Are you saying not everyone in the '20s and '30 had 3 gramophones and 7 cars?Originally Posted by LizzieMaine
I agree; everyone is trying to bring back different parts of the past in different ways. There's no right or wrong way of 'vintage living'.
Not everyone was thrifty during The Era. One of my Dad's classmates (public high school, 1930) was squired around in a new chrome-plated Cadillac (the whole body was chromed, not just the trim and bumpers). Pretty flashy (no pun intended) for the depths of the Depression. The car embarrassed the kid to death, but his parents evidently had other values at play -- made a lasting impression on my Dad, who disliked much chrome on a car for the rest of his life.
Edit -- just thinking about that Cadillac -- the driver must have needed to wear welder's goggles on a sunny day . . .
Last edited by Angus Forbes; 06-21-2012 at 09:55 AM.
Nobody ever wants to go vintage at the lower end of the scale. Probably similar as to how, even in such a multi-cultural city as London, the vintage community is overwhelmingly white.Are you saying not everyone in the '20s and '30 had 3 gramophones and 7 cars?
I agree; everyone is trying to bring back different parts of the past in different ways. There's no right or wrong way of 'vintage living'.
If in doubt - overdress.
Vivienne Westwood
Well, given the option, I'd say nobody wants to do anything at the lower end of the scale. At the end of the day, there's not a "right" nor "wrong" way (which are obviously subjective words) to do anything. Just gotta do what you do, do what makes you, you.
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I hope it was a V-16, because that's the only way it'd go fast enough to escape the rock-throwing mobs. The Depression wasn't a good time to be a public plutocrat.
The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error. -- William Jennings Bryan
The fact that people out there exist that think such actions are acceptable is just beyond me. To truly elaborate on how I feel about such individuals would require a whole trove of language not nearly acceptable for the forum, however. It's just savage.
PBS had a good series called something like "America in the 1940's." Amongst other topics, several people were interviewed regarding their experiences in the Depression.
One was a woman who had moved from the poorest part of Appalachia to Chicago as a child. She spoke convincingly about going to the soup kitchen in the cold, without shoes, and so on.
Then they switched to a handsome, regal, rich looking man. He spoke of "doing fairly well" during the depression, and went on to talk about his sister's French nanny, the governesses, the round-the-clock footmen, the house in Manhattan, the drivers, and the Rolls Royce with a custom body (as all RRs may have had in those days). He talked about feeling ashamed and hiding when he was in the car and the car went past a bread line. But when WWII broke out, just after he had graduated from Yale, he enlisted in the Marines, was commissioned a second lieutenant, and sent to the South Pacific. Being a "follow me, men" leader, he personally went after a machine-gun nest that was killing his men, and got himself shot across the chest, nearly fatally.
His name was Paul Moore. In later life he became Episcopal Bishop of New York, and seemed to me to be a really good man. Turns out that his family owned Bankers Trust. The point, however, was how everyone came together for the common good during the war, despite differences as great as those between Bishop Moore and the woman from Appalachia.
The ultimate example of such noblesse oblige was Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself -- and it earned him near-universal condemnation from much of upper-crust America as "a traitor to his class." And yet it was his efforts, more than those of any other man, which prevented a violent revolution in the United States during 1933. We were *that close* to the edge, especially after the collapse of the banking system just before FDR's inauguration.
As far as rock-throwing mobs go, I guess it depends on which side of the fence you're on -- and, in fact, "which side are you on?" was a common question of the time. Some see them as working people refusing any longer to be complicit in their own oppression. Read about the labor wars of 1936-37, in which private goon armies at the behest of the auto and steel companies wrought physical havoc, and you might see things in greater detail. Rocks and bottles were the very least of it.
"Don’t scab for the bosses,
Don’t listen to their lies.
Us poor folks haven’t got a chance,
Unless we organize."
-- Which Side Are You On? by Florence Reese, 1931
Last edited by LizzieMaine; 06-22-2012 at 12:26 PM.
The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error. -- William Jennings Bryan
I remember some news stories from 2008-09 when the economy went off the cliff of high end stores offering their customers the option of a plain bag instead of the usual fancy ones with their logo on it because the customers were being harassed and even physically assaulted by irate people.
Last edited by V.C. Brunswick; 06-22-2012 at 12:19 PM.
"I'm playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order." ...Eric Morecambe, OBE
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