101 thoughts on “ALL OUR YESTERDAYS”

  1. Wonderful pictures as always.

    I’m assuming the Scotland, County of Dumfries image is at Gretna. It’s so different today, most of the countryside is gone and replaced by the Gretna Gateway shopping outlet.

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    1. Just Googled it – it isn’t a pub! Went past it so many times too, luckily I never went in, would have been very disappointed. The “bar” bit must have been the pikestaff put across the road to stop traffic.

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  3. The biplane looks like a Boeing PT-17 Stearman trainer, and I think the last pic is the wonderful Matt Monro – heard him singing “Born Free” on a telly ad a few minutes ago!

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    1. Dave will be able to tell you about the plane, Alex, but you are right about Matt Munro.

      I heard his on the radio the other day, which is what put me in mind of him last night doing this page.

      What a voice. So effortless and so pure. It was ‘From Russia with Love’ I heard.

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        1. Every day is just brimming with new opportunities in a post Brexit Britain. I’m beginning to think that Gove, Fox and Johnson, may have had something (besides senile dementia), I mean.

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      2. Not everyone will have a horse though. Some will require to be physically capable of pulling the car(t) themselves.

        Still, bright side is that there will be no need to pay your gym membership to keep fit.

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    3. Indeed it is.

      And of course, as well as having no food, people will be wearing old clothes that they found in the attic, and there will only be black and white film.

      Also, it will only be women and children in the queues becasue all the men will be off making that famous jam, upon which the economy is going to depend.

      🙂

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  6. 6th pic, surely queuing for whatever could be got during WW2 (and a while after) rationing, probably in London but could be almost anywhere. Penultimate photo is of Queen’s Cross, Garscube Road, Glasgow with the Charles Rennie Mackintosh church on the left – it’s still there (unlike his Art School) and is the HQ of the CRM Society. Judging by the (Commer?) van, left foreground, the little I can make out of people’s clothing and the fact that the fine Neo-Clasical building at the gushet hadn’t at the time been demolished, I’d say 1950s. I concur with Alex Smith – the last pic is of Matt Monro and the plane a Boeing Stearman trainer., but a PT-13D Kaydet (reg. as G-CGPY).

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    2. The penultimate is, indeed, Queen’s Cross Church. The ‘classical’ building between Garscube Road and Maryhill Road – now demolished – was used as a billiards hall for many years. The current building on the site erected by Queen’s Cross Housing Association is, in my opinion a very elegant building with an Italianate campanile style – I never thought a scruff from Anderston would write such a phrase – I pass Queen’s Cross regularly for my 90 minutes of penitence at Firhill.

      In the first photo, the rid thing ahint the car is the gas generator for when the vehicle was converted during petrol rationing!!!

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  7. Just curious if the vehicle in the first picture would have been called a “station wagon” in Scotland or England? Or if ANY vehicle called a”station wagon” was ever marketed in the UK?

    This one has wood in or on its body. The American station wagon originally had a primitive wood body, and station wagons were “woodies” for many years. A wood body…..or later, wood incorporated stylistically into a sheet metal body……was used in station wagons for decades.

    A few unsolicited comments regarding the station wagon:

    Station wagons were the quintessential American family car, even when they weren’t made of wood anymore.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/the-last-great-gasp-of-the-american-station-wagon/373776/

    In the post WWII era, a station wagon could take you on the traditional family vacation trips to California by the Southern Route. A station wagon would get you to Los Angeles as long as you drove the blistering heat of the Mojave Desert at night……AND avoided certain neighborhoods of East St. Louis Illinois.

    “What it is Bro! We’re from out of town”……….”NO S***!”

    “I wonder if these guys know the Commodores.”

    A few racial stereotypes, but “National Lampoon’s Vacation” passed the mainstream movie censors and won critical and popular acclaim. Chevy Chase competed for star status with that awful car, custom built for the movie (with eight headlights) from a 1979 Ford LTD Country Squire station wagon.

    A station wagon could could take a lot of punishment.

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    1. Danny, the wee red car in the first pic is a Morris Minor Traveller. It was the estate car version of the much-loved Morris Minor range, the Minors often referred to affectionately as “Moggies”. You still see quite a few around. They were quite a small car, tiny compared with American station waggons. I don’t think the term station waggon was much used in Britain, estate car was the term in general use. When I was a kid, older cars with wooden bodies were sometimes called shooting brakes, their original function being to take shooting parties to and from the moors, hence also estate car. The term shooting brake is still used for some modern cars but they bear no resemblance in appearance or in their function to real shooting brakes.

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      1. Andi…….Interesting! I see that station wagons were sometimes called estate cars or estate wagons in the States. Or so says Wikipedia.

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    2. I don;t think they were called station wagons here.

      Fine looking beast the station wagon in your pic, Danny.

      Why “station”?

      Is it becasue they had room for luggage to take to and collect from the “station”?

