Vintage Picking and Road Tripping with Dinerman

[hatsRme]

Super thread, DM. What a country!

 

[Joao Encarnado]

Super thread, DM. What a country!

I would love to make a road trip around the US.

 

[PeterB]

This weekend's road trip was a return to Anaconda, Montana. . .

Wow. America is a treasure house, isn't it?

 

[EmergencyIan]

Great thread, Spencer!

I love the videos, too! All aspects of them are really good. One thing that I found funny (though, you seemed annoyed) was when someone began to open the door as you were filming inside of your apartment. Such a real moment within an interesting video.

- Ian

 

[Dinerman]

Yeah, that one was a live stream with some TV producers for a show that never came to fruition. My roommate decided it would be funny to open the squeaky door real slow and make faces behind the camera. Funny after the fact, but a lot was riding on it at the time.

 

[EmergencyIan]

Yeah, that one was a live stream with some TV producers for a show that never came to fruition. My roommate decided it would be funny to open the squeaky door real slow and make faces behind the camera. Funny after the fact, but a lot was riding on it at the time.

Yeah, you didn't seem pleased, at all. Honestly, I thought it was a kid who did it by mistake. Not too friendly of your roommate.

Well, that's in the past and you're doing just fine!

- Ian

 

[Dinerman]

This week's trip was a big one, clocking about 850 miles on the trusty 4 Runner. Starting in Bozeman, Alex and I headed west, through Missoula, up to Kalispell, Montana. The forecast had been calling for serious weather and we got an eerie combination of blazing sun and black skies coming past the old Prison in Deer Lodge. We finally made it up to Kalispell and settled in so that we could get an early start on Saturday.






As soon as they opened, we started looking, hitting every thrift and antique shop we could find in Kalispell and the surrounding towns. By the end of the day, we had hit teh thrift shops and six antique stores. The further away from home I go and the longer I'm there, the bigger the risk I'm taking. Gas, food and lodging start to add up. At the same time, it takes stores time to re-stock, so my range has to expand with every trip.

The two antique malls in Kalispell, which I had been pinning a lot of my hopes on turned out to be complete busts, with not just no finds or purchases, but nothing of interest in any of the booths at all. I probably bought a few things in the thrifts against my better judgement to feel like I had found something. Not junk by any means, but things like late '50s tweed jackets, which I love, but which there's not much market for at any price online, and which probably won't do much more than take up space. But at a couple dollars a piece, at least I can say I kept them from being turned into someone's zombie Halloween costume.
My luck changed somewhat at some of the thrifts, where I ended up finding a few vintage ties here and a few vintage ties there, adding up by the end to a fair number. The real prizes were two '40s suede leather whipstitched western Hollyvogues, with the original tags still on. I have a bit of a collection of those already, so we'll see whether those end up being passed along or whether they'll join the ones I already have. Alex, who usually comes away with a slew of vintage cameras, had about the same luck as I did, finding a fair number of 1970s Polaroids at steep prices, but nothing much of any real use or interest.



Lunch in Kalispell was a vintage treat. We ate at a place called Moose's Saloon. It's a bar from the '40s or so, done up in 1959 to approximate an old west saloon. Sawdust on the floor, low lighting, peanuts on the tables, and two dollar draughts. In the years since it was done up in saloon style, it's been heavily loved, with names carved into every tabletop, booth, bench and wall. The crowd was a nice mix of children and pensioners. It had a really nice family neighborhood dive atmosphere, great food and cold microbrews.

Alex and I always play a game when out hunting where we try to identify what we've seen an inordinate amount of in the shops that we've hardly ever seen anywhere else. This trip it was wetsuits. With all the cold mountain lakes, I suppose that makes sense. On a broader scale, this part of Montana has the most Quonset huts I have ever seen in my life, most of them still in use.



We went to Glacier National Park on Sunday. It's my second time to Glacier and was Alex's first. It's post-season there, and all the lodges and gift shops have closed down until next summer. The huge numbers of visitors have subsided, so you can finally enjoy the beauty in relative peace and quiet. The trees were a riot of color, and as we ascended Going To The Sun Road toward Logan Pass, the temperatures dropped and yellow autumn leaves gave way to snow covered evergreens.



We took our time on the way back, stopping in all the small towns we came across, and to get a tire fixed after picking up a screw somewhere along the way. For a hundred miles, we had seen billboards for the "Miracle of America" museum outside Polson, Montana. It's one of those classic roadside museums, with such a broad focus that you're bound to find something you're interested in, and if you're like me, bound to like just about everything. Historic buildings, rare motorcycles, helicopters, airplanes, vintage clothes, rusty cars, alien autopsies. You name it, they probably had it somewhere in the collection. There were definitely some things in the collection I would have loved to get my hands on.



The haul. No big ticket items, but a decent amount of '30s and '40s ties, a pair of vintage hunting boots, a powder blue '50s suit, a couple of late '50s-early '60s jackets and a Nomex flight jacket. With luck, I might just break even. A beautiful and fun trip nonetheless, and any moment of being in Glacier was worth the rest.

 

[cookie]

Nice trip to the real outback of the USA.

 

[Joao Encarnado]

+1
Thank you for sharing.

 

[BobHufford]

Great travel story and pics. Breaking even on a trip like that? Worth it!

Love that cow cop neon.

 

[dudewuttheheck]

This whole thread has been fascinating and a real joy to read through! Thank you so much for sharing, Dinerman! Pictures and stories like these make me really want to get out and explore more of our amazing country! A lot of this reminds me of trips around Vermont when I was younger. I really want to go to Glacier with my fiancé! That place looks unbelievably stunning.

