that’s just me (if you love sports trivia, it’s OK, you are awesome too!). Thanks as always for all of your great comments.

JG, oh, look at you!

Nanook, listen, everyone has one of those days. I see by reading ahead that I misspelled “brassiere”, and I will never live it down. Granted, I don’t have many opportunities to write that word out. Nobody to blame but myself.

Mike Cozart, I don’t have much to add to the “car talk”, except that it’s fun for me to read!

JG, oh wow, you are one of those restoration guys! I remember being with an acquaintance when we passed a car lot that had an old Edsel. This person had restored an Edsel once before, and as soon as he saw this other example, he said, “Oh no, you’re not going to fool me again!”. I guess the whole thing turned out to be way more expensive and time consuming than he’d ever imagined.

Anonymous, you are neat.

Chuck, I’ve seen more than a few sci-fi movies with brass brassieres, they are necessary for near-light speed travel. And also BEMs (Bug Eyed Monsters);.

Nanook, it takes a village.

Lou and Sue, oh man, I somehow blipped right past the link to Melissa’s great image of her grandma, thank you for calling it out!! I’m not a fan of coconut or licorice, but I can still appreciate a great work of baking art.

Lou and Sue, I’m glad I never make a mistake!

Melissa, I’m sorry I missed your photo of your Grandma, it is too wonderful for words.

Anonymous said...

Chuck, I know the Major is rarely wrong, however the item on Grandma’s head does not look brass to me. Maybe she painted it? Still seems like a brassier would be heavier than a brassiere. Just sayin…