SPRING - 1950

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Rat Rod

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spring1950.jpg
 
Nice Silver King Hex Tube
 
That cool on so many levels. I love looking at the details. The guy in the back with the popsicle, the thing on his handlebars, I'm trying to determine if that is a compass, a suicide knob or a bell that I've never seen. To me it looks like an automobile suicide knob.
 
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Cool gas pumps and girls in jeans, wow! When I was in junior high school girls weren’t allowed to wear jeans to school.


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Fudge sickle and steering knob I think.


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Simple times before I was born. Not a cell phone in sight. Carburetors and points to make the cars run. No need to double the number of wrenches due to the metric system. But then the same could probably be said about 1963 when I arrived. LOL
 
And somehow all of the females already appear to be in their 70s. :oops:

Probably moms...20’s-30’s rugged females back in the day. Maybe even sisters to boys.


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thanks for posting that photo (the kids). so good. wonder what it was like growing up then.
 
Dear Mr. Honcho:
The amazing quality of that photo made me suspicious, because I'm used to tacky snapshots from that era. So I checked on the copyright holder indicated on the photo, Dave Gelinas. He specializes in collecting vintage photos (1940's - 1960's) with emphasis on cars. So it appears to be authentic and very cool.
 
It wasn't the quality of the photo, they've been taking quality shots for ever...
street-photos-new-york-1950s-vivian-mayer-13.jpg

What got me was the vibrant colors! He must have scanned the negatives directly, no fade from 70 years of daylight and handling the way someone's "cheesy snap" might.
usa-vintage-50s-color-photography-14-5a82dbc173e84__700.jpg
 
Had a view master. It was like 3D, and yes, the colors did 'pop'.

I'm guessing this is a 'biker gang' of older girls; and maybe the two boys facing the camera too. The girl on bent knee next to the Silver King already has a job, and can afford the cream of the crop. The two younger boys (with their backs to the camera) are in awe of the bicycle, and vow someday to have a job that will afford them such a luxury.

My mom was 18 in 1950, and those hairstyles did make them look older. She looked like she was 30 something when she got married at 22. I was born a year later, and boy, did she age quickly after that! :21:
 
Even within my lifetime, I've noticed that people are visually aging slower. This isn't the best example, but I was looking up Richard Kuklinski, a hitman for various NY mafia families, and landed on an associate, Roy DeMeo, who was killed at 43—my age. Dude looked like he was almost 70. Sure, that's the kind of life that ages one faster, but it got me thinking about this very thing. I have a portrait of my maternal grandparents from their wedding. My grandmother was 10 years younger than my grandfather and in her early 20s at the time. He looked older than his age then, but she looks at least as old as he did and she was considered attractive in her day . . . that sounds way worse than I intend it. I just mean that you looked a lot older, ghost of Memere!—it was the hairstyle! He caught up to and passed the aging of time, though—he eventually looked young for his age and made it to 103 (too long, in his estimation, and he was a generally optimistic kind of guy, but having retired at 65 and stopped driving in his 80s, then outliving my grandmother and mother and all his younger siblings, I think he'd had more than enough).
 

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