You know what they say about the best laid plans, they often don't come to fruition. Such was the case with our intended sojourn to the Oregon museum devoted to the 19th century overland emigrant trail. Initially, we decided that I would spend the first half of the day with my old school chum, Charley, and then the three of us would spend the second half of the day at the museum.
But once I got to Charley's house this morning, we two got so caught up in "appreciating" his collectibles and antiques, as well as reminiscing about the good ol' days, that we decide to put off the museum visit until tomorrow morning. That meant Concetta got the whole day to read her current favorite book back at the RV, while I wandered Charley's house and yard looking for cool stuff to shoot with the camera, looking through hundreds of old photographs of southern California, and dining on some nice fish and chips at the local sandwich shop.
Obviously, I don't have a heck of a lot to write about, so I'll just go ahead and post some of my photos I took of Charley's collections, which are composed of quite a few items I'd just love to own myself. The first is a photo of Charley's '36 Ford coupe that he purchased from an elderly lady in Glendale way back in the 1960s. Still runs like a top, though the lack of seat belts felt a little weird. Charley came by the RV park in the '36 this morning to pick me up.
The next collectible I just really liked was a Thomas Edison Victrola. This century old machine still plays music as good as it did 100 years ago. Charley even had some Edison record platters to play on it. The tone arm on this baby has a diamond-tipped needle, which was needed to read the weird sort of groves in Edison's records. Charley tells me that because Edison's record grooves are so unlike what we have today, you can't play old Edison records on your modern turntable. Certainly a cool addition to his hobby room.
I was with Charley when he scored this collectible a few years back. It belonged to a friend of his and certainly brings back a ton of memories for me when I think of how many years Kodak film was a mainstay in my life, including my high school production photography years, my ever growing personal collection of cameras and photographs, and to this day, several dozen rolls in a drawer in our refrigerator.
Charley and I just love collectibles that have to do with the Southern Califoria mountains. From the later half of 19th century until the start of WWII, Californians spent much time in the local mountains hiking, camping, and having adventures.
For years Charles and I would find the old sign posts that were constructed to point the way to various destinations, but the actual signs were long gone. In order to recreate the essence of these old signs we started making our own reproduction signs that, where possible, exactly reflected the original wording of the originals. In this photo Charles has recreated a sign grouping that once existed on the flanks of Mount Lowe, but in modern times had been completely removed.
Another favorite collectible for Charley is pre-WWII tinplate electric trains. Tinplate means, simply, that nothing is made of plastic, but the trains are made exclusively of stamped metal. He has them in all sizes and years of manufacture, but unfortunately lacks any place to run them. Still they look mighty fine in his hobby room.
And then there's this vintage guy. I'm sitting on a reproduction of a bench that originally graced one of the picnic areas surrounding Mount Lowe, California, back in the 1920s or so. In the 1950s, Charley dragged the abused and rusted metal components off the mountain, and meticulously recreated the original look of the bench from old photographs. I was so taken with the bench, that once upon a time I disassembled Charley's treasure, had a steel fabrication company exactly copy the legs, then reassembled it so I could someday build my own copy. To date I've yet to do that, but my intentions are forever good.
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