Weechi Wachee Springs

This roadside attraction about an hour north of Tampa, Florida began operating in 1947. The main feature of the park, which included a natural spring, was the Mermaid Theater, featuring lovely ladies who frolicked underwater, using special air hoses to breath. The place was at its most popular in the 50's and 60's when elaborately staged underwater shows regularly played to sold out crowds.

Today, the park is run as a state park, and there's water slides and flume ride. And the mermaids live on, since mermaids live forever.

Check out this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7irb4xqtBQ&feature=related

Another Fine Dining Establishment

In Bowling Green, KY, have lunch at Mayhew's, advertised on the back as Bowling Green's "Newest and Finest Restaurant, specializing in Broiled Steaks, Chops, and Fine Sea Foods."

(Sorry about the lack of recent posts. I was on vacation for two weeks!)

A Pair O' Ramas

In order to make anything sound catchier in the 50's and 60's marketers could just add the suffix "-rama" to it, and all of a suddent it sounded much cooler. The top postcard is the Bowl-a-Rama Bowling Lanes in South Portland, Maine. A cinderblock building with an empty parking lot is much more inviting with -Rama tacked onto the end.

The bottom postcard is a barge-based exhibit by the New York Trap Rock Corporation, one of the country's largest producers of crushed stone. Yep, there's no way you can generate interest in the wonder of crushed stone unless you throw in a little -Rama to liven it up!

Groovy, Baby, Groovy!

A postcard Austin Powers would have sent. The groovy 1960's border clashes completely with the stately architecture of the Tower Bridge, which opened in 1894, but it certainly helps date this postcard!

Let's Eat Out!

The Rex Restaurant in this vintage 1950's chrome postcard looks very inviting! The back promises "Superlative American and Italian Foods" and a seating capacity of 400. Looks like business is good in at this attractively landscaped eatery, located "on the Moorehead Strip," Morehead City, North Carolina.

Hartford, CT

Hartford, Connecticut, back in the days of the linen postcard. A lot has happened since this bucolic view existed -- a waterfront park including an amphitheater and stage has been added, along with a large convention center and science museum. The white Traveler's tower and adjacent brick buildings provide the continuity between these two views.

Piano Sale

The back says:

DO YOU KNOW WHY
a piano is such a wonderful musical possession, acknowledged the world over to be the "basic musical instrument"?

It is because piano music enriches the lives of both player and listener -- and because the piano is an instrument that most people will play throughout their lifetimes.

Please call and let us make an appointment to talk this over with you. We know we can work out all the details.

And the following notation was handwritten in:

"Our exciting sales are still on and also we have a special on an Ebony used Acrosonic spinet."

The card is postmarked 1958, when all across the suburbs living rooms were filling up with pianos so the baby boomers could take lessons. The spinets, which are the shortest type of vertical pianos, like the one in the image, were the bottom of the barrel when it came to quality. They had poor tone, generally were cheaply constructed and were notoriously hard to service. Nevertheless, they were a part of many of our childhoods, in part due to the successful marketing campaigns of those times.

Corny as these postcard ads were (I'll post more later), there's some truth in my case. I still play the piano almost every day, often just for ten minutes, but it's rooted in a Danish Modern style Story & Clark spinet that found its way into the living room of my childhood home, in a subdivision built in the 'burbs in the early 60's!