Hot Rods The Black and White Picture Thread

Hello,

We lived in two separate old houses in the Westside of Long Beach. If I were to place a map of the two locations, one of our favorite Italian Restaurant/Markets was right in the middle. Our dad had discovered it, as he was an Italian Food afficiando. There was one other Italian Restaurant/Deli within several minutes from our house, but he liked the one on Santa Fe Avenue.

On his days off from work, he would take the family to Gardena,CA in the South Bay to another Italian Foods Store where they made the best Torpedo Sandwiches in the whole So Cal area. But, since this old Italian Deli/Restaurant, Santa Fe Importers, was closer, he frequented it weekly.

Don’t get me wrong, our mom’s cooking was restaurant quality for any foods she prepared. But, once or twice a week, she got a break and our dad surprised us with some great Italian Dinners or sometimes, a great big, thick Italian Sandwich to appease the two brothers and a “no cooking” mom.


Jnaki

The last time we drove by was in 2019 when I visited the remodeling of the Lion’s Dragstrip Museum and the Santa Fe Importers Market/Deli was still going strong. The old Mickey Thompson Enterprises office was right next door and it was one of their favorite lunch places, too.

I can still smell the aroma of that cool Italian Deli and Market. It is/was a great whiff upon opening that entrance door.

 

Hello,

In my research, it is always fun to see old stuff that we may have seen as a little kid. In 1949, we lived in the far Western reaches of Long Beach, within a stone's throw of the city of Wilmington, CA. The location was called the "Westside" and it definitely was the West side of Long Beach. Step past the Terminal Island Freeway location behind our property line and the Wilmington city limits ran parallel to our neighborhood.

Our dad used to stop at his favorite liquor store and pick up a local Long Beach Newspaper. He was an avid reader and that local paper was added to his two Los Angeles newspapers (L.A. Times and L.A. Examiner ) he brought home from his work in L.A, daily.

Jnaki

I happen to be searching for more background information for the Santa Fe Importers story and came across this morsel (in more ways that one...) of an advertisement from our own Long Beach daily newspaper.
1949
A 74 year old advertisement for the Santa Fe Importers from 1949 in the local Long Beach newspaper. The Long Beach Independent, which turned into the Long Beach Independent Press Telegram when we were in high school, then just became the Press Telegram, these days.

The great thing is that family traditions and history play a big part of everyone's lives.

"Without history, there is no future..."

 

@Otie's Automotive got this one yet?

 

Originally posted by 19Fordy.

 

This famous photo by Dorothea Lange depicts a troubled, Depression-weary mother and children in Nipomo, California in 1936.

Hello,

Unless you have been hiding under a rock for the last 50 years, this photograph by Dorothea Lange is a classic and a part of USA history. It was ingrained into our young minds during our teenage high school days. Then as a photographer and taking some advanced photo classes in college, learning about techniques played an important part of our history.
A very early Graflex Camera
Despite the pandemic and its variants, this year’s Laguna Beach Pageant of The Masters is showing a recreated version of Dorotea Lange’s excellent photography. The show is in its 88th anniversary year. previous shut downs were during ww2 and 2020.

Midcontinent. August 10, 1938. Dorothea Lange. Gelatin silver print. Collection of Oakland Museum of California. Gift of Paul S. Taylor.

“In early March, 1936, Dorothea Lange drove past a sign reading, “PEA-PICKERS CAMP,” in Nipomo, California. At the time, she was working as a photographer for the Resettlement Administration (RA), a Depression-era government agency formed to raise public awareness of and provide aid to struggling farmers. Twenty miles down the road, Lange reconsidered and turned back to the camp, where she encountered a mother and her children.”

“I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet,” she later recalled. “She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding field and birds that the children killed.” Lange took seven exposures of the woman, 32-year-old Florence Owens Thompson, with various combinations of her seven children. One of these exposures, with its tight focus on Thompson’s face, transformed her into a Madonna-like figure and became an icon of the Great Depression and one of the most famous photographs in history."

"This image was first exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art in 1940, under the title Pea Picker Family, California; by 1966, when the Museum held a retrospective of Lange’s work, it had acquired its current title, Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California.”

