I hadn’t originally set out to write two, consecutive weekly essays about B-body Chevrolet Impalas, examples from polar opposite ends of this platform’s twenty-year production run. Last Tuesday’s piece was already scheduled when my friend, Kelly, who was also responsible for finding and photographing a 1977 (or ’78) Ford Pinto I had written about a couple of summers ago, had sent me pictures of our featured car.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again that I do not believe in things being merely coincidental. I was already in a very “Chicago” state of mind after writing last week’s entry, especially with summer being just days away. When I had first looked at Kelly’s pictures of this beautiful ’78 Impala, with its gorgeous, factory Light Green Metallic paint and white vinyl interior, the car’s overall vibe reminded me of… Wrigley’s Doublemint gum, with the Wrigley Company being very much a Chicago institution.
Since I’ve already mentioned the green-and-white color scheme common to both car and gum, I’ll move on to other comparisons, including the one-time ubiquity of both. Sticks of Doublemint (and Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit) were among my very first chewing gum experiences, if not the first. For years and at pretty much every checkout counter of the local grocery or convenience store, one could purchase a five-stick pack of any Wrigley’s flavor of gum for just a quarter. More than a few packs of Wrigley’s would also end up in my trick-or-treat bag during Halloween.
Similarly, the downsized Chevrolets of ’77 were a huge success with both critics and customers, with over 657,000 examples finding happy buyers. Another 612,000 were sold for ’78, of which 183,000 were Impala four-door sedans like the example Kelly found. Only the four-door Caprice Classic was more popular for ’78 with almost 204,000 sold. Another 589,000 full-sized Chevys were bought in ’79 before they would be restyled for 1980. These cars were common sights for years, such that their slow disappearance as everyday transportation had caught me off guard until I started noticing more of them being customized maybe twenty years ago, and perhaps before.
There’s one important contrast between Wrigley’s gum and the downsized Chevrolets of the late ’70s. The ’77 B-bodies became more popular by taking something away, losing five and a half inches in wheelbase, and between 600 and 800 pounds, depending on body style. Sales improved by about 55% over the ’76 total of 424,00, to 657,000 for ’77. Conversely, Wrigley’s gum was original included as an extra (no pun intended) with sales of Wrigley soap and baking powder. Eventually, the popularity of the gum eclipsed that of the other products it was tied to, after which it was then sold as a standalone product. It was its popularity as a freebie that led to Wrigley gum being everywhere, as it remains today. The Wrigley company goes all the way back to April 1, 1891, just over twenty years before the first Chevrolet left the factory on November 3, 1911.
This particular Impala features just a few embellishments, including an aftermarket, finely ribbed horizontal grille insert, and that wicked steering wheel. Otherwise, it looks bone-stock, including those wheel covers, which are even on the ’78 Impala in the above print ad. Regardless of whether or not this one has air conditioning, that white interior and its entire spearminty essence make it seem like inside would be a cool place, both actually and colloquially, to spend time. It would undoubtedly be much nicer inside this Impala than in the faded, stale-Big Red cinnamon color of the non-air-conditioned ’84 Ford Tempo used as the main Dennis family car for years.
The shade of green on this Impala may not be an exact match for what’s on my new pack of Doublemint (a fifteen-stick pack now costs two dollars at the local convenience market at my Red Line CTA station), but I didn’t realize this until I looked at both the gum and pictures of the car. Maybe the color of this Impala is closer to that of a wrapper of spearmint Certs breath mints, but I had already used that metaphor here at CC almost eight years ago. This green was a popular ’70s color, and one I still find very palatable.
The stunning Wrigley Building towers were constructed between 1920 & 1924. Saturday, March 16, 2019.
A favorable, period review from Consumer Guide described the downsized ’77 Chevrolets as being “boxier” and “utilitarian”, but in a good way. Similarly, when you want just a basic stick of gum without any exotic flavors or gimmicks, a piece of Doublemint can be just the trick for freshening your mouth when you’re out and about. In the case of both Doublemint and a classic B-body of this generation, nothing beats the classics.
Skokie, Illinois.
May 2023.
Print advertisement was sourced from www.oldcarbrochures.com.
