I’ve shared a good number of vintage images at CC these past few months. After which a few readers have asked: Where do they come from? And I’ve answered in all non-specifity “From all over!” A true if unsatisfying reply.
The best I’ve gathered is that old image collectors seem to purchase them at state sales or eBay listings, color-correct them, and randomly upload them. Out of curiosity, I’ve checked a few eBay listings and I can see the logic behind the ‘random upload’ approach. Those who grew up in the age of film know what I’m talking about; out of a roll of 36, two or four really good pics, if that.
So, up the images go, out of order and out of context. Nice sunset! Nice car! Etc.
But today’s gallery is different, as these belonged to a fairly comprehensive upload providing a decent background on the images. No idea if the uploader was a relative, though there was no indication of that being the case.
So meet Barbara, a native of Pittsburgh, who graduated from the University of Maryland and worked as a librarian in Maryland, Ohio, Colorado and California. And while it looks like Barbara had a rather interesting life traveling extensively across the US and abroad –which is all fine– she and her family had a fondness for out-of-the-ordinary automobiles. In some ways, a natural byproduct of her background as a college-educated person.
Most of the images were taken at Biggs Ave., in Frederick, Maryland. And most of the ones with auto content were shot around the date of Barbara’s marriage. Or so is my theory.
In any case, Barbara and her family were none too concerned with brand loyalty, as the cars shifted wildly from one make to another. And as you’ll see, it’s a rather eclectic mix.
But before we go exotic, here is Barbara on what appears to have been her Dodge. Her car during her college years?
Looks like preparations for the wedding took place during the winter, and clearly, there was much excitement in the -cold- air. A couple of shots show Barbara’s father’s car, arriving with her wedding dress. Precious film, capturing the unfolding of a life-changing event.
A few images seem to have been labeled under ‘moving day’, with no indication of who’s moving what to where. Whatever the mechanics may have been, the moving took a few trips on different days to complete. Both the Dodge and Rambler got a good deal of use during that time.
Another image marked as ‘moving day’ shows the Chevy Sportvan for the first time, right next to the yellow Hertz truck. I’m pretty sure the Sportvan was Barbara’s husband’s ride.
With the wedding approaching, looks like Barbara’s father took the time to give his Rambler a good wash. Better go to the wedding looking tidy and neat!
More photos of wedding preparations. The weather is sunny, the skies are clear, and seems like the bridesmaids’ dresses have arrived.
Notice the Renault Dauphine in front of the Falcon, that at some point had become part of Barbara’s household.
Now, what’s the ideal car for a wedding? What better than a Chevy Sportvan? And the Rambler is seen again, even if only its tail fin appears in the lower right corner of the image.
I honestly never thought of a Sportwagon as a wedding car… but I’ll admit it makes for a jolly sight.
Barbara and her husband seem to be having a ball of a time. Is this after the wedding? I see some wedding gifts back there, enough clothing for a long trip, and the van has gotten the camper conversion at some point; with drapes on the windows and a bed on the floor. A Sportvan honeymoon?
The couple’s life seems to have continued on Biggs Ave. after the wedding, at least for a short while. A few additional photos feature the surrounding houses and quiet neighborhood. Plus another Rambler?
Oh, and the Dauphine, stuck in between the Pontiac wagon and the Falcon.
Now, it’s easy to see that Barbara was fond of the Dauphine. Here she is, happily posing with the little Frenchie.
We’ll close this brief tour of Barbara’s automotive adventures with this image of her by the library. I would think she went to own more varied automobilia, but looks like it wasn’t documented. Or not uploaded yet?
But even if a short tour, these images have given us a slice of Barbara’s life, plus some nice shots of uncommon vintage cars. I also have to say that Barbara seems the kind of neighbor I would have enjoyed having. After all, she was someone fond of new experiences and places. And well, lovely curious cars.
Bladensburg is the next town over from where I live; the library in the last photo was replaced in the late 1970s (with an old 1920s schoolhouse building), which in turn was just demolished and replaced with a new, larger building 3 years ago.
