Those who follow CC daily, are aware that I’ve recently shared a few galleries of winter images. But honestly, it’s time to take a break from all that. And as many others have done before, the best way to get a respite from the cold is a bit of sun in Florida. So let’s take a trip down memory lane in the Sunshine State, with the help of some Kodachromes.
I feel a bit odd posting about Florida since I had a 3-month stay in the state back in the early ’90s. Not enough time to get to know it, but long enough to know that it ain’t quite like the South, nor quite like the East. Even if technically belonging to both. It’s, culturally, its very own thing.
Which makes sense. Its history and peculiar geography make it one of a kind. For those familiar with the state, these images bring glimpses of that uniqueness, as well as providing a window to the Florida that was.
Florida Vacation, 1949.
29th Ave., Gulfport, 1956.
Sunrise Shopping Center, Ft. Lauderdale, 1956.
Storyland, near Pompano Beach, 1957.
Mid-Century Motels, Sunny Isles Beach, mid-50s.
Florida oranges, near Lake Wales, 1957.
“World’s Famous” Webb’s City – World’s Most Unusual Drugstore, St. Petersburg, 1958.
St. Petersburg Rail Road Station, 1958.
Clearwater Beach, 1964.
Downtown Clearwater, 1969.
First National Bank, Clearwater, 1969.
Even in the newer photos, which are 1969, not a single Beetle.
Just a theory, but in Florida A/C is almost a necessity. Factory air wasn’t available and the engines didn’t have a surplus of power with which to run a compressor.
My parents in El Paso bought a used VW bug with AC back in the 70s. The condenser and fan fit under the front end. It worked fine and didn’t make it noticeably slower than other Beetles. You can still buy similar AC setups for them.
See some “good ole Ramblers”, here/there though..
Love the ’51 Merc casually hydroplaning through the swamp.
Not the typical assortment; more middle and upper cars than you’d see in most places.
Colonial Inn: Henry J driving past an abandoned Packard.
The first pic really got my attention. We made a trip from Michigan to Florida, in 65, in a 64 Rambler Classic. As best as I can tell from the pic in the post, that Rambler is even the same light blue.
I have some Kodacrhome slides of that 65 trip somewhere: Cypress Gardens, Weeki Wachee.
That woman brazenly smoking on camera. What a floozy!
Wonderful how the color has held up so well in these 70-year old slides. Kodachrome may have been slooooow (ASA 25) but the color was the absolute best for bright daylight shots!
Totally agree.
I wish we still had it.
A small consolation prize may be that 500 years from now (give or take a couple of hundred 😉 ) some of these Kodachrome images will still be easily viewable and many of those will have the same vibrant colors they have now. On the other hand, the vast majority if not all of the digital images we currently take and shuffle around as bits and bytes will be entirely lost and unreadable. People in the 25th Century and beyond will assume that everything from our time looked like these photos….’cause it’s all they’re going to have.
When ancient statues were dug up during the Renaissance and later, they washed off what little paint remained on them, and it was long gone from the exteriors of buildings. That certainly (un)colored our view of the ancient world and shaped modern tastes. In the year 2525, I doubt they’ll copy much of the last 60 years of Western art and architecture
even ifespecially if they can see plenty.I was worried about losing my early digital photos, taken before the cloud became a thing. So I copied them to 8” floppies. Archived and accessible forever 😀.
Webb’s City sounds like it was quite the place.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida/2019/08/18/webbs-city-closed-40-years-ago-today-what-happened-to-the-worlds-most-unusual-drug-store/
Spoiler alert…the mermaids apparently weren’t real.
Thanks for linking to that. As soon as I saw that picture of Webb’s, I knew I’d have to find out the story behind that place!
“Shines Floors”
“Kills Bugs”
But is a dessert topping?
CC Effect – just last night I watched (for the first time) the 1974 Clint Eastwood/Jeff Bridges movie “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot”. A 51 Mercury coupe in the same color as the one in the second photo here got a starring role. I can’t remember the last time I saw a 51 Mercury, then two in the last 24 hours.
Somewhere (I think my sister has them) are a couple of Kodachrome shots of my parents on a trip to Florida, around 1963. I recall one where my father is reaching into the open rear hatch of our 61 Olds F-85 wagon that they drove down.
