When we lived outside of Indianapolis, my father would take us to the Indy 500 Time Trials. He would have his 8mm movie camera with him. Some of the best shots looked like Nancy's above, taken in the parking lot as we exited the venue. I have no idea why the old man kept the camera rolling out there. Maybe he was trying to burn up the rest of the reel so he could get it developed. The parking lot cars were a lot more interesting than the motorized soapbox derby cars going 'round & 'round the track all afternoon long.
On new years day in 1950 I was 3. Life was not complicated. Until school started. Recess was the hard part. Two nasty contraptions on our elementary school playground. If you fell into the middle of this thing I think you would have been ground up like sausage. The boys would get this one going so fast you would fly off if you could ever get on in the first place. Besides, they both made me dizzy. ..
Have you ever wondered why cards today are called Bicycle cards? A common site among bike riding kids in the 1950s'.
Pin Curls I think these are making a comeback with long hair. Using Bobby Pins (Marilyn Monroe) Mansplaining the "sculptured" curl with clips
Nice Bike! I wonder how long it would last if left un attended, like at a movie theater or store before someone stole it. I say that because back in the early fifties I was playing football for the church team and I would ride my bike to the church and drag it up a flight of half stairs to sit it in front of the Pastors door. My ride would pick me up there at the church and we would go off for about two hours of practice at a nice well groomed field several miles away. No lights so we practiced just up until sundown. I would get unloaded there again at the church and drag the bike down the stairs and then on to home. I often wonder how long that bike of mine would last today ! Now the church is gone and a large department store is sitting there. They kept the main chapel but a half a city block was razed. I have to say several years ago I was sad to see how poor the state of the church was then. At one time it was a very nice church and of course like all churches once the main members are gone so goes the church, unless the church union or main church keeps the bills paid. Some have survived 85 years in Houston before finally completely dying. I forgot to say I never owned a chain and lock for the bike. Today that would be laughed at.
Talking about bike thieves I grew up in Brooklyn and you had to watch your bike, keep it inside when you could. One summer day a new kid showed up on my block, I didn't know him he's a few years older than me, but he "took" to me, I think he likes hearing me talk about the Stars and the planets. I found out he had a reputation of being a tough guy and a hoodlum. After hanging out for a couple of weeks he asked if I could walk him home he had to get something I said sure. We got to his apartment his mom was home there's was no greetings he walked into his bedroom, I waited at the door. When he came out he said I want to show you something, he took me down the hall, to a door with a staircase that led to a basement. When we got down there I was taken back, he had rows and rows of bicycles what he had stolen or so he said. He seemed very proud of his collection I did not want to bust his bubble and tell him he was out of his mind, immediately I knew I had to disassociate with him but had to do it very carefully not to offend him. We did eventually drift apart and I got word at the end of the summer that he got caught robbing a gas station, that's the last I heard about bubbie.
In the 1950s, and on into the 1960s, we never locked our doors, and I doubt that dad ever took the keys out of his car, at least not at. home. The lock that was on our house door took a skeleton key, which could be purchased at any hardware store. Even when we were gone for two weeks, the doors weren't locked. My cousins never knocked when they came over. Of my three cousins who I hung out with the most, since they were my age, my cousin Jerry's was the only house that I felt comfortable going into without knocking, though. My uncle Paul seemed kind of mean sometimes, although I can't think of anything he said or did to me that was mean, except that his kids had to work a lot, and. he'd put me to work sometimes if I came over. My dad never did that, at least not without paying us, so Calvin would usually come over to my house. Uncle Erling, Jerry's dad, would put me to work too, but it was fun working for him. I rarely went into my cousin Robert's house. They had a lot of cats, and I think he was embarrassed about the mess in the house, so he would meet us outside and we'd go somewhere else. Mostly, my cousins met at my house, and on the rare occasions that we were going to hang around a house, it would usually be my house. For me, the 1950s weren't so much about any of the 1950s memorabilia, since most everything we owned in the 1950s was made in the 1940s or earlier. Plus, I lived in the country, so the 50s weren't about soda shops or movie theaters. They were about woods, rivers, streams, lakes, and abandoned houses that we could explore. The 1950s were about building shacks and camps in the woods, Cub Scouts, shooting guns, making go-karts out of old washing machine motors, and unsuccessful attempts at making bombs out of anything imaginable. In the 1950s, I suppose we did pretty much the same things that kids did in Wallace during the 1940s, but without the restraints brought about by the war. Actually, I suppose a lot of that was in the 1960s, since I was pretty young in the 1950s. I think the go-karts were in the 1960s and, although I shot guns several times before I was ten, I didn't have my own gun until I was twelve, and that was the 1960s.
In 1956 my Grandmother who was raising me needed some serious surgery that would take several months to heal so I was sent to San Diego to live with my Mother and Brother and two Sisters. We lived in an upstairs apartment right next to the interstate in Golden Hills so I think it must have been I-5. There was a steep canyon to our right and the brother and I would go down into the canyon and play and we would go directly under I-5 and it would be like every 5 or 10 minutes before you heard a car pass overhead. The school I went to was named Roosevelt and it was strange going to school in California because they didn't seem to be teaching anything. We had lunch outside and the play ground was directly across the street in a fenced lot. So I spent most of the year and finally I was put on a train back to Houston. I remember it well because I fell asleep and woke up freezing to death when they disconnected from our car and just left us there for another train to hook up to us. It was in Arizona and probably Phoenix. Every time I watch that movie Bad Day at Black Rock I remember that train ride. I had 5 bucks and I ordered a ham sandwich and a bag of potato chips, it took almost all of that 5 bucks so I learned early to never take the train. It would be 1968 before I ever returned to California other than Infantry training at Fort Ord in March 66, then it was 1974 I finally moved there and worked a while so I could spend time with my family. The 68 visit I got to my Mothers house in San Diego on Christmas Eve around 10:30 after flying 16 hours with one stop over in Hawaii. A month later I was on my way back to the airfield and we stopped on Mid Way Island to refuel. What a trip that was, nothing but goonie birds there.