Old Art O'Mine

The attic project has yielded a bunch of old art of mine, packed away during the last move, but unseen for years before that. The "cars" piece on the left dates to 1970-71, when I was 13-14, and shows five different models for my mythical "Delgiata" car company. They were all take-offs (early chops!) of current cars like the Barracuda, Super Bee and Cougar. The multicolored portrait at the right was done in college, a self-portrait. I wanted to capture my spirit and not so much the exterior facade, so I rendered it in everything but "flesh-tones" and brown hair. The piece in the background, flaking off in sheets, is all I have left of a set I painted for a college production of "Alice in Wonderland." This section was a parrot on a huge exotic-looking flower. I'm going to have to figure out a way of preserving what's left, probably a mixture of Elmer's glue and polyurethane.

B O N U S   P H O T O — A better view of the Cosmos this morning. Those cedar posts are eight-feet tall, and some of the stems are taller than they are.

British Car Show, Part 2

 Mid fifties Austin-Healey 100M in bright red. For a little more on this hot British sportscar, click over to this site.

MGA coupe, of undetermined vintage, lol. At first I thought it was a Twin-Cam coupe, but on second and third viewing, they weren't equipped with wire wheels. I think this is a 1600 coupe, a slightly more powerful version of the original 1500. For more on the MGA click here.

 

The engine of the black car above. Between the inexpensive digital camera, the very bright sun and who knows what else, the photo has a very blue sheen. I "fixed" if in Photoshop, dulling it back to a black, but as far as a photo goes, it was better blue, so I went back to the original. The alloy cylinder head says "JUDSON" which I believe is an aftermarket supercharger, but I'm not sure. Maybe Nigel can help with these cars! What I CAN say is that I absolutely adore these MGA coupes. The bodystyle is very appealing to me, the very close-coupled roof and roll-up windows making it more "my" type of car than the roadster.

The sole example of the then-popular "Spridget" series, the small convertible marketed as both an Austin Sprite and an MG Midget. This is one of the last of the Midgets before the raised-suspension rubber bumper versions, probably a '71 or '72 model.

The '69 Triumph TR6 wasn't in the show, but rather parked just outside the green. I've always loved this final iteration of the Michelotti TR4/5/250/6 sportscars. The lines were the cleanest to date, and while the US version was very detuned compared with the Euro versions, all of those parts are readily available today to make up for it. For more on the TR6, click here.

An early '60s Triumph TR3A. For more on these classic Brit sportscars click here. I couldn't find it by Googling recently, but I remember a photo of Walter Cronkite in his TR3 appearing in Road & Track I believe. TR3A info here.

These two TR3s were next to each other in the show. Their engines differed in details, but I couldn't exactly say why, lol. I'm hopelessly un-mechanical. I'll say this, you could eat your dinner off either one of them, they were polished and clean beyond belief.

Part 3 next, from an original Mini Clubman to a Zsa-Zsa Corniche.

My October Surprise: Tomatoes and 'Shrooms?

While most of the leaves have dried up and turned brown, I still have ripening fruit on three of my tomato plants. These are Celebrities, and I have Moskvitches and Brandywines on the vine. With the cooler days and nights, and the lower sun in the sky setting earlier in the afternoon, I'm not sure they'll all ripen, but I'm going to leave them on the plants until the very last day. I check the weather online everyday, and will pretty much know when the first frost is coming, and I'll go out and pick whatever is left. Fried Green Tomatoes, anyone?

I'm not a mycologist, and I don't even play one on TV, so I won't be ingesting these cute little Mushrooms. They're popping up all over the garden now that we're getting more rain and most of the vegetables have been pulled. Notice the leaves on the ground. Very few trees have turned color yet, almost none in fact, but I'm still seeing a lot of dead leaves blowing around. I hope it's not going to be one of those years where the leaves just drop instead of putting on a show first!

