Tag: 1950s

Counting 40 Blue Cars

1. Three in a row at an unknown American airport in the early 1950s.
2. There are at least four blue cars in this Cyprus Gardens car park, Winter Haven, Florida, late 1950s.
3. Here’s a two-tone blue car receiving a Customs inspection at the Canadian border, circa 1950.
4. A powder-blue, early-1950s Dodge parked in a quiet suburban neighborhood.
5. A blue car speeds past Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, Los Angeles, 1957. The movie “Island in the Sun” was a spicy tale of interracial romance.
6. My scantily clad, hot-babe mother behind the wheel of her similar blue and white car in Silver Spring, Maryland, Summer 1958.
7. In their turquoise convertible, the kids were all right. 1950s.
8. Out and about, Christmas shopping in Long Beach, California, 1953.
9. This rather odd two-tone Buick and a sugary-blue Volkswagon parked at an Ottawa, Ontario Texaco, 1962.
10. Outside an auto shop on a cold and blustery day, somewhere in America where it snows, the mid-1950s.
11. A sad, blue example of the results of a snowy, blustery day. Taken somewhere in Washington State in the early 1950s.
12. A 1964 Chevrolet concept car shown by a 1964 concept wife.
13. This is a 1942 two-tone blue Chevrolet Fleetline is not a concept car, but those are definitely concept females.
14. A non-concept beauty stands beside her dark blue 1954 Oldsmobile.
15. The very definition of “cheesecake”. Late 1940s.
16. Because of black and white television, the children of the 1960s and ’70s saw the 1950s as a stiff, colorless, conformist era, but this brilliant coral dress and vibrant 1955 Pontiac Star Chief show the reality of the age.
17. In Winter 1954, this lovely lady in her rich-blue coat and bright red shoes posed with an old dull-blue 1941 Buick Convertable.
18. A teenager in yellow beside a mid-1960s Buick and multiple other blue cars at what might be another airport.
19. A pretty girl and her BFF Pontiac Sunbird, Eastern America, 1979.
20. An Atlantic City motel, a 1948 Buick, and the love of someone’s life.
21. Daddy’s darlings posing on his 1959 Ford Wagon.
22. Brother, sister, and mechanical siblings (a 1953 Pontiac and older brother, a 1941 Pontiac) in Lakespur, California. Courtesy Shorpy.
23. Doing something dangerously stupid (also) in California, 1947.
24. Doing something dangerously stupid in Yosemite, California, 1956.
25. Doing something dangerously stupid in Wisconsin, the late 1940s.
26. Thinking about doing something dangerously stupid (I just know it), 1950s.
27. Too late. The dangerously stupid is already done. Avoid Grandpa and Grandma in their early 1950s Pontiac.
28. Well, okay…. Chevy Nova, circa 1980. Florida, I guess.
29. This must have been taken on the first day out because there was not a spot of bird poop or bug splat upon that new, shiny 1966 Ford F-100.
30. Standing awestruck after rolling their 1960 Olds Dynamic 88 four-door sedan through an unknown state’s historic covered bridge.
31. Lost in the desert, but there is plenty of wood to burn come winter, at least, 1960s.
32. Ah, the days of damaging the environment with your heavy blue car while working on your skin cancer. Still, those were indeed happy times for all of us lucky enough to have them. One of my earliest memories is being parked on Daytona Beach and jumping waves with my father. Probably Florida, mid-1950s.
33. Nance Gail, West Chester Teen Queen of 1968, rides in an open-top blue 1968 Plymouth Fury in the Los Angeles Labor Day Parade.
34. Matching mid-1950s station wagon with luggage rack and camper with sunshade. I’ll be honest, I want to be there soooo bad.
35. This Sheridan, Wyoming American Indian Day Parade in 1955 featured a blue open-top holding real Native Americans and fake Caucasian cowboys.
36. A 1955 blue Pontiac parked in front of Trader Bill’s Western & Indian Merchandise (and Novelties), Dallas, Texas.
37. Tough negotiations underway in the drive of this suburban home, 1960s.
38. Three deeply suntanned dudes, a blue convertible, and a cheerful mobile home estate, back when retirement living on one was respectable, inexpensive, and fun. Somewhere in the American South (probably Florida), 1950s.
39. Guests arrive on a snowy day, perhaps for Christmas morning, early 1960s.
40. And finally, our blue car journey ends with this beautiful couple and their beautiful two-tone blue sedan. I hope their life together was very, very beautiful, too.

Corrections on car identifications are welcome.

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The Most Wonderful Time of Every Year: Christmas Photos From Across the 20th Century

Colorized from the Library of Congress, National Photo Company, 1922. Title unverified as “Dorsey Christmas Tree.” Courtesy Shorpy.com.
Claudia Cardinale, born 1938, Italian Tunisian film actress and sex symbol, at Christmas in the early 1960s.
The Barr family Chrismas Tree, December 25, 1953, DesMoines, Iowa.
Christmas with Grandpa, circa 1945.
A mid-1960s Christmas.
Christmas Day, 1920.
Woman dressed as a Christmas tree, circa 1905.
A very happy Christmas 1922.
Standing by the Nativity scene, Circa 1950.
Christmas parade in Toronto, Canada in 1927.
German officers at Christmas 1917 during World War I.
Well, well, well…Christmas, Late 1950s.
Grandma and her favorite candy cane, 1950s.
Suggested Christmas feast, magazine spread, early 1960s.
Christmas Day, Chicago, Illinois, December 1970
Some seriously punk vibes in the early 1980s.
Space-age Christmas tree, magazine spread, 1960s.
A very beautiful lady at Christmas, 1960s.
Decorating the tree, 1981.
Christmas overdrive in 1999.

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New Year’s Eve: Roaring End, Rowdy Beginning

New Year’s Eve was celebrated on 31 December for the first time in 45 B.C. when the Julian calendar came into effect.

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New Year’s Eve in the 19th Century was as jolly and booze-fueled as it is in the 21st. Here, Baby New Year 1838, the first born of the reign of young Queen Victoria, enters stage right as the black-draped old woman of 1837 departs stage left, taking with her the Georgian Era.

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This New Year’s Eve party had it goin’ on. Conga lines—usually drunken Conga lines—became popular in the 1930s and remained so right through the 1950s. The Conga was originally a Cuban Carnival dance.

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Nothing says Swinging ’60s New Year’s Eve like bullet-bra and hot-pants-wearing  go-go dancers workin’ it in a giant glass of champagne.

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