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  1. J

    If I had to pick one girl from the golden era

    Agreed. Penny was probably the most underrated babe (and for the longest time) in all of Hollywood. A real stunner.
  2. J

    Disneyland 1955

    Lordie, Lordie, how I wanted to go to Disneyland when I was seven years old! It was always the star of the Disneyland TV show, and featured heavily in the Mickey Mouse Club most of the time. But my family lived in Pennsylvania, and money was not that easily come by for us. I never did get...
  3. J

    Swing girls

    The movie is very good, too.
  4. J

    Christmas Decor

    Maybe so, but A Christmas Story (and the Jean Shepherd stories on which it's based) was set in the Thirties, not the Fifties.
  5. J

    LA golden Era mystery complete with time capsule

    I'm glad someone noticed that.
  7. J

    Black armbands for mourning... when did that stop?

    I don't think you'll ever find out, because I don't think it was ever a uniform thing in all parts of the United States. The earliest funeral I can remember was in 1951, and no one was wearing any black armbands. That was in the coal country of Eastern Pennsylvania. It may have been more...
  8. J

    Decline of the Blue Box

    I do, and I think you're right about the date. I always thought the new color scheme looked gaudy. In my town, at least, they were red, white and blue in three horizontal bands from the top down. The all-blue boxes didn't come till much later.
  9. J

    "What the Great Depression Did to Culture"

    This has been a most interesting discussion. The things that annoy you folks also get under my own skin, but it's good to see them all discussed so eruditely. I work for a large university, so I see this up close and ugly all the time.
  10. J

    20s Revival in the 50s?

    As I recall, both Teresa Brewer and the Maguire Sisters both started their careers with Twenties-revival music.
  11. J

    Circa-1949-1952 Pontiac sighting

    What's especially bad about it is that it's obviously deteriorating. If it were part of someone's collection, it wouldn't be returning to its component elements the way it is.
  13. J

    The fall of the phone

    I can top that. I was at a funeral, and during the service, some idiot's cell phone started buzzing away. He fumbled around from pocket to pocket, and when he finally found the phone, he didn't just turn it off, he had to answer it and tell the caller that he couldn't reply just now. As for...
  14. J

    favorite cars of the golden era

    I love those GM postwar fastbacks. Our family car when I was a kid was a '51 Chevy fastback two-door. The Buick and Pontiac versions were even slicker. I wish there were more GM fastbacks available in 1:18 scale.
  15. J

    Vintage Magazines?

    Since I collect (and use) antique cameras, photo magazines from the 1935-1955 period are my favorite. But I also have Life, Collier's and a few workshop-fantasy magazines of the Science & Mechanics variety from the same period.
  16. J

    Life as it was lived then

    You're probably right. Wearing rings of any kind was frowned upon by mechanics in the Fifties, since getting zapped by a jolt from the battery or coil would turn it into a wraparound branding iron in less than a second. I don't know if today's mechanics still avoid rings or not.
  17. J

    Life as it was lived then

    My father wore his wedding band for over forty years, until he got a groove around the ring finger of his left hand -- he never took it off. The decision was taken out if his hands (no pun intended) in the late Seventies, when he took a bad injury to his left hand, and the ring had to go...
  19. J

    LA in the 1940's

    "Strawberries?" Never heard that one before. I'll have to remember that.
  20. J

    A truely unique photo.

    Link-and-pin couplers were horribly dangerous, and it wasn't at all unusual for railroad men to be missing a couple of fingers. When the knuckle coupler was finally introduced and made standard (around 1890), it was a huge advance in safety. For those who aren't aware, here are some photos...
  21. J

    'Unrestored' copy of first Superman comic book for sale

    Sure is. Along with my other superhero comics, all of them worth big bucks today, my mother tossed a #1 Doctor Solar. Which is rather strange, considering that she was a superhero-comic reader herself, when she was a kid. She often told me about the Doll Man comics she used to buy.
  22. J

    Best vintage camera for the starting enthusiast?

    I'll second the advice about getting an Argus C3. I have collected and used vintage 35mm cameras for years, and a 1939 C3 was the first of my collection. I still use it to this day. Other candidates would be the Kodak Signet 35 (make sure the mirror in the rangefinder hasn't gone clear...
  23. J

    Card Parties

    Really? I never knew that. My mother taught me to play Five Hundred when I was a kid. I guess it makes sense, since Granddad was a carpenter, and definitely a worker. It was Dad who taught me how to play Gin rummy. I enjoyed the game, but was never very good at it.

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