B O N U S   P H O T O — Not a tomato or mushroom, and this dahlia wasn't pink or blue for the post below, so it's a bonus photo today, lol. The centers are purple until they open up to a uniform cranberry color. I wish all of my dahlias had started flowering earlier, the variations in flowers on each plant this year is absolutely fascinating. I'm really going to try to save the corms over the winter. I'm going to pull them after the first killing frost, and keep them dry and cool (but not cold) in boxes filled with sphagnum moss. Hopefully they'll go dormant but not die and I can plant them next May 15th.

Pinks and Blues. In October? You Betcha! : )

The first week of October and my summer annuals are going strong. The nights are dipping into the high 40s now, but the days are still in the 60s and low 70s. My cutting garden doesn't understand it's about to end one of these days! I'm hoping for another three weeks before a killing frost, but we could have one any time now. The 8-day forecast seems just fine though. All of these photos, as is the norm at my blog, are clickable thumbnails, so enlarge and enjoy!

The morning glories are a deeper blue than before, and they're lasting longer during the day. The second set of glories is finally blooming, so the almost-bare veggie garden is bracketed in blue these days.

This geranium hasn't had a flower since July. It's lushly leaved, about 18 inches around and high, and just now throwing off multiple buds. I'll be bringing this in for the winter to save for next year. By this time of the year, most geraniums are leggy and not attractive, and this one is just beautifully compact and thick.

I call this photo "Cosmos or Butterflies?" Click on it to enlarge. The overexposed sky and trees obliterate the leaves and stems, and the Cosmos flowers just seem to be floating and flying freely. I would love to see this enlarged to perhaps an 8-foot wide mural. I think it would be gorgeous.

The bees love these glories. There is one in the center of the large bloom at the bottom. That's a bit of a red geranium at the lower left.

The Cosmos are multiplying daily and vary from a really nice pink, to a lavender, really subtle mixtures of magenta and cyan.

While not a great photograph, I included this to show the height of the flowers. The Cosmos in the back are more than 8-feet tall! Even the Zinnias are between 4- and 5-feet tall.

British Car Show Today on Our Town Green

Part 1: Jaguar

There was a British car show on our town green today. I was surprised at the number of cars there, at least 35. Most were in concours condition, or as close to concours as drivers get, I didn't see any trailers there. The Best-in-Show was the Wedgewood Blue XK120 Roadster, above.

The flawless interior and the classic DOHC inline 6 engine of this XK120. For more information about this famed and long-lived powerplant, click here.

An equally beautiful and desirable XK150 Coupe. I have Road & Track magazines from the 1950s and early 1960s, and Jaguar's full-page ads featured cars just like this, complete with wide whites. Elegant beyond belief, if you ask me! Grrrrrrr!

One of my personal favorites, the XJ12C, a mid '70s model, complete with period vinyl roof and pillarless construction. This car's silver metallic paint, black roof and red leather interior is just the way I'd like mine. The powerful 5.3 liter 12 cylinder engine would be icing on the cake!

Late '50s Jaguar Mark 1, in 3.4 Liter guise I believe. For more information, click here. These were the smaller of the two Jag saloons during that period, and eventually was developed into the Mark 2 of the early-mid sixties, one of the best sports saloons of the time.

"The greatest crumpet catcher of all time." 

—Henry N. Manny III, late, great auto journalist.

"The dumb blonde of sports cars." 

—Phil Hill, late, great race driver and author.

What else can be said about the Jaguar XK-E, or E Type, as it was also known that hasn't been written in a million magazine and newspaper articles? Whether it was an early 3.8 with glass covered headlights and recalcitrant Moss gearbox, or a late V12 with its awkward extended wheelbase, this car IS Jaguar pure and simple, the car that made Jaguar a household name throughout the world.

