Vintage Things That Will NOT Disappear In Your Lifetime

[HudsonHawk]

Analog clocks.

I recall seeing digital clocks going back more than half a century, and I’m guessing they were seen in certain industrial and professional contexts well before then.

But they certainly haven’t made the analog clock obsolete. Judging from their continuing ubiquity, I’m left to conclude that people generally prefer analog clocks over digital readouts. What’s at the heart of it, I suspect, is the knowing at a glance just where over the course of the day we find ourselves at a particular moment, as it provides a map of half the day and says “you are here.”

Is it that the analog clock is itself modeled on the sundial? It would seem so.

A few years ago there was a thread about public clocks...the kind you'd see on the corner of a building or on a pedestal in a public square or market. They used to be everywhere. I enjoyed that.

At any rate, I can't stand to read time digitally. I refuse to wear a digital watch, because when I read it's 7:12, I have to translate that in my mind to "the little hand is on the seven, the big hand on the twelve". Plus, I like mechanical things. I like seeing moving parts, wheels turning, buttons to be pushed, etc. It's the same reason I like turntables and reel-to-reel tape players.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
As I recall, it was often downtown jewelry stores that installed those typically two-sided sidewalk clocks on pedestals.

Some survive, but they aren’t nearly as common as they were.

As mentioned in other threads, the variations on an analog clock theme are infinite. And varied as they are, they still “read.” They’re among my favorite things.

 

[Trenchfriend]

I hope, it will not disappear!

Working class-aroma therapy = storebrand foambath Melissa & Orange.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^^
Once the novelty of aroma therapy wears off (which for me happens quickly), it‘s just annoying.

Same with incense. Back in the “hippie” era, the odor of incense seemed omnipresent. (I confess to having burned it myself on a few occasions.) I can still hear the Old Man (who was raised a Protestant) bellowing “This place smells like a ********* Catholic church!”

 

[Trenchfriend]

^^^^^^
Once the novelty of aroma therapy wears off (which for me happens quickly), it‘s just annoying.

Same with incense. Back in the “hippie” era, the odor of incense seemed omnipresent. (I confess to having burned it myself on a few occasions.) I can still hear the Old Man (who was raised a Protestant) bellowing “This place smells like a ********* Catholic church!”

Or Zino, which is just too powerful and roomfilling, for my taste.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

When I was a boy in the early '50s a bank in my small south Texas town had a clock with two faces mounted on its corner. Sometime around the turn of that century a drunk in a bar down the street took umbrage at its tolling and went out into the street and shot it. For a long time I wondered why that clock was missing the 5 on one of its faces.

 

[tonyb]

More on street clocks

https://www.seattle.gov/Documents/D...reservationBoard/MeetingDocuments/BBC_216.pdf

http://www.zombiezodiac.com/rob/ped/clock/

 

[Zombie_61]

This is the street clock in the "Uptown" area of my home town:

It has been hanging off of the northwest corner of this building since at least the early 1960s. The building itself, while I was growing up, was known as the "Bank of America" building simply because that was who occupied the ground floor. Eventually the bank moved into their own building and, after a dalliance with a craft beer brewery occupying the ground floor, suddenly someone appears to have remembered the building once housed the legal offices of former President Richard M. Nixon, and that sign seen in the lower right corner of the photo was attached to the building as well. I don't know what's occupying the ground floor of the building now, but the six floors above (as far as I know) have been rented out as office space for various businesses.

I have no idea how much longer that clock will remain, but the city itself (Whittier, California) has a sort of "quaint" history within southern California and they don't seem interested in modernizing that, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[tonyb]

…

I also have a pile of old Girl Scout calendars I use in my office, so I always know when Juliette Low's birthday is coming up.

Among my 1968 calendars is one produced by the Girl Scouts. It features obviously staged photos of Girl Scouts engaged in Girl Scout activities. I can’t say it’s among my favorite calendars, but I suspect that some people — women of a certain age, perhaps — would get a kick out of it.

Leap year calendars repeat only every 28 years. 1968 was a leap year, so is 2024. It’s quite doubtful I’ll be around when my 1968 calendars are “good” again.

