Category: vintage

“If it is in aluminum, we make it” – but not anymore. Company is closed.

Vintage advertising. Aluminum Goods Manufacturing Company became Mirro but it turns out it all closed in 2003.  I looked it up. (click here for history)  And there is a photo of the building on Flickr. Used as an art space and bands practice in it.

I was photographing this collapsible cup for the keeporpitch blog thinking it might be something I could part with and then when I looked at the photograph I decided, who am I kidding?  I can’t get riud of this item just yet,  So didn’t want people to vote on it and say PITCH it cause I know I’m going to let it stick around with me some more.  I think it is something my dad got at a yard sale or Golden Oldies thrift shop at the home where they lived in Illinois.

Aluminum

I have a hammered lazy Susan
with the dogwood motif.
A lipped pitcher with some flowers.
A couple of loaf pans.
Cookie sheets.
A jelly roll pan.
But here’s my favorite
aluminum item.
I guess you could take it camping.
by Categories: vintageTags: , , , , , , , 7 Comments

Zenith Radio Model 12-S-370, 1939

Tonight at the book club meeting I sat at the table with this radio in front of me for the evening. I knew it had a story and the hostess just wrote to tell me I left my notebook where I had jotted down what I needed to know about the radio’s history.  I remembered the location of Beaconsfield Street in Detroit.   Here is what Lisa B. wrote to me just now about this radio  from her husband’s family.  Zenith Radio Model 12-s-370. found online Antique Radio Museum.

Here is what Lisa wrote in an email tonight-  “So here you go: The radio belonged originally to neighbors of Virginia and Joseph Belloli who lived on Beaconsfield Street or Holcumb Street in Detroit. During WWII the neighbors were German nationals and as German nationals they could not own the radio because it had short wave capabilities. The neighbors sold the radio to “Granny” and “Grampa”.       Joseph was born 1895 in Cuggiono Italy and Virginia in 1896 in the US, though her family was from Cuggiono as well. And just to make things complicated, three Oldani sisters married three Belloli brothers. You just have to accept if you were born Belloli and you meet another Belloli in Detroit or St. Louis, yes, somehow in some convoluted way, you are related.”

You can see more about this model in a video a guy made on youtube with one  he found at the curb in Peoria IL


by Categories: photo of the day, vintageTags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 8 Comments

Button, Button, Whose Got the Button? ( & Bridal Veils, too!)

1700 Carson Street is the home of a great button store.  It fascinates me-  Parker Button. Boxes and boxes stacked from floor to ceiling.   All colors, shapes and sizes.  Like an artist’s palette.  Shank or flat. Frogs and belt buckles. Ribbon and trim. Spools of thread to sew them all on for utility or ornamentation. My mother had a glass jar full of buttons.  My sister made me the coolest necklace from vintage mother-of-pearl shirt buttons, strung onto embroidery floss. Do you have any clothing missing a button?

The other half of  the shop is Clarissa’s Boutique .   One word to describe the bridal veils, jewelry and accessories for custom headpieces and wedding necessities-  exquisite? lovely? classic? ethereal?  They will create a custom headpiece for you but allow three months.  Feathers, flowers, jewels, or pearls.       Voted the Best of the Knot for weddings 2011.

These Days Buttons are Often a Part of Web Design

Or people push our buttons.
Press the button to call the elevator
or select your floor.
Today’s post is the old fashioned kind.
Two-hole, four-hole or shank.
Metal, plastic, shell or bone.
Beatrix Potter shapes of rabbits.
When was the last time you sewed on a button?

Today marks 500 blog posts and counting!

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Growing up we had a record with the song ( these lyrics are from 1929)

Button up your overcoat, When the wind is free, Oh, take good care of yourself, You belong to me! Eat an apple every day, Get to bed by three, Oh, take good care of yourself, You belong to me! Be careful crossing streets, ooh-ooh, Cut out sweets, ooh-ooh, Lay off meat, ooh-ooh, You'll get a pain and ruin your tum-tum!
by Categories: Light in the City, Pittsburgh Photos, vintageTags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 14 Comments