The Gulfport Saks photo reminds me how crude and trucklike 1953-54 Chevy station wagons were compared to Fords. As I remember they rode like trucks too – maybe they put the panel delivery springs in all of them.
Sad they don’t make Kodachrome anymore ~ I grew up looking at pictures like this .
Thanx too for the link to Webb’s Drug Store .
-Nate
“Kodachrome” Paul Simon
https://youtu.be/rGAMp75Klqs?si=kBhPjfja6lldoNDV
I really enjoyed the link to Webb’s! 🙂
The “Ford” @ the “S/P train station” is a “scene stealer”! It’s beautiful.
Dad used Kodachrome on our trip to Florida in 1955, and I have all the slides, which are still brilliant and saturated. By the time we returned in 1963, Ektachrome was in vogue, which was faster, ASA-wise, and had a bluer tint. That’s me, aged 13, probably reading about the Red Sox in our Belevedere with a 318 wide block. Dad always liked the conical 1957 and ’59 Plymouth wheel covers, so he bought a set ’59’s for the wagon.
The picture of the orange groves reminds me of a Florida trip several years ago.
As per the GPS, I ended up driving through an orange grove via a dirt road. I could have reached out the window and grabbed several oranges for breakfast!! Surprised the farmer didn’t shoot at me!!
Cypress Gardens may be long gone, but I recently to a trip to Weeki-Wachee for old times’ sake. Lots of little things brought flashbacks of a childhood visit in the early 1960s.
Top Photo:
In the background is a Federal Hwy 98 sign and a road sign “Millview 4 miles” which enters Florida from Alabama around Paradise Beach.
Also, is that a New York or California license plate on the Rambler? Both had similar colors (yellow/orange with black numbers) in the early 60’s?
The fabulous ’49 beach scene (2nd pic) has my favorite ’40s car: a ’46 or ’47 Cadillac Model 61 fastback, I’ve wanted one forever. We had a ’47 60S some years ago but like the fastback 61 even better.
Saw that Webb drugstore on my very first visit to FL in Jan ’70, being there for a Marine Biology Jan Term class at the U of S. Florida Marine Laboratory in St Pete/Tampa.
Met my wife there that month, she was also a student, and 54 years on we are still together, and she’s still as beautiful as ever. Florida has a special place in my heart.
Great tour. Living in The Bronx in the 1950’s, there were three destinations for vacations: Florida, California and Europe. We traveled to none of them but, oh, what stories I would hear about these places that would fascinate me.
Where these photos taken with a Nikon camera? Paul Simon wants to know. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rlDTK6QI-w
Kodachrome is awesome. Film is making a comeback of sorts, because of the distinct “film look” – grainy and a bit muted and flat – which Kodachrome does *not* have. Kodak Ektar is close, but it still has a much wider exposure latitude (what is now called “dynamic range”.
The reason Kodachromes still look good is that the process is the opposite of other color technologies. With Kodachrome, the color dyes are added during developing rather than added when made and washed away during developing. Any tiny bit of residual developer makes the picture brighter over time rather than duller. As it turned out, the chemistry was very complicated and also pretty toxic.
But even if we wanted to we couldn’t easily replicate it – as I understand it the entire recipe was lost in Kodak’s bankruptcy / (attempted) switch to digital.
Nice shots. I shot some Kodachrome 64 back in the late ‘90’s (yes, I have a Nikon camera). I scanned them a few years ago and the colour still looks fine – no correction was needed. I still shoot film once in a while, and I prefer slide film – usually Ektachrome now, for obvious reasons. My wife and I were in Florida for a couple of weeks at Christmas and while I shot plenty with my digital camera, I wish I’d been able to bring the old Nikon along – there’s plenty I saw that would have looked great on film.
If you want another reason why suicide doors are flawed take a look at the ’51 Mercury in the water photo. If a rear door was opened (a bad idea) it would act just like a giant ice cream scoop in the water & flood the car.
I have stacks of Kodachrome slide trays of Florida, the Blue Ridge Mountains & a trip to Argentina from the ’50s, unseen in decades. I’ll have to check them out soon.
Air conditioning was available in automobiles starting in the 1940’s, so if someone really wanted it, it could be had
There were even aftermarket a/c kits available where they evaporator and vents installed below the dashboard.
Florida’s image is indelibly etched into the minds of millions for the “warm” reception that Florida gave to Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in the 1969 movie Easy Rider.