Today’s CC post is sponsored by…
😜
Actually, when I re-read this essay this morning, I did realize that someone (not me, of course) could make a drinking game of doing a shot every time I used the word “Wrigley”. If people are into that sort of thing. 🙂
“Double your pleasure, double your fun, with Doublemint, Doublemint, Doublemint gum!” 🙂
Juicy Fruit was my favored, and this Impala shows that it is obviously well taken care of! That white interior appears to be absolutely spotless. I’m not fond of wheel covers, so I’d want to find a distinctive wheel to spice it up even more!
I’m surprised to learn the Doublemint Twins go back to the 1930s.
Wrigley’s had some great jingles back in the day. The ’70s Doublemint, Spearmint, and Juicy Fruit tunes were all written by the same guy, Steve Karmen, whose 1969 Pontiac “Breakaway” commercial music was so popular it became a hit song in the UK after being gifted a wonderfully frenetic R&B rave-up by Jimmy Radcliffe. Still, none of those were as good as the later Big Red jingle, a wonderfully complex piece of music loaded with unusual key changes and rhythmic shifts. The visuals that accompanied them were great too, showing all sorts of couples so caught up in chewing Big Red they got left behind in various comical ways.
– earworm Juicy Fruit jingle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR8h94uDGjY
– ’80s Big Red ad compilation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7-6Ilnsipc
– nice 2010’s update of above (by Ne-Yo): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzg55C3QaZA
Thank you so much for finding and posting these!
Those are awesome, and I totally agree with your comments about the jingles.
A couple of more:
“Carry the big fresh flavor!” (Wrigley’s Spearmint, filmed at the old Atlanta Airport terminal that I remember from the ’70s, as a bonus in the background are the vintage planes from long-gone airlines like Eastern and Piedmont)
https://youtu.be/ndS5_0MKWkM
And this one from 1988 – two decades after “HAL” and three decades before “ALEXA” – it’s as fun to see old-school IT as it is to see old-school airliners!
https://youtu.be/x_X6oHTdomY
LOL that last one; what was futuristic in the ’80s (a talking computer!) now looks downright archaic in this age of AI chatbots…
Then there was the parody of the Doublemint jingle by Jay Ward for the Bullwinkle cartoon show on TV. Sung by Boris Badenov in fake Russian accent and a grossly mangled melody:
“Double your pleasure, double your fun,
Join Boris’s Fan Club and learn hit-and-run!”
Those commercials are perfect – people of a certain age bracket can instantly identify the gum with even the melody of the jingle. That advertising firm did their homework.
It was maybe the wheel covers and otherwise mostly stock appearance of this car that threw me, that I missed that the interior was not stock. I guess my whole heuristic might be that if someone was to go to all the trouble to redo an interior, and to your point, other wheels might have been part of the refresh.
After this gaffe was politely brought to my attention under separate cover, I did wonder how many comments in it would take for someone to recognize the interior didn’t come like that from the factory. It didn’t take long.
I remember really liking this color in the late 70s – car manufacturers were moving out of those earthy olive and avocado greens by then and I was beyond ready. I actually think more of Wint-O-Green Life Savers when I look at this – the green packaging and white mints. But then those don’t really have a Chicago connection. Yes, this car looks refreshing.
I was probably out of my white interior phase by then, but a brilliant white vinyl interior is still stunning when it is clean and in good condition.
It’s totally Wint-O-Green. My only thought about any white vinyl interior would be how easy / hard it would be to keep clean. I feel like even if I sat on public transit (which I do all the time), I may not want to sit on my car’s white interior wearing the same pair of pants…
Wint-O-Green – now another jingle is stuck in my mind:
“LifeSavers…a part of living!”
https://youtu.be/nulOPjMCNe8
There were also some LifeSavers ads around this time that featured Henry Fonda – I remember one where at the end a little boy approached him and said, “Hey! I know who you are – you’re Jane Fonda’s dad!”
Off the main topic, I have seen other photos of historic buildings with the same unintended illusion.
The photo of the Wrigley building is angled so the left side (from the viewer’s perspective) looks to be just a few feet wide, like a fake stage set on the Warner Bros. Burbank lot. Only the tower above implies that there may be more to the building than meets the eye.
My 1972 Impala – as nice as it was – had so much extra (meaning wasted) space, that the downsized version must have generated a lot of good feelings simply by offering the same room and functionality with much less steel and upholstery.
Unless you liked big wasted space cars.
Gum colored cars? As I look around today’s vehicles, I need to think about working on an ode to Black Jack gum. Then, If I can find gums in silver and white, I can address 95% of the vehicles on the road today.
