The chill factor.

[Forgotten Man]

I have this post in Golden Era because it deals with a feelin' I get whenever I'm doin' somethin' vintage.

How many here have been in a place, or hear a song or maybe just drivin' in an old car and get a chill down one's back? I have had this sensation many times when doing something old fashioned. In fact, once it moved me to tears.

I was in San Francisco visiting some friends for the Gatsby Picnic event... after the event, on Monday evening I was with a few close friends riding around in Johnny Stokes '37 Buick. I was in the back seat, with two buddies of mine... we were on State St. nearing "Fog City" diner. As we were moving along through the night, we came upon an older street car The Bay Area are known for... it was of a light yellow and deep red color combo... as we rolled along side of it, the song on the radio was Glenn Miller's recording of Solitude... a very haunting song as it is... as that song played and I was watching this street car from the window of a '37 Buick, dressed in period clothes along with others who were clad in vintage, I felt the most insane chill down my back, my eyes started to water up and I just felt this undiscribable feeling... I was fixated on that street car, hearing the sound it made as it moved along the tracks... oooooh man, erie!

I call this chill the time traveler's chill... I've always gotten it when I'm in a period setting and I'm feeling as if I've slipped back to another time.

This is why I do this... and why I'm so passionate about it... and why I pay so much attention to details. Music or sounds have a large part to do with this feeling... The sound of an old radial aircraft motor or steam train whistle are a few sounds that can bring on this feeling.

If any of yas have stories like this to tell, tell it! I'd love to hear about it!

 

[Forgotten Man]

BUMP!

What, I'm I the only one who has experiences like that?[huh]

Don't be shy, this could be a very interesting topic!

 

[Dagwood]

Your experience sounds great.

I'm still learning about vintage clothes, but I remember the excitement I had when I first found a 1940's tie. I remember thinking about the person who may have worn it, where he wore it, and why he gave it up. These thoughts often go through my head when I go shopping, and when I try the clothes on.

 

[ScionPI2005]

Well, perhaps the closest I have gotten to such a chill has been when I look at my vintage pocket watch and wristwatches. If I think about them long and hard enough, I wonder about who their previous owners were. It dawns on me how much history they have existed through (considering my pocket watch was built in 1904 it saw the Titanic sink, two world wars, the depression). Times like this I really wish vintage items could talk. They're almost like those giant trees we see in the forest that have been around for hundreds of years. As mere humans with such a short lifespan, we are awed by what experiences things from the past have had.

 

[redlight_artist]

I find the period pieces just resonate for me. Old pictures feel familiar, the music and words... all of that just fits me better than now.

Got to love past lives...

 

[cookie]

That Vintage Feeling

One of my favorite lines from Patton - the movie is where Patton is describing to the Allied High Command how he is going to take Messina in Sicily.

He says "we are going to take it just like Alicibiades did in 430 BC".

The other General Staff members ask him how he knows this.

His answer?[huh]

"Because I was there!".

 

[dhermann1]

I think my real vintage passion was kindled in 1986 when somebody bamboozled me into taking ballroom dancing lessons. ( ) That led me to MC-ing dances for the New York Swing Dance Society, and many happy hours of dancing and listening to some really great swing bands. There were many moments at our original venue, the Cat Club on 13th St in Manhattan, when the band was blasting (and I mean BLASTING) away, some of the great old original Savoy Ballroom dancers were dancing their hearts out, and I was standing there on the stage, wearing my double breasted vintage tux, (that would be the one that magically got too snug for me over the years), looking out over the scene. Magic.
One evening, when we had moved to Irving Plaza, on 15th St and Irving Place, I took a short stroll up the block to Gramercy Park during a break. I was in my tux, of course. It was a pleasant April evening, and it had just rained a little bit. Everything was glistening and fresh in the darkness. I strolled around the periphery of Gramercy Park, and I felt like I was smack dab in the middle of a Fred Astaire musical number. Magic!
One other moment: I was at Roseland some time around 1992, and Helen O'Connell was singing there, with a good band backing her up. Nobody was dancing, they all (maybe 500 people) just crowded up to the stage and she sang to us. She was in amazingly fine voice for a lady of about 70. I really felt like I'd been flipped back in time. Again, magic!

 

[Jay]

OK, I'll bite.

Back in August after me and my Dad got my 55 Chevy running fine (valve job and rebuilt the carb) I went for a drive out past all the farms and nice open space that's abound in south Jersey. Anyhow, I was driving along with no other cars on the road, the setting sun cast a nice orange glow in the sky and Carl Perkins "Blue Suede Shoes" was playing on the radio.

