Going to an imaginary car show in 1924

I've been to a lot of car shows in a longish life, and I go to them as often as possible. I live in Arizona, and I've been to the Barrett-Jackson, and the Gooding, among others that I can't remember the names of right now. I have friends who restore classic cars, and they've been inviting me along for years. To them, it's serious business, with a lot of money moving around, but to me it's just fun, looking at stuff.

I rarely went to into the auctions, which were just too noisy and complicated for me. You had to listen to auctioneers, and there would be numbers up on a big screen, and you had to follow along. At least that's what I tried to do, but mostly I just wanted to go wander around and look at the cars. This usually happened in January, but I go to car shows all of the time. Where I go there are no velvet ropes, no people trying to sell stuff, just cars, all wonderful and shiny. In other words, I just look at the cars around me. Any given parking lot is a car show for me. And today I'd like to invite you along to a car show, in 1924.

Yes, I know that it's just a bunch of cars parked there. This photo is from the Duke University site, and the focus of it is the billboard. But I like looking at cars, and these are some beauties! Sure, we can get a Coca-Cola over at the Sea-View Restaurant, but I want to look at the cars first.


No, I have no idea what make and model these cars are. Cars that are just parked there don't have signs on them. The best that I can do is to say that these cars are all 1924 or earlier, and I only know that because of the date on the photo.

I'm actually pretty good at recognizing makes and models, but mostly cars from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Before, and after that, is pretty blurry for me. And I can be just as huffy as the next car guy if someone confuses a 1978 Mustang with a 1979 one, and especially if they confuse it with a 1964 1/2 one! But as I look at the row of 1920s cars, I don't have a clue.

I have been learning, and I know that the best way to start learning is just to look. I'm inclined to think that the car back there with the spare tire (just a tire, not a tire mounted on a wheel) is older, as the '20s cars started having the tire-and-wheel combination that we still call "a spare tire". I don't see any logos, and I suppose I could walk up to the man behind the wheel and ask politely what kind of car that is? I've always smiled and approached people, saying something like "cool car", but I suppose in the '20s I would have to say the car was "the bees knees" or something. Most of the people I've known who have cool cars are happy to show them off a bit, to have them admired. I've owned some cool cars myself, and if you'll excuse the comparison, it's like having a beautiful woman with you - it's OK if other people admire from a distance, but don't touch!

These photos on the Duke site are amazing. Not only were the original photos large format, the Duke University scanned them in as high resolution. I can read the 1924 on that license plate! This is what makes these photos so much fun for me, I feel as if I can walk right into them.

By the way, this is Asbury Park, New Jersey, and the sea view is of the Atlantic. Here, I'll zoom in on more of the cars for you. If you're an expert on these kinds of cars, please let me know what they are!



By the way, it looks like you can get Frankfurters, and ice cream cones there at the Sea-View. You can also weigh yourself there, here I'll give you a penny!

Thank you for going to an imaginary car show with me in 1924!

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