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      1. Maybe not – the yanks frequently refer to the ‘Depot’ instead of station with exceptions such as Grand Central and Penn Station and Union Station in major towns/cities..

        Over here the norm was Estate Car not Station Wagon.

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      2. Tris…..I wondered about the “station” myself. From Wiki:

        The first station wagons were a product of the age of train travel. They were originally called “depot hacks” because they worked around train depots as hacks (short for hackney carriage, an old name for taxis). They also came to be known as “carryalls” and “suburbans.

        Station wagons have evolved from their early use as specialized vehicles to carry people and luggage to and from a train station, and have been marketed worldwide.

        Having shared antecedents with the British shooting-brake (originally a wooden-bodied vehicle used to carry shooting parties with their equipment and game), station wagons have been marketed as breaks, using the French term (which is sometimes given fully as break de chasse, literally “hunting break).” Early U.S. models often had exposed wooden bodies and were therefore called woodies.

        Ford 1929 Model A Station Wagon:

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  8. PS: Station wagons were heavy vehicles which were sometimes considered to be under-powered. This is a rare 1959 Ford Edsel Station Wagon (post-“woodie” era) with color coordinated side mounted turbojet assist.

    Side mounted jet assist was used on an experimental basis in various post-WWII era vehicles, although it considerably compromised stability on the road, especially in cars as small as the Volkswagen Bug. 😉

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        2. Gerry….Those window-mounted evaporative coolers were de rigueur (I’m told) for what became the post-WWII tradition of a family summer vacation car trip to California via the “Southern Route,” across the great Mojave Desert. People were advised to drive the Mojave at night and/or get a car cooler. (Actual air conditioners did not first show up on cars until a bit later, and none of the older cars had them.) A co-worker told me that he rented a car in San Francisco as late as about 1970 that didn’t have an air conditioner. This would have been unheard of in most of the USA. ONLY in chilly damp San Francisco, and never in the dry warm southern city of Los Angeles on the edge of the Mojave.

          I would think that window-mounted car coolers were for temporary use in the summer, and most were apparently made of unpainted metal. I was surprised to see a color-coordinated one on the Edsel Station Wagon. Even more surprising on a Volkswagen Bug. I do think the idea of jet assist on the Volkswagen had some merit. Too bad it was never tried as far as I know. 😉

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          1. It will be useful, Danny, when we don’t have any petrol… I mean unless the weather gets much more extreme we will probably usually have grass (if not gas)!

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    2. Yes, pic 4 is a Rover 14 P1. Note the trademark Viking’s head radiator cap. The station wagon looks like a Buick Special Series 40 from around 1940. Another Scottish connection since David Buick, who founded the company, was from the great city of Arbroath…

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      1. There were two taxis in my locality, one a Buick, the other a Packard in the late 40’s and early 50’s. Presumably they had arrived in Scotland via the American forces. They looked exotic – and huge. I saw a Buick once at a vintage car show in Bo’ness – might have been the same one.

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          1. I didn’t realize that Mr. Buick was from Scotland. Buick is one of the three brand names that……with Chevrolet and Cadillac……survived the last General Motors downsizing of their passenger car lines.

            American cars now have the small boxy look of European cars. Some consider them stylish…….although exactly what kind of “styling” they have is a mystery. We are told they have the look of “European roadsters.” American political liberals BTW just LOVE anything with the word “European” in the name. As much as Europeans tend to hate anything identified as “American”….LOL. What American cars actually have is NO ROOM for the average American family, which now buys SUV’s (sport utility vehicles) which have tons of room…….but also no discernible styling……unless “ugly” is a style.

            Those glorious old American sedans the size of a small room, with a soft cushy ride and acres of sheet metal….with fantastic FINS…….are long gone. I LOVE the old cars with fins!

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              1. Tris…….”Style” is surely in the eye of the beholder, and the much ballyhooed “European roadster” look that American car designers say they love so much can be attractive……as long as you don’t have a family and family “stuff” to shoe-horn into it. Worthless I would think for a cross-country…….which in the USA often means cross-continent…… motoring holiday. So we have the big truck-sized SUV’s. Maybe American car designers just can’t do “Big” like they did back in the 1950’s and 60’s.

                You probably know what the great old Chryslers looked like.

                THIS is a fairly modern Chrysler. (I have no idea what they called it.)

                They’re not all that bad. This is a modern Cadillac……one of the old luxury car brands. Almost all American so-called “sedans” have an almost identical size and shape to this. (Except the front is unusually ugly on this model.)

                Even the Japanese get in on the “ugly”. This is a Nissan “cube.”

                Has everyone in the world gone crazy but you and me? Just asking! 😉

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                1. Munguin says he hasn’t gone crazy.

                  We have SUVs here too. Unfortunately most of our roads are far too narrow and crowded to cope with them.