(As some what of a back story, my car was originally purchased new in Washington state and driven out to New Jersey in the 50s. There's still some chips in the window, presumably from stones picked up from the desert. Anyhow the guy who owned it parked it in his garage with 30,000 miles on it where it sat until a couple years ago when a guy who was repaving the driveway on the house had to move something in the garage and "discovered it". He bought it from the guys widow and had it restored. And then I bought it.)

As I gazed out the fields, framed by the wing-window and my arm on the steering wheel, I realized everything was perfect for the period. My shirt, pants, watch and all were of mid-50s vintage, the music on the radio, and nothing in sight to disrupt the illusion. It was like all the pieces of the puzzle sort of fell into place as I thought about what a trip on Route 66 would have been like.

 

[KilroyCD]

One time that stands out in my memory is on a visit to the Cabinet War Rooms in London. Left largely as they were at the end of the war, these have been opened to the public and are in fact, a part of the Imperial War Museum. One time as I was looking in one of the rooms, the air raid siren went off. An intense chill went up my spine, as it made it feel like it was the Blitz of 1940 / 41 again.

 

[Benny Holiday]

There's a fully and perfectly restored 1930's Art Deco cinema in Cremorne, on Sydney's north shore, that I've posted pics of here before called the Hayden Orpheum. The atmosphere inside the ptcure palace is amazing, you can feel the history of the place just being in it. As well as showing regular movies, every couple of months there's a special event at the Orpheum, usually a vintage movie with a swing band. I attend those events as often as I can and it's the most amazing feeling to be there with friends dressed in 1930's and 40's vintage suits and dresses.

Strange though it may sound, when the event is over and it's time to leave, I often feel as though it's almost unbearably sad to return to the alien 'modern' world outside, as though I'm really at home in the little slice of the 1930's that is the Hayden Orphuem.

I often get a similar feeling when I put on my best vintage suits, like I belong in them, that they are what I should naturally be wearing. I feel natural and confident in them, like I was meant to wear them.

 

[ScionPI2005]

That is one beautiful car, Jay! Thanks for sharing!

 

[dhermann1]

55 Chevy

My mom came home one day in 1958 with a Chevy much like that. Red on the bottom, white roof, and the small V-8 under the hood. She traded it in the next year for a 59 Ford. She had fallen in love with the styling of the Ford, but it waas an utter lemon. She always said the 55 Chavey was the best car she ever owned. Sweet little car.

 

[epr25]

Great stories. I can not think of anything off the top of head to share. But I find it so strange that there are so many other people out there that also are so nostalgic for a time that we did not experience. We might make a black hole or something if we all came together in one place.

 

[John in Covina]

The connection.

I do get some erie feelings in certain places and during certain events. One thing is when you get to visit a place that has remained relatively unchanged for a long number of years the place seems to pick up a memory charge as it were. This imprint of the events of the past seem to almost resinate thru the area. It is even stronger if you have been able to visit the place over time, like visiting grandma's backyard which is the same since you were little.

Some times an event when repeated regularly begins to stand almost out side of time, where when you come back after a years time it seems as if you pick up where you left off, unchanged by the passage of time outside of the event. Connected to the last time in a short, straight line to this event.

For me a visit to "The Strawberry Festival" at the Danish old Folks home by Croton on Hudson in lower NY state has a general feeling to it of that connection. (First Sunday in June if they are still doing it.) As a toddler thru my teens we went nearly every year. I visited last in the early 80's. But if the buildings are still in the same place and the feel of the event is the same, should I go again, the link will be there. (I was able to find the tree my cousin and I carve our initials in as kids on the last visit.)

FOr a similar feel the ride and visit to Oak Glen here in Southern California gets me feeling nostalgic, it seems like the Strawberry Festival to me.

Union Station in LA can get me. Any visit to the Empire State building does it too.

Sincerely,

 

[Forgotten Man]

One time that stands out in my memory is on a visit to the Cabinet War Rooms in London. Left largely as they were at the end of the war, these have been opened to the public and are in fact, a part of the Imperial War Museum. One time as I was looking in one of the rooms, the air raid siren went off. An intense chill went up my spine, as it made it feel like it was the Blitz of 1940 / 41 again.

What a nice story! Air Raid sirens are another thing that gets me... Attending the LA Air Raid of '42 in San Pedro CA they hold yearly in Feb, they recreate the mysterious Air Raid of '42... where no one really knows what happened that night.

