When I was growing up Cadillacs were rich people cars. They had air conditioning. My folks had Fords, Chevys, and Oldsmobiles. We didn't have an air conditioner. Now Oldsmobiles are gone and Cadillacs are barely holding on. I drive a Japanese car. Who knew it would end up like this.
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I just found this ad in the June 1955 National Geographic and it made me smile because I've spent moments today at the cyber ball at Willow Manor. Shows you what the net can do. Use your imagination and you can go anywhere. Today, I'm this frosty looking blond driving away in a red Cadillac with Thomas Crown at the wheel. My reality...stopped up sink, storm outside, power on and off, net access here and there. I think I'll step back into this piece of vintage ephemera and worry about that ugly clogged sink later. I can pretend I'm elegant even while I sit here in a dirty Relay for Life t-shirt, mismatched socks, and a pair of sweatpants that faded from their original color long ago. Of course this is exactly what this ad had in mind. Fool me into believing that if I bought this car I'd turn into Grace Kelly. Well, a girl can dream.
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It was an amazing day, indeed, thanks to the wonderful imaginations of all my dear bloggy friends! Dream, dream, dream.
ReplyDeleteIt was a lot of fun. Brilliant use of the net and far away people.
ReplyDeleteI owned a black '60 Sedan de Ville, four door, and the only thing it lacked was air conditioning.
ReplyDeleteIsn't a Cadillac without air conditioning just a Buick?
ReplyDeleteMy wife and I married the 15th of September, 1970. I was home from SE Asia just three days. My FIL bought me this car with money I sent to him before I left Vietnam because I sold mine before I went. He was a mechanic (actually, a farmer, but it's the same thing), and one of our wedding gifts from him was new shoes for the Cadillac. I think the car came from a funeral home. For being a ten year old car, it had virtually no miles on it.
ReplyDeleteWe packed everything we owned in that car - everything. Mind you it was filled to the brim, but I mean everything fit. That car made five trips back and forth to California in the next year, and then we drove it for another three years while I was going to college.
No, it was a Cadillac. We drove across Nevada at night out of neccessity. Thank God for Wind Wings, something you certainly can't get on a car these days.
Oh yes, wind wings. How I miss wind wings. The Goldilocks of car windows. This is too much, this is too little, but this is juuuuust right. And you could direct the air which was even nicer.
ReplyDeleteCadillacs were the cars I remember passing my family when we'd be driving across country through the Midwest. Nebraska, Indiana, Iowa...fields of corn followed by a tiny town full of grain silos, then more fields, then another tiny town with grain silos, and on and on. So miserably hot but when you came to one of the towns you had to roll the windows up because the blowing chafe would get all over your damp sweaty skin. And then a Cadillac would zip by with the windows up. My mother would sneer. We'd stop for something to eat and see the Cadillac in the parking lot with the people in the restaurant looking fresh as a daisy as we dragged our heat exhausted covered with chafe selves into one of the plastic booths.
You've got a classic.
Just popped over from Willow's blog. This has been such a fun thing, and so many new folks to meet. I loved your statement about back to the reality. In reality it has rained for the last two weeks, nearly every day. I think we are going to mildew here. I am learning so much such popping in and out visiting. The word ephemera is new to me and I am a word lover. Can't believer I have never come across it before. Stop by my neck of the woods one day and we can chat.
ReplyDeleteQMM
Yes, reality. Today I would love to run away from reality. The job I've been working on for the past several weeks went down yesterday in the storm and the file and the back-ups seem to be unrecoverable. And one of my cats who has a major health problem seems to have vomited the an entire gopher on my floor. But then things could be worse. A friends house is falling down from the storm in Los Angeles. So let's just go back to Willow's ball. It was all so much more civilized! Thanks for stopping in to say hello Queenmothermamaw.
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