The 1968 calendar I’ll hang on that nail on the kitchen wall in a couple weeks is a spiral-bound one from Texaco.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I also have a 1968 Texaco -- my grandfather ran a Texaco station for almost forty years, and the annual company calendar was a family institution at a time when every neighborhod business of any distinction gave out free calendars around Christmastime. Nobody would have ever thought of *buying* a calendar when you could walk into any gas station, neighborhood market, or bank and get one for nothing.

Now, of course, there are no neighborhood gas stations or neighborhood markets, and the only thing the bank gives you is grief.

 

[tonyb]

I also have a 1968 Texaco -- my grandfather ran a Texaco station for almost forty years, and the annual company calendar was a family institution at a time when every neighborhod business of any distinction gave out free calendars around Christmastime.

…

As a teenager I worked at a Texaco in the South Park neighborhood, just south of the Seattle city limits. A nice fellow named Lou Spurlock owned the place. He specialized in brake jobs. He had the lathes and the machinery for riveting new linings on brake shoes and a simple machine — basically a belt sander and a lever on a stationary base — for arcing the new linings to properly fit the drums.

Was there asbestos in those brake linings? You bet there was.

I was just the kid who worked the pump islands, so I suppose my exposure to airborne asbestos fiber was minimal. Sure hope so.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Now, the only thing the bank gives you is grief.

Since you mentioned it. I analyze global markets, and commercial real estate debt post-Covid pandemic
is primed to explode. This is a world wide phenomena. However the Federal Reserve may lower its fed funds rate, overall realty debt cannot practically be adequately served and the banks holding said paper are in serious straits. Unless the Fed can financially restructure necessary accommodation a nuclear device is set
to detonate inside American and world banks, collapsing all finance.

 

[tonyb]

I also have a 1968 Texaco -- my grandfather ran a Texaco station for almost forty years, and the annual company calendar was a family institution at a time when every neighborhod business of any distinction gave out free calendars around Christmastime. Nobody would have ever thought of *buying* a calendar when you could walk into any gas station, neighborhood market, or bank and get one for nothing.

Now, of course, there are no neighborhood gas stations or neighborhood markets, and the only thing the bank gives you is grief.

This one, maybe?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yep, that's the one. The chorines in raincoats were featured on the Jack Benny TV specials that Texaco was sponsoring at the time. The commercials featured Jack trying to buy his gas one gallon at a time from an attendant who turned out to be Dennis Day.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^^
I just looked it up on YouTube.

“If you’re not Dennis Day, how do you know I’m Jack Benny?”

”Who else would buy one gallon of gas?”

 

[Trenchfriend]

Good old "fresh" choco milk in the glass bottle.

 

[tonyb]

A podcast called Detours is produced by the same crew that does Antiques Roadshow on PBS. The podcast typically runs a half hour, give or take, and revisits an appraisal seen on the TV show.

The most recent episode centers on a 1917 calendar for the Boston Red Sox. It features photos of many of the players (including one George Herman Ruth, in his pre-Yankee days) and advertising for the Bunker Hill Brewing Co. By the next year, both the Babe and Bunker Hill Brewing would be gone.

The podcast host says the calendar’s rarity (it‘s the only known survivor) is due in large part to calendars getting thrown away once their year is expired, seeing how they're of no use at that point.

He might be right in that most calendars do get tossed early in January, typically, and that that likely accounts for this particular calendar’s rarity. But it is certainly untrue that expired calendars are of no use. I and at least a couple other visitors to this forum keep stacks of past years’ (way past, some of them) calendars to reuse AS CALENDARS when the current year’s days and dates agree with them. It’s been my habit for the past six years, and it’s a habit I expect to continue through my remaining time on the sunny side of the sod.

EDIT: In fairness to the podcast host, it should be noted that on closer examination the calendar in this case appears to be of the “tear-off” type, meaning that each month is on a separate sheet stapled to the backing image. So only one month is still attached. So no, it wouldn’t be of much utility as a calendar.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^^
FWIW, the 1917 Red Sox calendar — for which its owner, a lifelong Red Sox fan, paid $250 on a whim and then paid some undisclosed amount to have framed — sold at auction for $24K.

I am once again reminding my lovely missus that should I croak before she does (which is likely) not to let my various collections of antique and vintage paper — posters, magazines, sales brochures, crate labels, calendars, post cards, etc. — go cheap. Sell ’em by the each and then go buy yourself something nice.