Vinyl 45’s in Paper Sleeves with Plastic Adapter

How old do you have to be to remember what 45rpm means?   I had a carrying case for this size record.   Down at Excuses again, SouthSide, where King Cobra Blues plays the first Friday of the month.   I saw this scene-   a guy named John had two old 45’s and was asking Don Hollowood to sign them during the band’s break.  I asked if I could photograph the 45’s.  He was worried I didn’t have a flash but I managed.  John was explaining to me how there was an A side and a B side to a 45.  It was dark in the bar.  I had about twenty years on him and knew about the A and B side but he said he was used to explaining the concept to his nieces.  So the rare 45’s of the band Bon Ton Roulet were Black Diamond(A) and You Excite Me Daddy(B) and the other was Love and War (A) and They Call Us Bon Ton Roulet(B).  Check out the MTV Basement Tapes, hosted by Frank Zappa, see the early music video featuring Pittsburgh Band Bon Ton Roulet singing Love and War. John said he bought them at Sunny Jim’s in Emsworth. There is one copy of Black Diamond on Amazon. The plastic insert 45rpm  adapter is called a spider.

by Categories: Night Light in the City, photo of the day, Photography, vintageTags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 8 Comments

Plastic Charm Necklace from the 80’s

Once her mother’s, now in my granddaughter’s room on a shelf along with her mom and dad’s teddy bears and a doll with a purple and white crocheted outfit made by Anna’s great grandmother.  The window light hit the blue skate, highlighting the plastic dangling down.  I was shooting the teddy bears and got distracted with the brightly colored charms. Underneath a music box bunny rabbit Erika had as a baby. Can something from the ’80s be vintage already? I found a listing for Plastic Charm Necklace at the 80’s Museum. Today at work a teacher said she is teaching the children to say TwentyEleven not TwoThousand Eleven for the year.  She asked me how I said 1985? or 1900? Hmmm.

Seemed once we hit two thousand we started saying it differently.  Two Thousand, Two Thousand One, Two Thousand Two……..As I walked down the hall a song came into my head- “In the year 2525….”

Next time I am in NYC I am going to ask my sister if I can photograph hers. It's loaded with charms.
by Categories: Childhood, Family, vintageTags: , , , , , , , , , , 9 Comments

Signed into Law May 26, 1954

Veterans Day.  More than a day off from school.   A day in November to honor all veterans- men and women in the military who have served.  And the correct spelling  “the attributive (no apostrophe) rather than the possessive case is the official spelling ”  according to an article  “Apostrophe Sparks Veterans Day Conundrum”.  I had to look it up.  WWII, on the left my father’s brother Alan Ray Hendricks who “observed his 28th bday by flying a bombing mission  over Japanese-held Koror Island in a 7th AAF Liberator on which he is a gunner”.(old yellowed newspaper clipping)  Received the Distinguished Flying Cross.       Who do you know who has served? Scan and email a photo of a veteran you know , along with name and service and I will post a gallery of veterans.  Suzanne sent me her father-in-law and father and that sparked the idea.  rutheh@gmail.com

Hendricks Family Photo I Found in a Box- Alan, Harold, Floyd, Mary Alta, Roy
by Categories: From the Archives, photo of the day, vintageTags: , , , , , 11 Comments

My Sister Found the Two-Tone Cadillac

Driving to the Sunday Brunch at the groom’s parents’ home, we’d checked out of the hotel.  We were sitting at a red light.  Mary handed me the camera but I told her maybe the credits should read- photo by Ruth Hendricks with assist by Mary Hendricks.  Wouldn’t have gotten it without her! We had a wonderful wedding celebration in the Quad Cities and were sad to say so long.

Bettendorf Iowa- classic scene with vintage cafr
Anyone know the year for this model?
by Categories: Light in the City, photo of the day, vintageTags: , , , , , , , , , 8 Comments

Why Movies Are Filmed in Pittsburgh

Not sure the year of this vintage auto-pre or post war?
10:48 AM Update: Uncle Frank has identified the car as Chrysler 1948 so post-war.
by Categories: photo of the day, Pittsburgh Photos, vintageTags: , , , , , , 9 Comments

1953 Chevy Bel Air

Steve looks like he has just parked.
Steve looks as if he has just parked and gotten out of the car Uncle Frank is fixing up.
by Categories: Night Light in the City, vintageTags: , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Emmett Kelly/ “Weary Willie” Clown

My sister thinks we got this hand puppet at the circus. It was before I was 5. Some people have a fear of clowns(coulrophobia)

There is an Emmett Kelly Museum in Sedan, Kansas -born there in 1898.  You don’t hear the word “hobo” anymore.

Another find while cleaning out.
How do you feel about clowns?

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by Categories: Childhood, photo of the day, vintageTags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 8 Comments