It's a great event! They hold it at Fort McArthur Museum and they have a good number of restored GE 40's search lights out combing the sky, a live band playing 40's numbers, war time jeeps and cars on display... and every worker on the grounds are in early WWII uniforms. It's a really special night and when the sirens sound, I get this eerie chill... just as you did! It makes me sad and happy at the same time... weird!

Thanks for sharing! That is a true vintage experience!

 

[Forgotten Man]

OK, I'll bite.

Back in August after me and my Dad got my 55 Chevy running fine (valve job and rebuilt the carb) I went for a drive out past all the farms and nice open space that's abound in south Jersey. Anyhow, I was driving along with no other cars on the road, the setting sun cast a nice orange glow in the sky and Carl Perkins "Blue Suede Shoes" was playing on the radio.

As I gazed out the fields, framed by the wing-window and my arm on the steering wheel, I realized everything was perfect for the period. My shirt, pants, watch and all were of mid-50s vintage, the music on the radio, and nothing in sight to disrupt the illusion. It was like all the pieces of the puzzle sort of fell into place as I thought about what a trip on Route 66 would have been like.

A nice car you own my friend but, an even nicer story you shared!

Driving in my '46 Plymouth, dressed to the period, listening to proper live band broadcasts of the period over the original radio that I have piped through from a CD player in the glove box... driving down a winding country road through the Orange Groves of Redlands... I'll get the same feeling... and then a pain inside me starts to yearn for days long ago that I never experienced in my life... I ask my self what is it about this stuff that just gets me? I'm not sure, but, it's experiences such as this that make life worth living for me... and sharing it with friends is the ultimate high.

We are addicted to vintage... what a strange and wonderful drug!

PS: I am so happy to hear others experience much the same as I do... and for the same reasons... thank you so much gang for sharing, keep them rollin'!

 

[Jay]

That is one beautiful car, Jay! Thanks for sharing!

Thank You, ScionPI2005! And you, too, Forgotten Man.

Funny, I thought this thread would have picked up a little more...

 

[MrNewportCustom]

What a nice story! Air Raid sirens are another thing that gets me... Attending the LA Air Raid of '42 in San Pedro CA they hold yearly in Feb, they recreate the mysterious Air Raid of '42... where no one really knows what happened that night.

It's a great event! They hold it at Fort McArthur Museum and they have a good number of restored GE 40's search lights out combing the sky, a live band playing 40's numbers, war time jeeps and cars on display... and every worker on the grounds are in early WWII uniforms. It's a really special night and when the sirens sound, I get this eerie chill... just as you did! It makes me sad and happy at the same time... weird!

Thanks for sharing! That is a true vintage experience!

Ooh! Keep us posted on this. I'd like to attend the next one!

Sorry, but I haven't any experiences like these, as I haven't been into vintage long enough. But, I often pick up an antique, such as a camera, and wonder where it's been and what it's seen.


Lee

 

[Luddite]

Blimey, I thought it was just me got that feeling......

I get it quite frequently, which probably accounts for my vintage tastes, but it was really strong when I was working at RAE Bedford at Thurleigh airfield in the English midlands. It's part of the airfield complex which includes Twinwoods, the airfield from which Glenn Miller, and was used by the 306th BG during the second war. I worked in the old 306th hangars and although the aircraft I was working on were considerably more modern, the whole atmosphere of the place took me straight back half a century or so, especially when working alone in hangar five, which looked out across the airfield towards the runway. I was doing the same work in the same place as those US airmen, it was only time which separated us, and although I could only imagine what they felt, I treasured that connection.

The first time I can recall this happening was on visiting Blake Hall in Essex, a former OPs room for North Weald. It's pretty atmospheric anyway, having been left as is since operations ceased. Lining the wall of the viewing gallery were photographs of relevant subjects, and one picture was of two American mechanics from the Fourth FG at Debden, standing informally spanners in hand, in front of a P-47. They'd obviously been surprised at work by a mate who insisted on taking the picture. It struck me how ordinary these guys were - they were in a setting and situation with which I was very familiar, but they were under terrible strain and facing the day-to day losses and horrors of wartime. Yet they were posing for a picture just as I would have. Again, it was only the accident of time which separated us, but for fifty years, that could have been me in the picture.

 

[Tomasso]

Given my druthers, I have a tendency to choose vintage space for home and office. I occasionally have moments where I get a vibe from something in the space which causes me to connect with the former occupants. Sometimes simply entering a vintage building causes me to flash on the tenants who preceded me.

When I lived at the Brewster Apartments in Chicago, I would often flash on Charlie Chaplin and Gloria Swanson when I rode the elevator, knowing that they'd done the same decades before when they were tenants.