The Future is Here

The local Jaguar dealer brought three brand new models, the XK Coupe, the XF sport sedan, and the drop-dead gorgeous XJ sedan, in black above. This car has had its share of criticism since it was introduced last year, for its avant-garde C pillar treatment and its completely futuristic and nontraditional interior, but I'm here to say, that as soon as I saw it in person I was in love. Granted, in its black metallic livery, the black C pillar trim was nearly invisible, and the odd shut/cutline of the rear trunk almost disappeared, but the more I walked around it, the more I "got" the design. It's the future, with just the slightest nod to the past. It's forward-thinking, it's sleek, it looks like a million bucks going a million miles an hour, while sitting still, and I want one, I want one, I WANT ONE, lol. I'm completely sold on the C pillar and would take a long-wheelbase version in white, just to fully showcase the modern detailing. The design of this XJ is a gigantic F*** You to the established luxury car makers like Mercedes Benz, BMW and Lexus, with their too staid, or too forced styling these days. It's every bit as shocking and gorgeous as the XK-E was in 1961 if you ask me. Grace, Space and Pace incarnate. Now all I need is a spare $100K or so. Considering I turned in my spare change last week to buy groceries, I won't have to wait long, right? 

: )

Next: Part 2, The rest of the field of MGs, Triumphs, Austin-Healeys, and a few others.

What's On TV? (In November 1954)

TV Guide for the week of November 6-12, 1954, featured George Burns and Gracie Allen, the married pair of comedians at the top of their careers.

First interior spread for the cover story.

The end of the cover story on the left, and a page telling of the humorous gifts various stars had received from their fans.

A full-color spread touting the use of "stars" on TV dramas that season, including here, Helen Hayes, Fredric March, Claudette Colbert and Nancy Olsen.

Lucille Ball, dressed as Marilyn Monroe for an episode of her wildly popular TV show, shows I will still watch every time I find them on TV. The right side featured some TV news and the key to the listings following.

A typical listings page for the week's TV programming. I was especially amused by the small ad in the lower right corner for the next week's TV Guide, "Liberace's Mystery Woman, Unmasked! Read all about his favorite date, who she is, how they met...." I"m guessing it was his mother, rofl.

•  Also check out the 1954 Christmas TV Guide, here.

Appreciating the Flip Side

A "TEAR-SHEET" I SAVED IN MY YOUNGER DAYS — Sometimes, instead of saving an entire magazine or newspaper, I ripped out specific pages. Since we owned a new 1966 Fairlane 500XL in bright red, I'm sure that I saved this sheet for the ad of a red '67 Fairlane as it reminded me so much of ours. On the flip side is the cover for the March 25, 1967 issue of The Saturday Evening Post featuring the Mamas and the Papas. In hindsight, the ad for the car is really nothing special, but I adore the photo of the singing group. The colors used on the cover, and the pose and their clothes are so evocative of the sixties, I think I'd frame it on that side now if I was the framing type. (And yes, I'm pretty much ignoring the Vietnam War reference on the cover, although its "10 More Years" prediction would prove to be pretty damn close to coming true. The war wasn't technically over until 1975, fully eight years after this Post cover. 

NOTE  ON TYPOGRAPHY — One interesting aspect of the car ad though, is the typography of the tag line, "Show your stripes." Notice the very swinging-sixties font, and the use of capital and lower case letters in a non-traditional way: Randomly. The "y" and "r" in "your" are lower case, but the "R" in "Stripes" is capitalized, but the "i" is lower case as well. I can't really think of another use of random cases like this off the top of my head, but I'm digging it, as the kids would have said back then.

DEEP BACKGROUND, LOL — Even though I was only 10-12 years old when the Mamas and Papas were popular, I was really influenced by their clothes and songs. I would walk around our yard, which had lots of wooded acres, and sing songs like Monday, Monday and California Dreamin' at the top of my lungs, lol. My dad worked in Manhattan three days a week and I managed to have him buy me plenty of paisley and polka dot shirts, love beads, medallions and bell-bottoms from the city. They weren't the clothes the other kids in my small Connecticut town were wearing—jeans, flannel shirts and Keds—and only served to make me odder than I already was in their eyes. I was always encouraged at home to be who I was, and not who someone thought I should be. The other kids had already "pegged" me as being gay as early as kindergarten, although it's not a term anyone used then and I certainly wouldn't have understood what it meant, but it wasn't as if I tried to hide who I was. But being one of the three "smart" kids in my class, (the other two were girls), and wearing purple satin elephant sleeve 20 button shirts, headbands, wildly flared pants, Beatle boots and lavender granny sunglasses wasn't exactly the way to fit in! Other M & P songs included Creeque Alley, Dedicated to the One I Love, Words of Love, and at least a million other #1 hits, lol. All links are YouTube vids of the songs listed. 

