Vintage shots from days gone by!

First time published scene in front of the Seaside Hotel. Taken sometime before the Hurricane of 1919.
Property of the Wm Beauchamp Collection

 

Yup - the rag top and extra windows in each rear corner make it pretty spendy nowadays. Most likely it has safari windows in the front too.

My bus is not so collectible, but I love her anyway...

 

Thought I had seen most of the 60's show cars... but this one has me stumped.

 

Johnny Cash - One Piece at a Time
(words)
Well, I left Kentucky back in forty nine
An' went to Detroit workin' on a 'sembly line
The first year they had me puttin' wheels on Cadillacs

Every day I'd watch them beauties roll by
And sometimes I'd hang my head and cry
'Cause I always wanted me one that was long and black.

One day I devised myself a plan
That should be the envy of most any man
I'd sneak it out of there in a lunchbox in my hand
Now gettin' caught meant gettin' fired
But I figured I'd have it all by the time I retired
I'd have me a car worth at least a hundred grand.

I'd get it one piece at a time
And it wouldn't cost me a dime
You'll know it's me when I come through your town
I'm gonna ride around in style
I'm gonna drive everybody wild
'Cause I'll have the only one there is around.

So the very next day when I punched in
With my big lunchbox and with help from my friends
I left that day with a lunch box full of gears
I've never considered myself a thief
But GM wouldn't miss just one little piece
Especially if I strung it out over several years.

The first day I got me a fuel pump
And the next day I got me an engine and a trunk
Then I got me a transmission and all the chrome
The little things I could get in my big lunchbox
Like nuts, an' bolts, and all four shocks
But the big stuff we snuck out in my buddy's mobile home.

Now, up to now my plan went all right
'Til we tried to put it all together one night
And that's when we noticed that something was definitely wrong.

The transmission was a fifty three
And the motor turned out to be a seventy three
And when we tried to put in the bolts all the holes were gone.

So we drilled it out so that it would fit
And with a little bit of help with an adapter kit
We had that engine runnin' just like a song
Now the headlight' was another sight
We had two on the left and one on the right
But when we pulled out the switch all three of 'em come on.

The back end looked kinda funny too
But we put it together and when we got through
Well, that's when we noticed that we only had one tail-fin
About that time my wife walked out
And I could see in her eyes that she had her doubts
But she opened the door and said "Honey, take me for a spin."

So we drove up town just to get the tags
And I headed her right on down main drag
I could hear everybody laughin' for blocks around
But up there at the court house they didn't laugh
'Cause to type it up it took the whole staff
And when they got through the title weighed sixty pounds.

I got it one piece at a time
And it wouldn't cost me a dime
You'll know it's me when I come through your town
I'm gonna ride around in style
I'm gonna drive everybody wild
'Cause I'll have the only one there is around.

Ugh! Yeah, RED RYDER
This is the COTTON MOUTH
In the PSYCHO-BILLY CADILLAC Come on

Huh, This is the COTTON MOUTH
And negatory on the cost of this mow-chine there RED RYDER
You might say I went right up to the factory
And picked it up, it's cheaper that way
Ugh!, what model is it?

Well, It's a '49, '50, '51, '52, '53, '54, '55, '56
'57, '58' 59' automobile
It's a '60, '61, '62, '63, '64, '65, '66, '67
'68, '69, '70 automobile.

What a tale - hahahaha!

 

YEP!----Jerry Gaskill in Santa Barbara knows all about that!

 

Ray Fahrner's X-Ray

 

The link to the song if anyone is interested.

 

Re the multi year Caddys:
Wonder what happened to the one in the song video? Obviously a different car to the "real" one first posted. Surely they wouldn't have just made a quick one for the video?

 

From Wikipedia (.... is there anything Wikipedia doesn't know??)

• Bruce Fitzpatrick, owner of Abernathy Auto Parts and Hilltop Auto Salvage in Nashville, Tennessee, was asked by the promoters of the song to build the vehicle for international promotion. Fitzpatrick had all the models of Cadillacs mentioned in the song when it was released and built a car using the song as a model. The result was presented to Cash in April 1976. It was parked outside The House of Cash[5] inHendersonville, Tennessee, until someone could find a place to store it. After The House of Cash Museum closed, Bruce Fitzpatrick retrieved the '49–'70 Cadillac with a wrecker and brought it back to Abernathy Auto Parts and Hilltop Auto Salvage in Nashville, Tennessee, and crushed it.
• • The car from the "One Piece at a Time" video is at the Historic Auto Attractions museum in Roscoe, Illinois. This is a different car than the one made by Bruce Fitzpatrick.

 

That is a gasporter made in Minnesota on a Crosley chassis and drivetrain. Can't imagine how well they drove and stopped with a full tank of fuel. Mechanical brakes and 26.5hp - 1400 lbs empty plus 200 gallons of fuel, that should put it up over 3000 pounds.

 

Dust storm chases a car on a Texas Panhandle road, 1936. A classic Dust Bowl image taken by Arthur Rothstein.

 

New York City 1970s




1966.

 

This old truck was parked on the south side of the Goliad, Texas Courthouse Square. You can see the bank and the Franke Meat Market in the background.

 

Can you find the dog in this photo of downtown Goliad, Texas?

 

Taken in City Park, Dallas (now known as Heritage Village) the sweet car is possibly a 1914-1915 Chevy Royal Mail Roadster. The registration of the vehicle gives a date of 1918.

from
Historic Mesquite, Inc.

 

From 1910, this photo shows Perle Curtis Florence sitting in the Florence family Buick. The Florence family came to the New Hope/Mesquite area in 1872, settling in the area of what is now Barnes Bridge Road and North Galloway. The barn visible on the left behind the car is the Florence livestock barn.
The Florence Ranch Homestead is now a museum and can be visited Tuesday through Friday, 11a – 4p, and the second Saturday at 10a to 1p.

from
Historic Mesquite, Inc.

 

Behind the Horse, just in front of Tree,rear of Buggy on left hand side of picture...

 

Garnet and Opal Lawrence are shown with their nephew Bob Shaw, in front of their home on Kearney Street (then called Long Creek Road), sometime in the 1920’s. This home is now known as the S. D. Lawrence Homestead: part of Opal Lawrence Historical Park, it is on the National Register of Historic Places. Mesquite, Texas.
Photograph, courtesy of the Shaw/Fagin Collection, Historic Mesquite, Inc.


from
Historic Mesquite, Inc.

 

From Preservation Texas Fort Worth, 1938.

 

from Preservation Texas Congress Avenue 1938, Austin, Texas. This maybe a double posts if at least a photo taken from the same place at another time. I have my own photo from almost the same spot from 2003. e, Austin,

 

Preservation Texas Franklin D. Roosevelt Library/National Archives.
Dust storm in Amarillo (c. 1936). Photograph by Arthur Rothstein.

 

Preservation Texas