I have always and still love Huge Land YACHTS. Never felt space was wasted. Had a 72 Caprice. Roomy, comfortable and much better looking than the down sized Version
Oooooo… Black Jack! I have had it before, and didn’t expect to like it, but I did. I prefer Teaberry, but I was feeling the Black Jack the first time I had it. The only (minor) downside is that it seemed to act like one of those dental “disclosing tablets” that showed where I could stand to re-brush my teeth.
And yes, both Wrigley Building towers have unique geometry to them even if in the same architectural style. I hadn’t noticed how thin the south tower looked as I had composed this image four years ago.
Teaberry fan here – when Mom loaded my sister and me into her station wagon (be it a 1965 Buick SportWagon with VistaCruiser-type roof windows, a 1971 Buick Estate Wagon (the giant B/C-body combo with Electra styling and dimensions, LeSabre interior, three forward-facing seats, and the all-electric clamshell tailgate), or a 1973 AMC Matador), she would produce the pack of Clark’s Teaberry gum from her purse and we would all eagerly grab a stick and unwrap and chew it.
So they still did the “disclosing tablets” when you were in elementary school? I remember getting them back in the ’60s when I was in grade school – “You’ll see RED…when you take the Toothbrushing Test!” This was after a visit to our class by a guest dentist who brought a giant toothbrush and giant fake set of teeth to demonstrate proper brushing technique!
The color, alone, sells me. Ever since Dad brought the family to HIWay Chrysler-Plymouth in 1963 to show us a gorgeous mint-colored Valiant V-200 wagon on the showroom floor, and the salesman handed Mom the keys, it’s my absolute favorite. And those armoir bodied Chevies still have an attractive utilitarian presence, like a getaway garden shed tucked away at the far end of the yard, away from a bickering family. There’s a guy on my commute route who has a beat-up white one that sat flat-tired and abandoned in a corner of his drive for years. Suddenly he put it back on the road, and it gives me a warm & fuzzy when I drive by and see it on my way to work.
Yep, the green coupe in the ad pictured above has to be one of the best examples of this bodystyle.
I really like your metaphors, of these being like a garden shed, but mobile. 🙂 And I’m sure like many CC readers, I would also appreciate seeing one of these back in action after believing it to be neglected or a goner. These aren’t just cars for us.. they are often symbols of other things, as well.
Excellent condition for a pedestrian Impala 4-door sedan model. I more often see Caprice’s in that kind of condition than the less expensive Impala’s. Good find.
After several Impalas in the 60’s & 70’s my father finally splurged for a Caprice Classic in 78. His first car with power windows, an aftermarket stereo and a handling package with
rear anti-sway bar and steel belted radials.
What a sweet ride that was. And a big step up from a mid spec Impala. I got to use it a lot.
Thanks for the memories.
Oh, and I remember when that pack of Wrigley’s was 5 cents. I has to ask for an increase in my allowance when it went to 6 for tax.
I was watching an old episode of “Wonder Woman” from the ’70s last night where the price of fifty cents for an apple was balked at by Diana Prince. Then I used my phone to calculate inflation… I was really surprised that a pack of Wrigley Spearmint, even if it had 15 pieces in it, cost a whole two dollars.
Very nice find. The green and white combo really make this one pop, and it is obviously in great shape. I’m guessing that the interior was re-done or painted, as most had a dashboard in a contrasting colour to the white seats. My poor ’78 Bel Air looks like a taxicab or undercover cop car in comparison.
My 81 Bel air was the same colour as this one, but it had a vinyl roof. That was my favourite colour on a car when I had it.
I had a boss who used to trade his Chevy in every few years, and would always get doublemint green. Once his wife intervened when she learned of an upcoming trade, and said she would come along that time. She made him order a very nice burgundy colour, for which we all hounded him for caving in.
That’s right, I remember GM offered white interiors with red, blue, green or black dash/carpet. Maybe tan too, but I’m not sure.
I think that it was an interior option marketed as “Compaticolour” or something along those lines, so this should have had a green dash, carpeting, headliner, etc. I’m guessing that it would have looked like Chris Greencar’s Monte Carlo, colour wise.
Did they build Bel Airs in ’78? I didn’t know that. Or is it a Canadian market thing?
Congrats on your BelAir. Wonderful car!
