Vintage shots from days gone by!

Good Lord, remember Sambo's Restaurants ?

 

I'd like to be standin' on the sidewalk below that!

 

We had one close to the house but did not stay open too long and only ate there once,its now a used car lot.

 

Here is a nice early photograph from California. Handwritten on the back is: "Our honeymoon Trip to California July 1933 our new car Ford".

 

Ya'll had them in California? I am shocked, stunned...the stories I could tell

 

We had them in Oregon where I grew up.
I think they were everywhere.

 

That's Eureka, northwestern coastal California

 

We had them in Washington state and we had even worse. Coon Chicken Inns. Shudder to think.

 

They were everywhere in SoCal in the 60's. Pancake house type food. They have pretty much disappeared due to the hypersensitive culture that has developed in recent years. I do know where one still exists. For the most part, you can recognize places that used to be Sambo's by the sign shape.

 

A friend of mine used to manage a Sambo's. While factions on one side blame hypersensitivity for Sambo's demise and factions on the other side claim victory through thier efforts for the demise the "political correctness" actually had little to nothing to do with it. Mismanagement and "Fraction of the Action" policies were the cause of Sambo's fate. http://www.nytimes.com/1981/11/27/business/market-place-mistakes-at-sambo-s.html

 

That's quite a "starter" setup on this Blue Crown rear drive car in 1948. I assume this is the Lesovsky chassis that became known as the Baby Blue Crown although I don't know for sure. That looks like Lou Moore working on the engine while driver Mack Hellings sits on the pit wall. Apparently, the car was put in gear and the starter rack spun up the rear wheels to get the engine started. You can see what looks like a group of 6 volt batteries that are being used to power the motor on the rack. At this time the accepted practice was to have an onboard starter that a remote battery cart was simply plugged into. And a few cars were still using a hand crank while the Novis employed a pneumatic starter. I guess that Lou Moore was going all out to save weight on this car and didn't want to be bothered with a starter onboard. At any rate, the car missed the show and Hellings went on to drive the Don Lee car.

 

Looks like Buck Baker

 

Sure does.

 

It looks like it has a starter hole in the grill for a crank or remote shaft also. I suspect maybe it was done that way so if they wanted to run it on dirt it would have been a p.i.t.a. to drag that wheel starter around. (?)

 

Isn't that a '56 Chevy with a '57 front bumper?

 

Sure looks like it, Grill bar, too

 

The '59 Imperial billboard would indicate that this was at least the Fall of '58.

 

Rootie, is that Zora Arkus-Duntov in a Talbot? If so, he was at Indianapolis in both 1946 and 1947 but never came close to qualifying speed.