Gosh, we could use their melodic singing voices and songs of peace and tranquility today! Make Love Not War should have been my generation's mantra, not Make Lottsa Money and Give Me All Of Yours Too, as it has worked out.

Signs of the Times. Sigh.

Today, In between gale force winds and torrential downpours—Tropical Storm Nicole making her way through Connecticut—I rode my bike to town to get some [much needed] exercise. This is a local bank I ride by every day, and it's encircled in yellow police tape. Notice the Connecticut State Police van parked at the door. This Webster Bank has been robbed in the past, and apparently was robbed again today. The highway (I-95) is just down the street, so it's a relatively easy on and off—that's the only reason I can think of for its multiple robberies. There are at least five other banks in town, but they're all in the town center and thus, more difficult to get away from in a hurry. There has been a rash of bank robberies all around the state recently, and I can only think that the terrible economy has quite a bit to do with it, unfortunately.

R I P 
Also note, that sadly, the flag is at half-mast again today. Recently, another one of this state's finest, and the nation's finest, was killed in Fallujah, Iraq. They're calling it a "noncombat incident," but regardless, if this country wasn't in such an ill-advised war in the first place, he'd still be alive and his parents would still have a son. For more on U.S. Army Pfc. Gebrah P. Noonan's death, click here.

Update: More details of his death can be found here. Apparently it was an out-of-control vocal altercation with other soldiers, and there was a second young man murdered as well. Tragic, all the way around.

Around the World in 80 Days. And 50 Years.

Vintage reel-to-reel tape of the Hollywood movie, Around the World in 80 Days. Apparently this is an audiotape, not the movie itself. The movie based on Jules Verne's victorian novel, starred David Niven, Shirley MacLaine, and many others. For a 4 minute clip at Youtube from the 1956 movie, click here. The box and tape are undated, but in doing a bit of research, I'd say this item dates to 1958 or so. This is a 2-track tape, and apparently Bel Canto moved to 4-tracks in 1959. The box art is fun, as is the typography. The director, Mike Todd, was one of Elizabeth Taylor's great loves, and tragically died in a plane crash shortly after this movie came out, in 1958. Here's a 10-minute video of Taylor and Todd.

For a brief synopsis of Bel Canto reel-to-reel tapes, click here.
For an even briefer text on the Hollywood movie, click here.

The Oldest Photo in my Collection (I Think!)

This photo, dated 1867 on the back, is a family home in Sabbatus, a tiny town in southern Maine, not too far from Lewiston. My mother's grandfather on her father's side, came down to Connecticut from Maine in the 1850s to work in the granite quarry. He ended up marrying the quarry owner's daughter around 1865 and they were given a 1766 saltbox home and hundreds of acres of land as a wedding present. That saltbox home, eventually my grandmother's, is the house I've spoken about here before, and posted photos of. This well-kept house, with fantastic detailing around the porch, is, I believe, his family's home.

Many old homesteads in Maine, and upper New England, have the barns and outbuildings all built together with long covered hallways, so that in the dead of winter, they could easily tend to the animals etc, without having to deal with the 4-8 feet of snow they usually received. The spacing of the people is very interesting to me, they're not all grouped together like one would think for a family photo. In fact, it doesn't really seem to be a photo of the family at all, but rather a photo of the home itself. Perhaps it was a memento for my great-grandfather to remember where he came from.

A close-up detail shot from the photo above. You can see a little girl (presumably) holding a doll, the woman of the house wearing a striped shawl and a couple of {what I think) are young boys. I wonder if the one on the far left was perhaps a neighbor believing he wasn't in the photo, or perhaps he was just staring at the photographer. I can't imagine photography was very common at this very early date. I wonder if the lensman had to stand under a black cloth like you see in old movies? Click on both photos to see in much greater detail.