Some of the most popular posts have been remembering cars that my family drove during the 50’s and 60’s.  In those days cars were personal and distinctive quite unlike today’s peas in a pod cars.  In the 50’s you didn’t ever wonder about whether a car was a Chevy or a Cadillac.  I have listed links to some of the most popular below.

1953 Chevy Bel Air Sport Coupe

1954 Buick Roadmaster

Pink Cadillac
Image by kevwhelan via Flickr

1958 Edsel

1959 Chevy Impala Convertible

Those were the days

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EamesHouseThe Eames House in Pacific Palisades is another icon of modern design. It was completed in 1949 but belongs with other examples of mid-century modern that we associate with the 50’s. Built using off the shelf parts with very little pretense and no ornamentation, it was home for Charles and Raye Eames from Christmas eve 1949 until their deaths in the 70’s. Today you can visit the outside but there is only rare access to the interior.


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An iconic piece of 50’s stye that is still a star today.

hero_eames_lounge_1

“The first Eames lounge chair and ottoman was made as a gift for Billy Wilder, the director of “Some Like It Hot,” “Irma La Douce,” and “Sunset Blvd.” The heritage of the chair goes back to the molded plywood chairs pioneered by the Eameses in the 1940s. Charles Eames said his goal for the chair was that it be “a special refuge from the strains of modern living.”

It was my early aspiration to own several classic pieces of furniture.  The Eames was pretty much as far as we got.  Our’s is the real thing from Herman Miller with rosewood veneer.  Rosewood is no longer available – not because you can’t get rosewood – but because Rosewood is not farmed and therefore using it is classified by Greenies as bad. If I ever want a second chair for cozy fireside chats with my wife, I will have to hit the resale marketplace.  One works out beautifully because the chair is a piece of sculpture that owns the room.  Two is overkill.

Charles and Ray Eames talk about design and introduces the Eames chair on the Home Show (a popular show about living in the 50’s – somewhere between Oprah and Martha Stewart in today’s terms.)

Good Times!


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1958 Lincoln – the Star of the Fabulous 50’s

Lincoln2My father followed our failed 1958 Edsel with another Ford product- the flagship of the Ford Motor Company, a Lincoln.  This was the most magnificent automobile – in my humble opinion- he ever owned.  It was huge, substantial with a cavernous interior.  It had magnificent broad shoulders and big protrusions at every corner.  You were never in doubt about the location of any extremity on that car.  It wasn’t lithe.  It rode more like a boat – or perhaps a cruise ship but driving that car, I always felt like the center of attention – pretty good for a nerdy 17 year old kid.  Ours was navy blue- a more fitting color than the white in the picture giving it an imposing presence.  This was the car I drove to my Senior Prom.  This car hauled my stuff from Kansas City to Chicago for college and brought me back for summer.  My father was on a roll in the late 50’s because our other car was my runner-up favorite.

I was heartbroken when, during my second year at college, my folks told me that the Lincoln had burst into flames as they crossed an intersection after a stop sign.  They escaped unhurt but the car was a total loss.  I was disappointed when my father replaced it with an ordinary Cadillac. He never said but perhaps living with this beautiful beast was not as pleasant as I remember.


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The 50’s were a time of optimism.  Just a decade past World War II, America could do anything and we weren’t about to be subtle .  One example was the exuberant tail fins that appeared, flourished and then vanished. 

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Pickup

We moved to our own farm in 1955 or so.  We had owned it for a while but my grandparents lived there while we still lived on the farm my father managed for his boss from his day job in the city.  Somewhere along the way we acquired a pickup truck, useful for hauling our Shetland ponies around as well as the ocassional pig or lamb.  It was a stick so I had to learn how to drive it although I don’t remember ever driving it on the road,  just around the farm.  It was several years old when we got it and it definitely wasn’t cool.  Ours was green, pretty close to the classic Jaguar green but withoug the cache.

I never gave much thought to how we grew up but clearly we were living some fantasy of my father.  He used to talk about someday getting a ’spread’ by which he meant a lot of grazing land to run cattle.  He would sometimes talk about it mostly during road trips or driving vacations.  When I think back on my childhood, thanks to my father, I had some remarkable experiences which my kids never got in the ritzy neighborhood, we chose for them to grow up in.  My older son drives a pickup now but you would never get him to haul a hog in it.

Life is a trip and you never know when you are in the moment what might really matter.


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It is easy to get nostaligic about the 50’s and 60′ .

Beaver

Since they were my high school and college years, I have many wonderful memories of those times.  Check them out.  Maybe you have some nostalgia to share as well.

Architecture

Eero Saarinen – the St. Louis Arch

Paul Rudolph – The Art and Architecture Building at Yale

Cars

1961 Chevy Corvair

1968 Chevy II

1954 Buick Roadmaster

1958 Edsel

1959 Chevrolet Bel Air

Lifestyle

Movies – the first one is from the 50’s

Other

UCLA Business School

The Farmall Cub Tractor


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farmalcubIn high school, we moved to an eighty acre farm of our own.  I got a room of my own and a new friend – our Farmall Cub.  During the summers, you would often find me mowing our pastures (mowing cuts down weeds and lets the grass grow better).  About 40 of the acres were pasture, so this wasn’t a trivial pastime.  I picked this picture because it shows the type of mower we had.  Ours looke pretty much like this except it was red.  It had a big rotary blade and you could raise or lower it to change the height of the mowed grass or to make it easier to get through places where the weeds were very high.

This was my first motorized vehicle and I got pretty comfortable even on slopes like the dam for our pond.  In those days (late 50’s) nobody even thought of carrying music players with you and though we were just beginning to see tiny (5″x7″) transistor radios.  Even an ipod might not be effective on a Cub because it makes a lot of noise.  In those days we didn’t expect to be entertained every moment of the day so I was content to daydream as I mowed.

I can always claim that I was meditating.


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