This is wonderful to be able to put a name, place and personality with these pictures! The Rambler has a Ft. Detrick parking permit, so my guess is that Barbara’s father worked there, with either a military or scientific background (the US Army Chemical Corps was headquartered at Ft. Detrick).
It looks like the apartment complex in Picture #8 was in Hyattsville, about an hour away from Frederick. Hyattsville is just 2 mi. from the Bladensburg Library (last picture). The photo looks like the Kirkwood Village Apartments, built in 1949 and still standing – the window and brick patterns both fit, as shown below. Kirkwood was big, with 800 units at the time, so there’s a number of individual buildings that could be the right match, but I’m pretty sure that’s the apartment complex.
I meant to include the StreetView link too:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/GsRKP6ax3SnMNG118
Those apartments are in walking distance from my house (Ager Rd. was where a freak collision with a broken signpost led to my losing my then-current car). There are gazillions of buildings that look like that in Hyattsville though.
Wow – that’s amazing! There do seem to be a lot of that type of apartment buildings in Hyattsville, Mt. Rainier, Bladensburg, etc… so I’m not 100% positive of this one. However, that two-story central window and the bulging brick line between the 1st and 2nd floors are unique enough to make me fairly confident. And of course it could be some other complex that was torn down long ago.
Your signpost incident on Ager Rd. sounds terrifying.
There sure are!
If it was a blue sticker, he was was an Officer, a red sticker made him enlisted, yellow an NCO, civilian employee at the base would have been green, black was contractor (back in the day, of course).
Yes, early dark morning where a median separated the left-turn lane from the lanes next to it that went through the light. The median barely rose above road level and wouldn’t have caused a problem, but the sign warning of it was broken off leaving just a thick, strong piece of metal sticking about 6 inches off the surface. That metal piece cut a gouge along the underside of my ’07 VW Rabbit from front to back, ripping off the radiator and poking a hole in the transmission, severing A/C lines, the exhaust system, and more. It normally would have been repairable for about what insurance money would pay, but during the height of the pandemic there was a parts shortage and the shops simply couldn’t get the parts they needed. I wound up giving away the car to someone on CL (I had to remove it from the body shop lot), who sold or gave it away to a mechanic who pulled parts from another car to fix my old car and is now driving it. I’ve offered to buy it back if he tires of it, assuming it’s in good shape; the ’19 Golf that replaced it is inferior in most ways save for the welcome new safety and tech features. Anyway what was really terrifying is that the whole thing occurred after I had a seizure and have barely any recollection of driving; went out on a winter day dressed in gym shorts and a t-shirt, and wound up somewhere I almost never drive. It was like I was drugged, except I wasn’t (and have hospital drug test results taken afterward to prove it). I take preventative anti-seizure meds now.
If I could make out the address sign on the apartment door I could easily drive there and see how it looks now, appears to start with 4. The view you posted definitely looks like the same building design except the windows, but those could have easily been replaced with a different style since the 1960s. It’s not uncommon around here to see the same house or apartment building show up in more than one neighborhood so not positive it’s Kirkwood Apts. (no “Village” in the name, at least not anymore).
That’s horrible. Unmarked medians are a problem here in Northern Virginia too. Many jurisdictions install medians jutting out into what would ordinarily be the turning arc of an intersection, but either never install signs, or (like in your case) the sign gets knocked down and never replaced.
Glad there’s anti-seizure medication that works now, too.