This photograph shows a Depression Era family standing outside of their car. Because of a terrible drought in the 1930s in the southern Plains of the United States, many farmers and farm workers left failed farms for work in California. Of the 5,000,000 people who fled the southern Plains, some 200,000 migrated to California. Many farmers were drawn to California because of the cotton crop, which had an impressive 600,000 acres of fields in the San Joaquin Valley alone by 1937.

Jnaki

When I was growing up, I wondered why everyone else had a small Brownie camera to take photos of our baseball games, picnics, days at the beach and elsewhere. Then come to find out, my dad had a 4x5 Graflex Camera that he did take places and took some great photos. The one thing we noticed is that that size of camera takes a while to set up with the film cartridge, the alignment of the bellows and the pop out bulb flash if needed.

It was not your simple camera that could take instant photos. So, most of our photos of our family adventures were taken as set ups. We all know about posing on a cliff, a beach or just in our front yard. Our dad’s camera just was not a point and shoot, but a set up and use a light meter, a fence or block wall for support or just his old rickety tripod. The photos were not easy to take on the spot as the Graflex Camera was heavy and intricate.

Even when it was open and set up, it was still difficult and time consuming. Sometimes the moment was lost. We always wondered why our dad just did not buy a high quality rangefinder camera like a Nikon or Leica, instead of lugging around a huge press camera?
The End

 

One of my Cads

 

Jnaki.....
Thanks for the Dorothea Lange photos. She was commissioned and assigned to document the plight of migrant and displaced workers, because at the time the majority of the population (especially the "upper crust") and politicians thought "the depression" was all about Wall Street and banking and paid no attention to the consequences of the "Dust Bowl". Her striking photos (and the fact that Washington DC got a layer of dust from drought-carrying winds) FINALLY got recognition of what was REALLY going on in the country! Hard, destitute times for a huge portion of the population that most people today know nothing about, and consequently can't comprehend (or care) what some people are going through today.

 

Hello,

The photographer was one of the pros that got the rare pit pass into the special areas. The spot in front of the spectators seating facing the orange tower was the best spot for action and starting line still photography. But, sometimes, they are on assignment and have the freedom to run around all over the starting line staging areas and into places where we normal film fanatics could not go to take films or still photos.

This photo was taken around 1965-66 era as the camera is/was one that I was going to get for my last bit of photo equipment in the later years. By 1965-66, my brother was already getting involved in his early 35mm cameras and the brand Pentax was one of the top models. But, most of the professionals were using the old style box cameras, the Hassleblad 2.25 x 2.25 cameras.

That gave them the advantage as the negative is larger and then a magazine photo page can be enlarged with super clarity. Envy turned into "passe," as those cameras were so far out of reach of just about anyone, other than professional photographers in the field or working for a company like Peterson Publishing.

My brother used his 35mm film cameras and his photos were very good. When I started shooting photographs, I was the recipient of my brother’s Asahi Pentax/Honeywell Pentax Cameras. He had moved on to his two Nikon F camera and lenses. By the time that time period rolled around for the need for larger color and B/W enlargements.

This new Asahi Pentax Camera now had the distinct advantage of having a format that allowed a perfect 8 x 10 finished photo without having to crop too much. The good thing was, The 6X7 camera was as good, but less expensive as the pure professional Hassleblad Camera line.

Jnaki

The 6x7 camera was very versatile. It could be at ground level using the flip up viewfinder, used like a larger 35mm film camera with SLR lens set ups. Overall, it was not as small as a 35mm film camera, but it could be used for any super enlargements in color and black/white photos with superior results. The pro photographer could be in the same position using a Hassleblad, but those 2.25 cameras were quite a bit smaller. This is early envy in the biggest arena of drag racing and photography.

Did I ever get a 6x7 Pentax Camera during my photo shoot days? For us, the cost was just a little out of our reach, so we purchased a another pro version of a 2.25 x 2.25 versatile camera to get the great enlargements in color for the covers and center spreads of the magazines. Some of those old photos have been posted here on the HAMB.

A “chimney finder” on an Asahi Pentax 6x7 Camera

 

Detroit Dragway….