 

[AdeeC]

Evocative thread and its great you and your partner both have common interest in the vintage and can share these experiences together. Can you tell tell briefly about some of your great finds?

 

[pawineguy]

This whole thread has been fascinating and a real joy to read through! Thank you so much for sharing, Dinerman! Pictures and stories like these make me really want to get out and explore more of our amazing country! A lot of this reminds me of trips around Vermont when I was younger. I really want to go to Glacier with my fiancé! That place looks unbelievably stunning.

+1, I haven't commented yet but I always look forward to updates. This is a great thread!

 

[Dinerman]

Here are the jackets. I'll post pics of the ties and boots later on- they need a different photo setup.

 

[RBH]

Great trip and super photos!
This tread needs to be a sticky.

 

[Frunobulax]

Great photos of Kalispell, Dinerman! My father was in the CCC in the 30s, and was assigned to Libby, MT to plant trees ("The Tree Army") during the Depression. He took us back out there in the late 60s because he wanted to see the area again. We stayed in Kalispell at the time, and I remember going to a rodeo! As luck would have it, some 15 years ago I had a project that entailed sampling water wells for the EPA. Lo and behold, one of the wells was at the forestry station in Libby. So I got to go out there on business and see it again. It's truly God's Country out there - very beautiful. Stopped in a local Libby diner for lunch - can't remember the name - and had some great huckleberry pie.

Thanks for the pix.

 

[Dinerman]

From Alex:
Kalispell turned out to be a haven for little treasures that filled our trip with “wait wait, we have to pull over”. Although we stopped and explored every little strange part of Kalispell and surrounding area that we found, I have a hunch there’s so much more that we missed. Two things that stood out to me as unique to Kalispell were the buffalo in a bullet proof case watching over a mobile home community, and the Moose’s Saloon, a dark, divey bar that screams “MONTANA” the minute you walk in. This Saloon wasn’t like any saloon I’ve ever been to. Maybe it was the sawdust that covered the floor, the sweetest elderly woman that took our order, or the delightfully chilled goblets that the beer was served in, but we were hooked on this place. The pizza was pretty good to boot. I regret not taking a peek in there gift shop, who’s sign read “Moostly Mooses”, which gave me a chuckle.

 

[RBH]

OK DMan...you have us hooked.
We need more photos!!!

 

[Dinerman]

Just got back from another trip- I'll have some up in just a little bit. Downloading and editing as we speak.

 

[Dinerman]

Today, Alex and I intended just to make a quick hour and a half or so jaunt a couple towns over to Three Forks, Montana but, as seems to happen with us, ended up going way further. We hit a thrift shop about the size of my bedroom in Manhattan, MT which is new since I was last in that town, replacing an antique shop in the space. Found another thrift shop in Manhattan in the back of a building with a hand written sign taped to the window, unfortunately only open mid-week for a few hours a day. Peering through the windows, it was packed with clothes, so maybe worth a trip back sometime soon. The antique/junk shop I had hoped to hit in Three Forks ended up being closed Mondays, so no luck there, and the stacked-to-the rafters dig-through-the-piles thrift shop downtown appears to have moved from their spacious storefront to a small vacant gas station on the edge of town, all their furniture stock stacked in piles under the gas station canopy with a hand written apology letter from them on the front of the store about the mess. That one was also closed, with people inside moving things around. The one remaining shop in town was open, but while it had a lot of antique knick-nacks and odds and ends, was strictly in the 1980s corduroy blazer world when it came to their men's clothing selection.
With no joy picking wise in either of those towns, we pushed on to Ennis, where we gassed up the car, got lunch at a drug store lunch counter and hit an antique and thrift shop. Ennis is big in the flyfishing world, and the thrift shop was rife with Patagonia fleeces and Mountain Hardware moisture-wicking shirts, but nothing of the era I look for. The antique shop had a ton of things that were *this* close to being right, but everything was too small. '50s wide brim fedoras, but all in the 6-3/4 range. Vintage cowboy boots in size 7. Yellowstone souvenir belts in sizes small even by children's standards. So close, but left empty handed.

Our last stop was Virginia City, a ghost town semi-restored to a tourist destination in the 1950s-1960s. I love Virginia City and hate Virginia City. 60 odd years ago, when doing the restoration, interiors of the surviving buildings were recreated and were stocked with deadstock items sourced from all over the state, dating from the late 1800s-1920s or so. This was back when these things could still be found, of course. Since then, though heavily visited by tourists by Montana standards, all of these things have been more or less left to rot in semi-enclosed, semi-abandoned buildings. Deadstock tweed suits from the 1910s, stacks and stacks of caps, deadstock button boots, ties, you name it- they have it all, but from being displayed in the harsh sun and under leaky tin roofs, it's all water damaged and sun faded now. Great to see someplace where it exists, and upsetting to someone like me to see it ruined from poor display.
So, 160 more miles on the road and completely empty-handed. Not great business (and this is how I pay all my bills and school, not just some hobby), but still a pleasant fall day in some beautiful places. As I say every time, this business is always a huge gamble every time I leave the house. Sometimes it's 75 necktie jackpots and secondhand store D-Pocket leathers, sometimes it's moths flying out of the wallet. But unless you pound the pavement and put in the work, you'll never make the big scores.

Spotted a lot of older cars today, some as beater daily drivers with current tags, others rotting away in fields like the top center one.


Sometimes out here the difference between a small town and a ghost town can be fuzzy.


Some good vintage signage


Interiors in Virginia City and a few antique shop shots