In the kingdom of Southern Californialand we don’t have a king, but we do have a queen - the Rose Queen. Her reign is brief - just a year. The Queen and her court work their way up through the charm schools and debutant balls of the San Gabriel Valley. The highest call of duty […]
I’m breaking my own rule this week. This is not a slide, it’s a snapshot. But it’s the only picture I have of my family at Christmas.
We’re at my Aunt Mattie and Uncle Art’s house. That fake white flocked tree with gold ornaments reappeared every season for more than two decades. I never realized how […]
The candles are lit, the Christmas-ball Christmas tree centerpiece is in place and a very special dinner is served. At each end of the table, Lazy Susans offer carrot sticks, green olives and a half red cabbage studded with sputnik-style multi-colored toothpicks bearing olives, sweet pickles and pearl onions. On either side of the […]
Flamingo pink walls and pea green curtains provide a festive backdrop for stockings hung by the chimney with care, plastic poinsettias on the mantle, clown on the wall, Christmas cards on the television console and gifts around the aluminum Christmas tree.
Aluminum Christmas trees are one of the great synthetic products of the space age. They […]
Two lovely young ladies clad in sleeveless blouses and capri-clam digger-pedal pusher-toreador pants rest on giant cement mushrooms in front of the “Welcome House,” of Southern California’s most bizarre theme park. The first of three Santa’s Villages — the others were in Santa Cruz and Dundee, Illinois — it opened just months before Disneyland in […]
A giant skyward helium-filled Popeye balloon tethered with many strings and a small army of earthbound wranglers. Just part of an annual tradition of parading balloon sculptures down Broadway that began in 1927.
Popeye goes back almost that far. Originally he was introduced as Olive Oyl’s love interest in 1929 in the then ten-year-old comic Strip, […]
The sweeping spear, sky high rear window and eye-catching tailfin trim on this two-toned space-age spectacular 1959 Chrysler Saratoga, combined with the gentle curve of a barrel vault roofline, twin gooseneck lights craning toward very sober signage and sort-of checkerboard windows, provide a most unexpected backdrop for this impromptu family portrait.
Like bowling alleys and miniature […]
Miniature green dinosaurs top gas pumps. Bright pennants rustle in the bluster. It has just rained. A giant stucco dinosaur is a gas station. The year is 1965
Last Saturday night, half way out the front door leaving a party the host said to me "Hey, I have something for you, I want you to […]
Beaming with joy, three customers bask in the glory of orange, yellow, blue and white vinyl, wood paneling, hanging lamps, slanted striped ceiling and plate glass. Even they are color coordinated. By any creative design standards the interior decor scheme is as playful and colorful as a space-age fantasy toy box
The most detailed work […]
The striped-stamped, two-tone turquoise and white aluminum siding of a travel trailer is a dramatic backdrop for three works of pumpkin art displayed on a classic redwood patio table protected by an early American patterned plastic table cloth. On the left a feather and arrow suggest a Native American inspiration. Center stage a flower-trimmed […]
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