Bel Airs were sold in Canada through 1981.
I actually thought the featured car here was a Bel Air rather than an Impala, because the interior looks much the way the Canadian Bel Air’s did – featureless seat upholstery, door panels without the woodgrain and chrome inserts, and no woodgrain on the dash. The Bel Air exterior looked like an Impala with most of the chrome moldings removed.
I think you’re right about the interior having been reworked; the factory white wasn’t quite such a bright-snowy one, and the paint chart shows white-interior cars had black dashboards (which is also what I recall).
Interesting – it never crossed my mind that folks would paint dashboards, but having just looked it up, I see that is sometimes done. Regardless of how it was done, someone appears to have spent a lot of effort on that interior.
Though I imagine that white dash reflects startlingly on a sunny day.
Dean, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I’m always so impressed with your choices in your fleet! And with the quality of the merchandise..
Joseph
That was the closest that I have to a ’78 Chev….The ’73 CDV is more Spearmint like in appearance.
My parents bought a new Impala in ’77, white with a red cloth interior. The only options were air-conditioning and an 8-track stereo. It drove well and was very comfortable but was otherwise an absolute lemon. Very poor build quality and myriad issues. At one point a rep from corporate had to come from Detroit to Charleston, WV to resolve the issues. Alas, I still have fond memories of the car.
Back then we were told to avoid a car that was brand new. That’s why the 1978 Impala was always my favorite of this gen.
My parents bought a 77 Impala wagon that was this color green, but a tan interior. It was by far the best car they ever had, the previous two being a Vega whose engine, well, Vega’d, and a 67 Saab 95 which hated the wet and suffered a transmission failure and the successor a dog slow and unreliable Escort wagon.
The only big issues with the Impala were the AC – the compressor seized on the Cross Bronx Expressway one summer in 1979, a time when you really didn’t want to stop there. It also dumped all the Freon into the passenger compartment one day in 1981. A smaller issue was the the rear springs were under spec’d, as they rode noticeably lower after a 4 week camping road trip soon after we got it.
Nice find, and it does have a friendly and sweet look to it! I would never have thought to compare a car to gum, but it works here. And a stick of gum has a “boxy” look to it, two dimensionally that is.
This car is curious because it’s so stock looking on the outside apart from the grille, yet the interior has a very custom vibe. That steering wheel is really wildly garish for the car and the steering column is definitely aftermarket. I’m almost certain the white color is not original. White interiors were mostly out by the late 70’s, I don’t recall ever seeing a pure white interior on Chevys of this period. The closest the 79 (78 doesn’t have a color chart) brochure lists an “oyster” color available for the interior, which is a light gray from what I can tell, and that isn’t available with either green (http://www.oldcarbrochures.com/static/NA/Chevrolet/1979_Chevrolet/1979_Chevrolet_Brochure/1979%20Chevrolet%20Brochure-10.html). Pure, bright white? Got to be a custom re-dye job, I think. But yet for all that trouble, the owner didn’t put on the obligatory custom wheels one generally sees on cars like this. Not that I’m complaining, the stock exterior is muy bueno and the white interior looks good with it.
I love early skyscrapers. So much more architectural detail than newer buildings with their universally smooth facades. The worst is in mid-century, many old highrises where given new smooth facades to “modernize” them, erasing all their character. Looks like the beautiful Wrigley building escaped that period unmolested, thankfully. My question is how much design and administration did it take to make chewing gum??? That’s an awful lot of office space!
“My question is how much design and administration did it take to make chewing gum???”
In the twenties and thirties corporations build skyscrapers to both promote their brand, and divest their wealth into real estate. Several floors would be dedicated to the corporate offices, and the rest was rented out.
I read the Walter Chrysler biography some years ago, and he built the Chrysler Building as a seperate entity from the Chrysler Corporation. The idea was that his children would inherit a property that always generated some cash flow.
I’m with you on this being not-factory-white. The steering column appears to be stock, and looks to be black—same as the dashboard, from the factory, on white-interior cars; see my other comment/link.
Yep, I blew it with the non-stock interior. But in my defense (I realize I’m not on trial, LOL), and as I mentioned to Moparman, it didn’t even occur to me that the interior might not be stock, given the otherwise mostly unadorned exterior and those wheel covers. Nothing besides the steering wheel and grille seemed that custom to me. Lesson learned – take nothing for granted!
