My wife's dad is getting pretty old, and has a lot of stuff. We've been slowly taking some of it home with us, to get a head start on having to deal with it all. Anyways....yesterday we got a box of pictures from his folks, which he hadn't looked at ever, I think. Among them was the old envelope titled "circus". Turns out his dad had been an acrobat in the 1920s. Who knew? The Four Collins, the group was called. Here are a couple pics of some cars at the circus. Have fun!
That hoodless, bumperless car in the background of the photo with the two beautiful women sure looks like the start of a hot rod to me. I guess your family hot rod roots run deep!
Those are pretty cool. My maternal grandparents were both school teachers throughout the school year, (as was my mom, and all of her maternal aunts), but from Memorial Day to Labor Day, they were on the road with their Howard Bros. Amusement Co. Not a circus, but a collection of fair rides and sideshow vendors. This started before WW II, and continued through 1965. Great fun for us kids when they did the fair in our hometown. Show us some more, Jim.
Just great. Got any more? This is why I like the HAMB. The cars are great but the stories about the people are just as great.
There are a bunch of other car pictures in the collection....I'll scan them one of these days. The others are not circus related, though.
there are a bunch of pictures of him a few years earlier, diving off really high towers. Not for me, either!
That comes under the heading of you think you have done some crazy stuff until you see what your wife's ancestors did for a living. 50 ft in the air swinging from what amounts to a Ham radio antenna mast with no net. Great stuff with nifty cars and some classy gals.
For those of us who are scared of heights, the picture of the ladies standing on the bumpers make me dizzy.
Neat old photos Jim. I have this one from 1929 of my Dad in his Hot Rod. My Grandma didn't cut his hair for the first 2 1/2 years because she wanted a girl, finally my Grandad put his foot down on that whole idea !
I'm still trying to figure out what the car is....looks like a 1924ish Hudson, with a custom coach body?
No help on that, but both of the cars appear to have some nice features, the hoodless one looks like a town car, and the privacy curtains visible on the suspected Hudson are nice. Too bad we can't run a license plate check on them, that would be too easy.
The Jalopy Journal
