Our own vintage town

LizzieMaine said:

Our Vintage Town will have a Gas Works, located on the edge of town in a district populated by roughnecks, bullyboys, toughs, and hoods. Those who violate town discipline will be taken across the tracks and dumped out behind the Gas Works, where the Gas House Boys will show them the error of their ways.

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I hope the greyhound track will be nearby, for the 'wide-boys' and the 'doggy-boys'.

Here's one building:





(that's where I work.. [size=-2]for now, that is[/size])
It was built in late 1920s, and early 1930s, for the sole purpose of being the "It" building: headquarters of municipalities. And it still is, and it still looks the same as in the postcards. Ahh..

David Conwill said:

Perhaps Tom and I can run the junkyard. And I'm not thinking just cars - appliances, tools, perhaps even architectural salvage.

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Hey David, I was theoretically rooting around in your fantasy junkyard and came a cross an imaginary one of these:




Good ol'-fashioned public transit, anybody? I'll drive. All farebox contributions go to buying rail and wire to put this motorman (and anyone else wanting to serve our town's non-driving public) back behind a proper electric railway controller!



In real life, I've been wishing for one of these Ford "Crackerboxes" ever since I discovered that the cute little buses existed. Ah, it's nice to dream...


-Steven

I'm all for light rail. And I heartily appreciate the poetic justice in using bus fares to build it.

AtomicEraTom said:

Also, while wrenching on cars. Fedoras are no good for that!

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How about the old "welding beanie" with a popular oil brand advertised on it. A lot of guys around here wore those in the garage.

FountainPenGirl said:

How about the old "welding beanie" with a popular oil brand advertised on it. A lot of guys around here wore those in the garage.

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Now that's Style.

I really do like that idea!

David Conwill said:

Perhaps Tom and I can run the junkyard. Several acres of rescued pre-Johnson Administration treasures. Most beyond restoration but all good candidates to donate parts for the repair and maintenance of their luckier contemporaries.

And I'm not thinking just cars - appliances, tools, perhaps even architectural salvage.

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David Conwill said:

Perhaps Tom and I can run the junkyard. Several acres of rescued pre-Johnson Administration treasures. Most beyond restoration but all good candidates to donate parts for the repair and maintenance of their luckier contemporaries.

And I'm not thinking just cars - appliances, tools, perhaps even architectural salvage.

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Pre-Johnson era?

Golly, that's a bit limiting, don't you think?

I'd Suggest that you advance the cut off age of your junk up at least to the Harding or even the Cooledge administration. Not much pre-Johnson stuff left, we were a much smaller nation and our industrial machine had it yet hit its stride. Of course, Eastlake had yet to publish his "Hints on Household Taste" in the days of old Andy Johnson, so perhaps it was a rosier day indeed!

I don't remember seeing this anywhere.

Does our vintage town have a barbershop yet? With the spinning candy-pole and the boater-wearing quartet? Hot-water cutthroat shaves, haircuts, shoe-polishing. I honestly can't remember the last time I saw a shoe-polisher locally. The last time I saw one at all, I was in the Burlington Arcade, in London.

Shangas said:

I don't remember seeing this anywhere.

Does our vintage town have a barbershop yet? With the spinning candy-pole and the boater-wearing quartet? Hot-water cutthroat shaves, haircuts, shoe-polishing. I honestly can't remember the last time I saw a shoe-polisher locally. The last time I saw one at all, I was in the Burlington Arcade, in London.

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I suppose we could use our own version of Floyd the crazy barber.
The local shoe repair people around here will also polish shoes. Come to think of it, do we have a shoe repair guy already?

I didn't read the whole thread but would like to apply for the job of one of the old guys who sits on the bench in front of the post office. If those spots are taken how about town drunk, or village idiot?

If I have to go to work I could run a fix it shop or help Tom and Dave at the junk yard.

Stanley Doble said:

If those spots are taken how about town drunk, or village idiot?

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[video=youtube;bhDJxEPRDek]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhDJxEPRDek[/video]

dhermann1 said:

I've always imagined this little town of ours with chronologically progressing neighborhoods. One end of town, actually maybe a suburb, could live in 1910 or so, then when you hit the city limits it's 1919. The heart of town is solidly set in 1939 or 1940 (so we can accurately have our equivalent of Higbee's for Ralphie to visit Santa), and then by the time you reach the other end of town it's about 1963.
As I've always said, as one who lived through some of the "Golden Era", it really stops dead on Nov. 22, 1963. (If you don't know that date, then you're a LOT younger than I am.)
Maybe the suburbs at the other end can stretch to about 1960 or 70.

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There is no need for that. Different eras in the Golden Era mixed without comment. Older men continued to wear wing collars, pince nez glasses and Congress gaiters (elastic sided boots) of the 1910 era up to 1950 or so. Twenty year old cars, a few even older, were in common use. Some people filled their houses with good furniture and never replaced it. Others, who did not have a lot of money, bought good used furniture. And of course there were antique collectors at least as far back as the twenties.