That’s how several are here, including one two blocks from home. There’s the usual median, than it disappears for a walkway, then in front of it another small section of median. When making a left turn from a cross street to the 4-lane road with the median, it’s easy to see the main part but miss that extra section, especially with the long, tall hoods of modern trucks and SUVs. And too many signs have been hit and not replaced. They do have flexible posts on newer signs; wish they would replace the old solid metal ones that anchor in the concrete and are inflexible. Even if it means a small bump in taxes (the money has to come from somewhere)
…like this one. Making a left turn from where the photo was taken, especially at night, it’s easy to primarily see the main section of the median (with an abrupt edge that reflects light from headlamps) and steer a few feet clear from it, hitting the small section of the medium to the right (which has a sloped edge in front that’s harder to see). The sloped edge is great for cars hitting it from straight ahead (which they would be if already on that road), but for vehicles making a left turn onto the road you hit the full-height vertical side section of that small piece.
Yes, that’s exactly what we have around here. Those medians are completely unmarked and are impossible to see in poor-lighting situations, especially for people not familiar with the area. A complete hazard – I wish the State DOT would set reasonable standards for these kinds of things, like requiring signage, reflectors, lane markings, etc. if they stick out like that.
I ran over one of those medians like the one pictured (except no sloped portion) in Brooklyn a few months ago when I was visiting my younger son. It happened at night when I was turning left from a narrow one-way street onto a 4-lane major arterial. That small end portion was essentially invisible with no contrasting paint. (Luckily there was no embedded sign post stump in it!)
My “cool” aunt was a librarian in Baltimore during this same time and also collected a stable of somewhat non traditional cars, ranging from a early 60s VW bug (covered with yellow flower decals to conceal the rust spots) to a Saab 96, and an Opel Manta rallye.
Librarians tend to outside-the-box thinkers who make very modest salaries. That combination can make for interesting car choices.
Pretty cool series of pictures made even better by the stories .
-Nate
Stephanie and I took our honeymoon in my ’68 Dodge A100 van that I had converted into a camper. We spent 4-5 days in the Southern CA deserts, out past Palm Springs and then working our way down to the Anza Borrego desert east of San Diego. We did get hit with some heavy rains, but we were cozy in our little van. I got stuck once, but found a carpet remnant and used it for traction. I tried to get Stephanie to drive the van (she’d never driven any car before) but the manual shift van was a bit too much.
Barbara was college-educated at a time when not very many women were, and her eclectic cars and her lifestyle reflect that. She reminds me of some other college-educated women that crossed our family’s paths in Maryland at the time. I invariably found them more interesting than average.
So why the oft-noted correlation between college education and off-the-beaten-path cars? Any theories, or better yet, studies investigating this phenomenon?
I grew up in a college town and saw all sorts of weird cars, including never-imported Euros and rare Americans like Cord and Eldorado Brougham and Kaiser-Darrin. My best guess is that cars were a permitted form of expression in the buttoned-down 50s, so college people expressed their coolness with cars instead of tiedyed shirts and long hair.
A professional career back then for women was somewhat limited. For my two older sister, the paths were more on nursing, secretarial science, or teaching. My sisters would make fun of the female history majors who were more focused on their Mrs. degrees.
My college was offering a 2 year associates degree in Secretarial Science in 1980 with 30 to 40 at each quarterly graduation. Word Perfect, e-mail, and voice mail changed the dynamics of that job fairly quickly.
I assume this was the first half of the 70’s or am I wrong? In all my years of college, 71-81, all I was around were college educated women. At Cal they were business majors, science majors, a good friend a chemical engineer, and another Japanese girl a soon to be PhD in Chemistry. My field had 10 out of 65. Today it is 55 out of 65, a complete flip.
I just looked. My PhD friend from 1981.
https://www.entherapharmaceuticals.com/portfolio-item/kazumi-shiosaki-phd/
Worse, it was the Deep South.
We were not as enlighten as the West Coast.
Babs was quite a fetching figure on the hood of that Dauphine! I love these vintage photo montages of ordinary people and everyday life. The pieced-together background story just sweetens the pie.
Fascinating post.
In 1964, I lived about 4 blocks from Barbara (Lee Place for anyone who knows Frederick). It was the 3rd place that I’d lived in about 4 years of life and represented yet another grant-inspired/mandated posting for my dad. We moved around a lot. We lived in Frederick for about a year and a half.