About ’60s and ’70s updates to older buildings, I’ve seen refurbishings up near where I live, and even back home in Flint, where buildings with those midcentury updates were restored to their original aesthetic, and it’s like night and day.
My brothers “essentially stripper, 74 Ventura” had the “luxed up” interior. it was white. Bucket seats seemed so odd with the “column mounted, auto trans”, and no console. Had no p/s/p/b either. The previous owner had jazzed it a bit with a side stripe, between the wheel wells. It had the full wheel covers too.
Drove nice , relatively speaking. The “buzzy six” kept the weight down and it wasn’t front heavy. ((went rather well in the snows of wstrn PA.
Our Oceanside holiday, and university, town has a few industrial neighborhoods including some now re-purposed large buildings. One was a Wrigley factory; as a no-frills factory built of concrete slabs in 1954 it’s architecturally the opposite of those Chicago towers. It’s still in active use, with a few small and medium manufacturing companies, art studios and other occupants. It’s known in town as the Old Wrigley building, or OW Building, or Ow Building as it’s currently owned by a large local landholding family named Ow.
Local history aside, I remember when the 5 stick packs were a nickel, then went to 7 sticks for 10 cents which outraged me. I didn’t know about inflation. That was about the time I stopped buying gum … if I was going to spend a whole dime, I might as well get a Hershey Bar. Of course those soon went up in price too, and seemed to get smaller at the same time. Downsizing began well before 1977.
Edit: I just realized that Joseph mentioned 5 sticks for a quarter. So Wrigley downsized also along with raising prices. I wonder how long the 7 stick packs lasted. The 5 to 7 change happened in the Sixties.
I like your thought process of going straight for the Hershey bar if the price of gum got beyond a certain point. Totally the kind of math I would have done. This is coming from someone for whom risk selection and cost/benefit analysis puts food on the table. 🙂
The older I get, the more I appreciate the good ol’ Caprice Classic. A nice car with brutally honest bones that’s ready to cover miles and work like a truck if it has to.
I thought about what it’d be like to bring back the caprice as a Tahoe with a trunk. I like it. I think the market might, too. All it is is a civilian version of the Beast Presidential limo.
This Caprice idea could feasibly happen! That’s my thought, anyway.
It does beg a question: How is handling affected by the much reduced steering wheel diameter? I have one personal experience, in putting a modern Mopar wheel on a ’60’s Valiant with power steering. Although the arc necessary to change direction was less, it was harder to avoid oversteering, partially because of the sensitivity and overboost of Chrysler power assist. Wondering what others have experienced.
What a sharp and minty find—pinstriping and original wheels and covers and all! Well analogised and presented, as always, Joseph.
I always thought the factory Impala grilles looked deliberately uglycheap, as though to advertise “Hey, world, this guy didn’t spring for the Caprice Classic!”, but I’d have an easier time getting onside with this ’61-Lancerlike grille if it were flush to the front of the car, rather than recessed (and if there were matching pieces down in the bumper bar). I might have an easier time getting onside with the headlite-shaped trinkets if they were at the bottom of a rubbish bin. The steering wheel and shift knob aren’t to my taste, and the snow-white interior don’t go for me, and none of these opinions of mine matter, because it’s not my car. And whosever car it is obviously loves it; it shows!
As for gum: they updated the logo and packaging design for Wrigley’s Doublemint in 2002. Then they applied the same design to Wrigley’s Spearmint in 2012. See the thoughtless design error they made?
It would be cool if there was an error, but that’s probably not likely. Looks like they began thinking of the double-headed arrow as an icon in its own right, irrespective of “mint count” in the gum. Or they were uncomfortable or superstitious about it always pointing to the right…
Yeah, the Spearmint should have only one “spear” or arrowhead. That’s if they still make it – Wikipedia says it was discontinued last year. But the Mars/Wrigley website still shows it as current. Surprising how little change there’s been in the packaging design for either variety since 1930 until recently. Anyway, even the new Spearmint design isn’t as abhorrent as what they did to Juicy Fruit packaging.
Or the recipe. I understand that artificial sweeteners make the flavor last longer, but all of these Wrigley gums and the related Winterfresh had flavors that hit hard and then were gone, and that was fine. They changed the formula and now it’s not the same.
They left the correct, single-headed arrow on the packaging elsewhere in the world.
