History The Yellow Bullet: Belle Glade, Florida c.1940

This forum is funny. That car has probably been bottle caps and rebar for decades and those kids are all dead and we're debating if their car is a rat rod. Crazy times man.

 

Sad to see the desire to reduce another era, which had its own values and mores, being reduced to the intellectual median of those whose study of sociology, psychology, anthropology and history lacks the energy of even a good story telling. My father was a migrant worker, so to speak, and ended up working on an onion ranch in South Texas during a period of time when the South, still not even a hundred years after the Civil War, was dealing with the effects of having lost many of its young men, having lost most of its capital, and nearly all the infrastructure, and had not even gained the same amenities most people of that era took for granted: electricity, indoor plumbing, etc. And, to have this photograph --- that appears to be of a young woman (as labeled) the designated driver (her name and appellation is is on the door) and her possible boy-friend that she is tickling to make him smile for the photo, that he is not doing --- possibly not feeling any mirth in being pictured for posterity by a hired gun photographer with a large format camera --- at least 4x5 format, and the obvious Jester, that we all know is along for the hell of it, labeled as being like anything in our current experience needs something more than comparing the automobile to a current trend toward uselessness and malaise that exists in the other world of car nuts, whose slow dirge marches toward the inevitable oblivion of all pleasure vehicles. Whew! Sad, did I say? And, in Florida, land of the 'No Seeums' and, most likely at that time, hordes of mosquitoes. Migrants doing what? No, we won't see anything quite like this again. And, as to the people and the car in this photo, may their fates have been blessed double and treble having to face the scrutiny of the likes of those who think their car is anything like those implicated in the previous posts. I don't expect anyone to have thought of what walking to town might've been like. All the attention given to it, the paint and slogans were blessings on something that was the equivalent of a carriage pulled by a matched team of fine horses.

 

The steering wheel is in front of the girl, look closely

 

Beats the hell out of walking to town. Me with my Dad and the cars that I threw my early morning paper route in. Lamp on the garage is one my dad and I made. Coupe came first then the touring . This was in the early 50’s. Frank

 

Great follow up posts, gang. And @slowspoke ... GREAT find! Miss Cleveland sure had a fun attitude.

 

Here's a shot of one of the bars in the background. And apparently a hurricane just about wiped Belle Glade out in 1928. Killed about 2500 people, so these kids had seen some tough times to say the least.


Post Office

 

I am enjoying the old photographs. A small frozen piece of time . To have a car with fair tires and money for gas that was a luxury for those young people.