Christmas in 1958, Brooklyn Park, Minnesota


Of course I don't remember Christmas of 1958, I was only eight months old, but I have this wonderful photo, and since it's the season, and I'm feeling all sentimental, I thought that you'd like to time-travel with me.

When I can tear my eyes away from how cute I was as a baby, my eyes go to that chair, which was very modern, very "space age"! And that's my big brother there, who became my big protector, and still is to this day. We didn't live in Brooklyn Park (which is a suburb of Minneapolis) for very long, because I can remember riding around on my tricycle in Mankato, which is south of the Twin Cities (Minneapolis & St. Paul).

This year I'm trying to remember all of my Christmas, which will be my 62nd in a couple of weeks. And I have to admit that Christmas has always been good to me. My parents were typical frugal and thrifty Midwestern people (like I grew up to be!), but at Christmastime they were wonderful, and generous. Whatever negative memories I might have of walking to school through the snow, uphill (both ways, of course!), I have nothing but positive memories of Christmas. We got a LOT of cool toys, some of which I sold on eBay a few years ago.

That truck was probably a genuine Tonka truck. I'm sure that it was for my older brother, and I probably just got blocks or something (whatever babies get). Since this is the internet, someone out there can probably identify exactly what it was. I have no memory of it, although I'm sure that I chewed on it - I chewed on everything, and I probably left teeth marks (when I grew teeth) in that chair, and that couch. Looks like there are some toy soldiers lying around, too. More stuff for me to chew on!

Have yourself a merry little Christmas!
If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. Your support makes it happen! Thank you!

Click here to become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is ...
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the...
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me...
Read more