And yes, design errors can be called design errors even if they’re done on purpose.
I see what you mean, did away with a brand distinction of their own original design in a remodel. Those are classic brands that always risk getting stale, but their recognizable heritage package is one of their strengths. Hersheys. Crayola. Some of these packages you know from the corner of your eye. A funny thing about mass produced sweets that I remember: I knew someone who worked for Mars, making Snickers and Milky Way, etc. The chocolate pattern on the top of each one was different, and it was easily possible to tell an unwrapped Snickers from Three Musketeers and so on by the pour pattern on the top, even without a distinctive wrapper.
The pride of ownership was so clear with this car, and I love that my friend Kelly recognized this, as I would have in the moment. I don’t think the Caprice-Impala grille disparity was quite as large as, say, (as I duck) the ’72 Ford Torino / Gran Torino difference. But that’s all relative.
And I would have completely missed the faux-pas with the Spearmint label had you not pointed it out.
I remember seeing these when I lived in Vienna 1992-1993, IIRC, they had them in Austria for sale 1979-1982 but you rarely saw them. Only ever saw one or two at the time.
Never drove an Impala of this type, but have driven the larger Caprice as a rental when in Canada in the 1990s – they had a 1982 model for hire in August 1999 at a mom-and-pop place in Toronto! Only Impala I’ve ever driven was a 2007 model, wasn’t too bad, the V6 was OK but not as good as the equivalent Honda I later replaced it with in 2008.
The green one in the photo looks nicer than the examples I saw.
Back home in New Haven, CT, they’re still not as common, but the ones I have seen tended to be blue and in poor condition.
I remember reading somewhere online about an Oldsmobile prototype was made of the Impala sedan with the Olds badge and it had the 305 V8 engine, but nothing more was known about this 1978 car. This was on a Geocities site way back in 2004!
Thing is… would an Olds version have been too much with the Impala having a Pontiac version too, the Parisienne?
Wow – the idea of an Olds “Parisienne” fascinates me and makes me want to see if I can find anything else about it. I’m trying to imagine what that would look like, especially if the Olds version (like the Pontiac) would use most of the Impala / Caprice tooling. Maybe for slightly nicer fleet sales?
“Blue and in poor condition” (in that ubiquitous shade of municipal, metallic light blue) sounds like many examples I’ve seen that are doing regular duty as transportation and haven’t (yet) been scooped up and shown a little more attention.
The Caprice was the de luxe version of this Impala; it wasn’t larger.
Not being from the area, I never thought of Wrigley’s gum as a Chicago institution, but I very much think of Wrigley Field as a Chicago institution, which of course is named for the founder of the chewing gum company. I rarely chew gum anymore, but when I did I was more of an Adams devotee, which back in the ’70s sold 8-stick packs of sour fruit-flavored gum. Only a few flavors were easy to find at drug or convenience stores – orange and grape seemed to be the most common – but more esoteric flavors were sold at a few places. The biggest variety of gum in my area was sold at a old strip mall place called simply News Stand, which I’ve since learned was a really seedy, musty old place that mostly sold plastic-wrapped “adult” magazines along with a small selection of newspapers and mainstream magazines, but for 8-year-old me it was the best candy store in town and didn’t know or care about anything else they sold. Adams apparently was owned by a succession of pharmaceutical companies, most recently Pfizer, before selling the division to a confectioner, and they haven’t made the sour-fruit gum in decades.
My family had a ’77 Pontiac Bonneville with two-tone green paint, the lighter green being the color of this Impala. Matching green velour inside too. I didn’t think of it as a minty green though. There was a very minty green offered on GM cars in 1979; the darker green and interiors that year were a Kermit olive green I never liked.
I loved the picture you painted of the News Stand with your words… I could almost envision it in my mind’s eye.
I do know of the “Kermit-green” you speak of for the Pontiacs, which reminded me of Prell shampoo.
I searched online and apparently there’s only two other people who’ve written about News Stand:
(#1: http://www.nosuchthingaswas.com/2011/04/between-having-and-losing.html
#2: https://blog.rosssutton.com/blog/wheaton-news-stand-chum-gum-king )
but their recollections match mine exactly – and one of them even has a photo! I forgot all about Carousel Footwear next door which is probably where my parents were really taking me before I ducked into the shop next door to get my candy/gum stash. The B.F.Goodrich place next door was Graeves Tire & Appliance which is still around but moved to a larger, newer building; the old place seen here is now an AutoServ and fulfills the same function. And surely that 1950s/60s B.F.Goodrich sign with their old logo is long gone, right? Nope, they just moved it to the back of the shop!
