When we have a car, we use it for lots of different purposes but some are more enjoyable than others. For this second October post I've selected a variety of photos of friends and family out for some some event or occasion, posing in front of or beside the cars that got them there. Apart from providing the means of transport, it seems they also make good backdrops!
My mother-in-law Mary on a camping trip, posing beside her new husband Bob Featherston's pride and joy, a Nash, in 1947.
Mary, Bob, his mother Grace Eleanor Featherston and her sister Dulce, enjoying a picnic day out somewhere.
Mary's English aunty Grace White (nee Newth) with her husband Len, their son Alan and dog, posing with their car as backdrop, probably somewhere in Gloucestershire where they lived.
On an annual Christmas camping trip in the 1960s, with my Dad Ian and my brother and sister, and the Consul station wagon, which would have been packed full of all the equipment needed for a week in a tent at the beach. I can see the essential Eski is still there in the boot. No portable fridges or other mod cons back then!
My husband in the early 1970s posing with his trusty first car, a dark green 1950/51 Austin A40, which took us on many a picnic and some longer trips before we reluctantly decided we had to let it go a few years later. He was sad to sell it for a mere $60. I am currently getting a wooden model made of it as a Christmas present for him. Happy memories, although I can't say I missed its occasional crank starts and other idiosyncracies!
Husband second from left, with some of 'the boys' on a post-school trip from Canberra up to Queensland. He didn't try taking the Austin that far however, as that would have been asking too much of it.
5 January 1974 and the A40 is all dressed up by the boys in toilet paper and towing tin cans, ready to transport us from our wedding reception venue to the hotel where we were to spend the first night of our married life. My Dad looks to be scratching his head at the sight of it!
My grandfather Oliver Cruickshank posing with his Morris Minor, which coincidentally we got to drive for a few days on our honeymoon in NZ, while he and his second wife Maisie were holidaying in Australia after attending our wedding. Funnily enough, my mother's photo caption doesn't mention the car at all. It simply says "Granddad Cruickshank enjoying his new Parka". I think this was because the Parka jacket had been a recent gift form Mum and Dad.
Mum and Dad dressed in their finery beside Dad's Ford Fairmont in 1975, in which he chauffeured the daughter of some old friends to her wedding. I had learnt to drive on this car after leaving school in 1970. Driving the A40 soon afterwards was a rather different experience!
That's all from me this time, but no doubt you can take many more trips down memory lane and elsewhere here at Sepia Saturday #344:
10 comments:
Nice connection of family vehicles with family posed beside, before, and around them. Even though I know December 'down under' is akin to our June up here in the north, it still stops me for a moment when I read about someone going camping at the beach at Christmastime. (4th photo) :)
Very enjoyable wander through your gallery of cars and their owners/occupants. Mary’s Fairisle sweater reminds me of one Mum knitted for me; very stylish.
I also noted the Fair Isle jumper - my mother was a dab hand at them. I have some fond memories of the Austin A40 as well. Thanks for the memories.
Lovely happy family photographs down the generations. My Dad had an Austin 40 as a company car - he was a commercial traveller.
Oh the wedding car! That brings back memories, for sure. Ours was covered in shaving cream and crepe paper, thanks to friends and family. I don't think anyone does that anymore, not where I live at least. The other car that strikes a chord is the station wagon. Growing up, I was secretly jealous of friends whose parents had a station wagon. I loved it when we got to ride backwards in the third seat.
OK, culture shock...I don't know what Fair Isle sweaters are, or jumpers (which I do understand). The only one I notice is in the first shot. It's a pretty Scandanavian design vest to me. But mainly what is an "Eski?" I can't see it on the tailgate of the station wagon. And are you sitting on the tailgate yourself? Or are you the cute blond standing by it? In print, we use mostly the same language, but when we start listening to each other, I bet we sound quite different!
Not sure how we managed to drive away in the car like that - I think we stopped around the corner and pulled a lot of it off!
Thanks, Jo!
The pattern on Mary's sleeveless sweater is called Fairisle. She knitted it from odds and ends of wool she managed to scrape together, because wool was still in short supply after WW2. The Eski is in the boot behind the children. In Australia it's a brand name that has become the common name for a cooler or ice box. In NZ they call them Chilli bins, maybe from another brand name.I guess it's a sign of successful marketing if your brand name becomes a generic term. Another example is hoovering, from the Hoover brand of vacuum cleaner. By contrast in NZ they talk about luxxing, from the Electrolux brand. And yes, I'm the 11 or 12 year year old blonde standing beside the wagon.
ps. I should have mentioned that the Fairisle pattern was originally developed in Fair Isle, a remote Scottish island
Post a Comment