Monday, March 5, 2012

3-5-12 the mystery car, still a bit mysterious. And trees.

re: the Black and White Session answers:
So, it was 1974, August to be exact, and Dad was taking a photography class at San Jacinto, with an assignment for black and white, hence the roll of film.

Correction: Mom did not make the Raggedy Ann bedroom set; she purchased it from J.C. Penneys, who also, I recall, had an excellent candy counter back in the day. And I do remember Mom sewing me dresses, Peter Rabbit and Snoopy jumpers come to mind. Plus, she kept all her sewing stuff in a set of drawers made out of cardboard with every drawer a different, bright color: orange, blue, yellow. I loved to pull them open and find the felt and googly eyes and instructions for the stuffed animal project somewhere inside.

And...


I am asleep in the back seat of the car Mom and Dad purchased just after they were married, a 1969 Ford Galaxie 500 LTD, which was never equipped with rear seat belts, so as much as that looks like a seat belt to me, it's a mystery item.


I was amused by the features they chose to highlight, three about the wheels/tires? Oooh, and VINYL interior!



What I can't quite work out is the difference between the Ford LTD and the Ford Galaxie 500 LTD, if there was any. The "LTD" label seems to have been used among a variety of models as a trim line, but looking at the copy of the 1969 Ford Estimator, it has the LTD listed as its own model, but not attached to the Galaxie name.

(I have to fill in amounts and ADD them myself? Before the days of the online shopper, to be sure.)

(high waters anyone?)

I did find the Galaxie 500 XL that features the same front grille work and hidden headlights of the LTD:








The car that followed this one was the 1972 Grand Torino, which I have only the vagest recollection of. It was stolen from the Gulfgate Mall while we were at the movies watching Old Yeller. I have just a single moment of memory of that, which was the confusion about why we had to go back inside the movie theater after walking out to the cars. I don't think I understood the concept of stolen at that point.



Dad scanned and sent me this one this morning:


Having never seen this picture before today, there are several things that thrill me besides the car. There is Julie's house to the left of ours, and Shelly's house on the far left. One more house down, Sissy's, and it would have been the quartet of girl houses captured on film. Sissy's house was also the boundary of my wandering alone in those days. There are the lawn chairs hanging so jauntily inside the garage, my bike parked on the other side of the driveway, and a tiny little sprig of a tree.

This is what that tree looked like when I last went back in 2009:


The tree in backyard, which is even taller? Below, right. 










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