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Autoserv/@39.0422544,-77.0504653,3a,75y,173.04h,88.08t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1skDjMSJznHe7thEnAe4TO6w!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!4m9!3m8!1s0x89b7cf04a7e20c5b:0x319a1447378b601!8m2!3d39.0419631!4d-77.050313!10e5!14m1!1BCgIgARICCAI!16s%2Fg%2F1tgcbdkd?entry=ttu
This is so great. And with what looks like a mid-’50s Buick in front of it (?)!
I was trying to ID that car but couldn’t; possibly a Buick but not sure.
More bothersome is that I can’t ID the other, newer ’60s car. Usually I can at least narrow it down to GM/Ford/Chrysler/AMC but I’m drawing a total blank here.
The other photo from the first blogger has a clearer shot of the B.F.Goodrich/GE Appliance shop and someone getting into a Ford Maverick so it’s at least from late 1969 when I would have been 4 years old. The Sun TV & Appliance across the street surprises me though, because as a little kid I distinctly remember that place being the Juvenile Sales toy store where many of my Hot Wheels sets were purchased, so Sun must have vacated this location soon after that pic was taken. It later became something else I don’t recall, then a CVS. Google Street View shows it’s yet again vacant, with that round sign still there waiting for its next occupant. Wheaton, MD is such a time capsule, full of little independent stores and restaurants of every imaginable ethnicity. The independent VW shop where I service my ’07 Rabbit (Wheaton Service Center) looks like it hasn’t changed since it opened in 1964; the waiting room still isn’t air conditioned. Guy who owns the place still rues when Volkswagen started putting the engines in the wrong end of the car…
https://www.google.com/maps/place/2401+University+Blvd+W,+Silver+Spring,+MD+20902/@39.041836,-77.0505283,3a,75y,80.04h,87.95t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1scGOgJfbyKfIpWuxuiW0RNg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!4m15!1m7!3m6!1s0x89b7cf04a7e20c5b:0x319a1447378b601!2sAutoserv!8m2!3d39.0419631!4d-77.050313!16s%2Fg%2F1tgcbdkd!3m6!1s0x89b7cf04a7ea1711:0x2c366aa13cbf0f33!8m2!3d39.0420344!4d-77.0503074!10e5!16s%2Fg%2F11bw437rhf?entry=ttu
(“wrong end” being the front, that is)
As for the gum… I do remember that the first time I traveled to Chicago, I was struck by the magnitude what that chewing gum had wrought. I mean, I knew about Doublemint, and that was mostly through the twins…
…and the Juicyfruit (which no-doubt today would be “JuicyFruit” because we MUST capitalize letters in the middle of words)…which I always thought was something called “Jewgiefruit”…because apparently I’ve misheard and made up words from day 1 (and neglected over a dozen years to actually READ the word on the wrapper). Still, it seemed an awful lot of building to have sprung from nickle to 25 cent packages of gum.
But now that I know that the empire was actually based on soap and baking powder, it all makes sense.
Kind of.
Oh, Jujyfruits are a thing! One of my favorite Seinfeld episodes, ever, and there are quite a few that vie for that honor!
My favorite Juicyfruit reference is when Jack Nicholson offers it to the up-to-then mute Chief Bromden in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
That steering wheel is “dreadful” . ((appearance speaking))
My brothers “essentially stripper, 74 Ventura” had the “luxed up” interior. it was white. Bucket seats seemed so odd with the “column mounted, auto trans”, and no console. Had no p/s/p/b either. The previous owner had jazzed it a bit with a side stripe, between the wheel wells. It had the full wheel covers too.
Drove nice , relatively speaking. The “buzzy six” kept the weight down and it wasn’t front heavy. ((went rather well in the snows of wstrn PA.
It’s great to see green making at least a small comeback. Kia has a dark mint color available…quite attractive.
Green seems to make a comeback every 20 years or so. The last time was in the mid nineties, when I had a 1996 dark green Pontiac Bonneville. Looked good with the taupe interior.
The front-seat passengers were shortchanged in foot room. Higher floor in order to provide space for the catalytic converter.