We lived a few blocks from Fort Detrick..which my mom insisted (in family legend) was the reason why our house had an an abundant collection of rather large cockroaches. She said it was the result of the biological and chemical warfare testing that Fort Detrick was responsible for (it still is in a way). If true, maybe this is why we mostly see photos of Barbara outside and in daylight. 😉
By 1965 we had moved to nearby Baltimore and had escaped the cockroaches…and my dad had found yet another job working for Governor Spiro Agnew. We did though buy a Renault Delphine…just like Barb’s family did in Frederick. For some reason (which I have yet to understand), the Delphine only lasted a few months before being traded in for a Simca,
But that’s another story.
Great post Rich!!
My Dad bought 2 Rambler wagons in a row (a ’61 and a ’63). We moved around a lot back in those days; in ’63 we moved to Catonsville, by ’65 we were moving to Vermont, and right outside our motel room (we’d vacated our house) the ’63 was totalled when my Dad was making a left turn into the motel from Rt 40 one guy waved him to go but in the other lane the driver had no similar intention.
Never owned a Dauphine, but 3 years later my Dad bought a new Renault R10 in South Burlington. Mom almost never drove it (she didn’t like anything but a full automatic); but of course she drove both Ramblers. We have a couple of pictures of her in front of our home in Pittsburgh (where we lived before Catonsville) with the ’63 Rambler in the background. She got her associates degree in ’51, and went back to school while my sister and I were also undergraduates (at a different college), we all ended up graduating the same year (almost 30 yeas after). Her brother was similar, but more extreme, he got drafted and never completed his graduate degree in ’69, but went back to that same school and completed it about 40 years later, in 2009 (while he was working as well).
Dauphine: sort of a French princess, usually wife of the Dauphin, heir to the throne, pre-Revolution.
Next door neighbor in Towson had one, it was a total POS. Finally he got smart and traded it on a ’62 Lancer w. 225 /6.
Yes, I don’t think Renault was as serious about dealers or their cars in the US. My Dad’s was after we departed Catonsville and became a 2 car family. He started with a used ’59 Beetle which got totalled in front of our home, so he bought a new ’68 R10 to replace it. The R10 dealer was more like a garage than a dealership, located near the South Burlington airport.
I missed driving the R10 by months (50 years ago) when he traded it so he could buy a small car with an automatic so my Mom could also drive it (instead of her ’73 Ford wagon) to save gas. I was in driver’s ed right after the R10 got traded in.
Dad started out with a ’56 Plymouth Plaza stripper he bought new right after graduating from college…never owned another Plymouth (nor Chrysler) but had several Dodges in the 80’s.
In the shot of the Chevy Sport Van with the tail fins of the Rambler visible there seems to be a Nash Metropolitan on the other side and then a VW roofline past that Nash…
Actually, to me it look more like a Rambler American, 1960 or so…?
Yes – it is a Rambler American c. 1958-60. I’d recognize that ugly face anywhere.
You did a great job and bringing this lady Barbara to life for us. Kudos also to you who know your real estate in Hyattsville! Thanks y’all.
Nice work, Rich.
I like this Barbara as much as my wife’s auntie Barbara who I had in here a few weeks ago. Great taste in cars!
Barbara must have had a lead foot- that badge on the right side of the Dodge’s trunklid reads “V Eight”, so it had the Red Ram baby Hemi of 1953-4…
Late posting: 8th photo from the top appears to show the rear of a Pontiac Safari? (twin to Chevy Nomad?)
Looks like my mother in law, career music teacher , 1964 -1997. Definitely a Rambler purchaser, not buyer, had they been available in the UK.
Rich to say you just do a little “color-correcton”with the images is quite the understatement. Perhaps it has something to do with me viewing these images for the first time on a brand new cell phone but I doubt it. The color is absolutely superb leading me to believe your working from negatives. If that was mentioned in prior comments I apologize as I skipped past them for this one article.
Great work and please keep them coming.✌️