Keeping Watch for More than Fifty Years

Though she no longer sits at the top of a Christmas tree for two weeks every year, this German angel has been keeping watch in my family since the mid 1950s. I leave her out year-round, and she now adorns the cone-shaped metal "horn" of my Edison Gem cylinder record player. She keeps company with the seated china-doll to the right, dating to the 1890s. That little vintage doll wears a non-original red and navy blue cotton dress sewn by my grandmother in the 1920s. She updated the aging doll for a new generation of little girl to play with—my mother. In the upper left is a gold and white 1:24 scale 1957 Studebaker Golden Hawk, and a lavender 1:43 1953 Packard Caribbean convertible with a broken windshield. The little turquoise plastic jewelry container is an early 1950s piece and holds a few period pearl rings. I love having little boxes and containers everywhere, with beautiful little things in them to explore and become reacquainted with every so often! Just peeking into the photograph at the lower left, is a gray and red 1:24 Duesenberg SSJ supershort wheelbase LaGrande roadster, a scale model of Clark Gable's famous sports car of the Thirties.

Have a great day today, however you spend it and with whomever you spend it with! I think I can smell my scallion pancakes and shrimp egg foo yung already, lol! I may have more photos to post later in the day.

• Still fun to look at, this is a post from last Christmas, with a quick walk through my 1954 holiday TV Guide. Click to peruse this vintage magazine and smile!