Sunday, September 20, 2020

Rest of the old grocery store photos

My plan to do a series on old grocery store photos kind of went by the wayside two weeks ago. Because life just keeps coming at us fast in 2020. Which is probably the nicest thing anyone has said about 2020. Many folks are much less charitable in their thoughts about what 2020 can go do with itself, and I wouldn't disagree with them, except to say that it's people who do damage, not arbitrary numbers picked to count the number of Earth's trips around the sphere of hot plasma at the center of the solar system. (Also, I'm not sure I'd place any bets on 2021 being a bed of roses.)

 Anyway, I wanted to get to the rest of those grocery store photographs, so I'm posting them all here tonight. They are all printed on paper that's about 5 inches by 7 inches. There's no photo lab stamped on the back. Given the subject matter and the fact that some of these photos are very blurry, I suspect they were taken as part of someone's photography class — an early assignment to just shoot any subject and then learn how to develop and print photographs in the darkroom.

So here are the rest of the photographs, which I think are from the 1960s. You can click on them to see larger versions.
Some of the items (or signs) we can see in the above photos include cigarettes (Camel, Salem, and one brand I can't make out), layer cake, leg of lamb, wieners, Klear floor wax, bread, rolls, coffee cakes, pies, hot cereal, canned milk, syrup, starch, bleach and Jell-O. Sharper focus by the photographer might have allowed us to identify many more. 

Does anyone know what doll the man is holding up in the first photo?
I'm also curious about the super-unfortunate Native American cartoon characters in the sixth photo. We would correctly call that racist today.
Finally, as Mr. Safety, I am intrigued by the safety poster that seems to show — correct me if I'm wrong — a two-person horse costume in which the person who is the "hind legs" is lighting a firecracker under the foot of the person who is the "front legs." This seems wrong on many levels. It's also a piece of ephemera that would be amazing to have around today.
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This was my first post written in the New Blogger, which I resisted switching to as long as possible. So far, I'm kind of "meh" about it, and I'm not alone in that sentiment. Seems unnecessarily less user-friendly.

1 comment:

  1. I believe the toy on his should is Quick Draw McGraw's sidekick, Baba Looey. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Looey

    As for the Native American cartoon, it almost looks like the Ernie the Keebler Elf behind him, so could be something related to that, although I'm thrown by the "Klear" drum the other Native American is beating.

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