You could set a time period of, say, 1910 to 1960 and let everyone pick their own era. I don't like things too regimented.

jamespowers said:

That is a good point. They only problem with the Stanley was that you had to plan your trips about half an hour in advance to build up enough steam to use it.
Stanley's used gas but only enough to heat the water in the boiler. I wonder what kind of mileage they got. [huh]

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Stanleys burned kerosene. Nice, cheap kerosene. The gas burner was only there to heat up the kerosene burner. It burned naptha gas like a Coleman stove.

It did take half an hour to start a Stanley from dead cold but if you left the pilot light on overnight it only took five or ten minutes to get up enough steam to get moving. The Chicago Stanley dealer invented a gas burner with a rubber hose that could be connected to a gas pipe from the house, and left in the boiler to keep it warm.

Fuel consumption about 20% heavier than a gasoline car of similar size. Say, 15 MPG. But of course, kerosene was cheaper than gas.

Stanley Doble said:

There is no need for that. Different eras in the Golden Era mixed without comment. Older men continued to wear wing collars, pince nez glasses and Congress gaiters (elastic sided boots) of the 1910 era up to 1950 or so. Twenty year old cars, a few even older, were in common use. Some people filled their houses with good furniture and never replaced it. Others, who did not have a lot of money, bought good used furniture. And of course there were antique collectors at least as far back as the twenties.

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In 1946, over half of all cars on the road in the United States were made before 1935, and most other consumer goods were showing their age as well. Golden Era America wasn't a world of shiny, dazzling chrome-plated highly-polished newness. It was a world of shabby peeling paint, dented fenders, patched tires, ad-libbed repairs, and lots and lots of rust.

In the Depression, most people didn't have the time or the money to buy things new. So I expect that the average household would've had furniture and fittings and soforth, which had been around since the turn of the century, if not earlier. In Australia, for example, the unemployment rate at the height of the depression was appalling. If I recall rightly, 1 in 3 was out of work. So the chances that homes were full of brand-spanking-new items would be rather small, I think.

"In regard to the present work I must disclaim at once all intentions of
trying to do anything so ridiculously easy as writing about a real place
and real people. Mariposa is not a real town. On the contrary, it is
about seventy or eighty of them. You may find them all the way from Lake
Superior to the sea, with the same square streets and the same maple
trees and the same churches and hotels, and everywhere the sunshine of
the land of hope.

Similarly, the Reverend Mr. Drone is not one person but about eight or
ten. To make him I clapped the gaiters of one ecclesiastic round the
legs of another, added the sermons of a third and the character of a
fourth, and so let him start on his way in the book to pick up such
individual attributes as he might find for himself. Mullins and Bagshaw
and Judge Pepperleigh and the rest are, it is true, personal friends
of mine. But I have known them in such a variety of forms, with such
alternations of tall and short, dark and fair, that, individually,
I should have much ado to know them. Mr. Pupkin is found whenever a
Canadian bank opens a branch in a county town and needs a teller. As for
Mr. Smith, with his two hundred and eighty pounds, his hoarse voice,
his loud check suit, his diamonds, the roughness of his address and
the goodness of his heart,--all of this is known by everybody to be a
necessary and universal adjunct of the hotel business.

The inspiration of the book,--a land of hope and sunshine where little
towns spread their square streets and their trim maple trees beside
placid lakes almost within echo of the primeval forest,--is large
enough. If it fails in its portrayal of the scenes and the country that
it depicts the fault lies rather with an art that is deficient than in
an affection that is wanting.

Stephen Leacock. McGill University, June, 1912."





This thread puts me in mind of Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, Stephen Leacock's homage to life in small town Canada ca.1910. If you haven't read it you have a treat coming.

Recommended reading

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3533

Recently made into a movie by the CBC.

http://www.cbc.ca/books/2012/02/watch-sunshine-sketches-of-a-little-town.html

A brief taste, trailer for the movie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHohkL09s-U

I think that's a fair and accurate assumption. Even when I was a kid, many of the older family farms were still full of furnishings which were original to the 1870-1900 homes that speckled the countryside.

Shangas said:

In the Depression, most people didn't have the time or the money to buy things new. So I expect that the average household would've had furniture and fittings and soforth, which had been around since the turn of the century, if not earlier. In Australia, for example, the unemployment rate at the height of the depression was appalling. If I recall rightly, 1 in 3 was out of work. So the chances that homes were full of brand-spanking-new items would be rather small, I think.

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LizzieMaine said:

In 1946, over half of all cars on the road in the United States were made before 1935, and most other consumer goods were showing their age as well. Golden Era America wasn't a world of shiny, dazzling chrome-plated highly-polished newness. It was a world of shabby peeling paint, dented fenders, patched tires, ad-libbed repairs, and lots and lots of rust.

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Your excellent above observation was one of the aspects of that film 'Road to Perdition' that seem to give it that real honesty and authenticity feel.

LizzieMaine said:

In 1946, over half of all cars on the road in the United States were made before 1935, and most other consumer goods were showing their age as well. Golden Era America wasn't a world of shiny, dazzling chrome-plated highly-polished newness. It was a world of shabby peeling paint, dented fenders, patched tires, ad-libbed repairs, and lots and lots of rust.

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Good points all. It makes sense that after The Great Depression and the subsequent rationing of WWII, People had to make do with what they had for Quite a long time. Out here, rust is not so much a problem but Patched tires, dented fenders et al were around. It was after the war that the consumer society took off due to pent up demand.