                  Of course the drivers are seated quite high up in them and as a result frequently make bad judgements about space.

                  Of course they are useful to have in the country in bad weather, but in narrow little streets they are a nightmare.

                  The Cube is seriously ugly and aerodynamically pretty crap too, I’d have thought.

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                  1. Tris….I actually saw a Nissan “Cube” on the street once. Couldn’t believe it! 😉

                    I can certainly understand how SUV’s are seriously challenged by some narrow European streets. Not much of a problem here in the Midwest where streets were mostly laid out with cars in mind.

                    I suppose that the old eastern colonial cities have some really narrow streets. New York City is interesting in that it has small winding streets at the south end of Manhattan in what was seventeenth century Dutch New Amsterdam, which becomes a modern numbered grid street pattern farther up north in mid-town.
                    But then you have “Broadway”…….which is wide……but which meanders across the grid pattern, making odd angled intersections and large so-called “squares”….such as Times Square……which are odd shaped intersections where it cuts across a grid intersection.

                    Broadway was a Native American trail along the entire length of Manhattan that the Dutch found when they got there in 1625. Wiki says….

                    “Upon the arrival of the Dutch, the trail soon became the main road through the island from Nieuw Amsterdam at the southern tip. The Dutch explorer and entrepreneur David Pietersz. de Vries gives the first mention of it in his journal for the year 1642 (“the Wickquasgeck Road over which the Indians passed daily”). The Dutch named the road “Heerestraat”.

                    Fortunately it was renamed “Broadway”, since it would sound really silly to say that a new show is opening on Wickquasgeck Road. 😉

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                    1. LOL, Danny.

                      What would Mr Benson have done with “Wickquasgeck Road”… They say the Neon lights are bright on….

                      Nah. It would never have done.

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                2. THIS is a fairly modern Chrysler. (I have no idea what they called it.

                  This is a PT Cruiser, no longer built.

                  The ” cube” is seen fairly regularly around Toronto, but is outshone by the Kia “Soul”, these were built i believe for the younger market.

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                  1. Doug……I think I read that the Nissan Cube was originally built for the Japanese market, but was later marketed worldwide. Maybe it caught on?????? Could that be possible?

                    I was sure that little white Chrysler thingy was probably given a name. I even saw one once. Of course when I say “fairly modern” in the context of the styling of the great American land cruisers, I’m talking anytime within the last 50 years or so.
                    My standard for fins are things that could double as letter openers. Fins declined rapidly after 1960.

                    The 1960 Chrysler New Yorker:

                    The 1959 Cadillacs were the ultimate in fin styling. The 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz Convertible is arguably the most beautiful car ever made, IMHO.

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                    4. Danny, it has caught on,where i live just outside Toronto.Nissan cube, Kia soul,Toyota scion, all boxy looking cars.I think the Soul is the biggest seller of them all. As an aside, when i first came to Canada i drove a 73 Lincoln Continental ( think Frank Cannon). Later it was a Grand Marquis then a 76 Continental, all had the 460 motors or 7.6Litre, gas was 30c a liter then though.

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                    5. I suppose that the increased price of petrol, or gas, as I suspect you call it in Canada, may have contributed to the desire for smaller cars.

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                    6. Doug……I do have trouble getting used to “boxy” styling……..LOL.
                      The old Lincoln Continentals were great looking cars. As was the Mercury Grand Marquis in its time.
                      I see that Ford reintroduced the Lincoln Continental in 2017, after a 15 year absence. Looks a lot like the Cadillac styling to me. And if you want real room, you have to get a SUV……which looks no better…..sometimes worse. Maybe I’m just out of touch. 😦

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                    7. you have to get a SUV

                      SUV’s are very popular, Mercedes, BMW and Audi are everywhere around here. There is a huge Chinese population and they seem to buy the more expensive brands. All Japanese brands are being hit by the Korean’s Hyundai and Kia. I believe i heard that Ford may just stick to pickup and commercial vehicles in the future.

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                    9. Doug….I know a guy who bought a high dollar Volvo that he likes a lot. Of the traditional American brands, I checked the sticker price on a Cadillac Escalade a while back. On that basis, I MIGHT be able to afford a Chevy…..LOL.

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                    1. Tris…..Today, they can do things with LED tail light and brake light displays that they couldn’t do in the old days. Imagine combining fins with onboard-computer-controlled LED displays. What a show that could be! 😉

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  10. The Red Morris Traveller is actually the Morris 1000. Circa 1964 ish.
    The Minor had the 858cc engine, also it had the side flap style indicators not the new flashing type as in your great picture

    Pre 1958 the minor also had a split front windscreen. My first driving lesson was in my Dads traveller EYJ 720 YJ being the reg for Dundee along with TS.
    Double de-clutch no syncromesh gearbox in them days for 1st or reverse.

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  11. OT. The BBC have just got YouTube to delete both Peter Curran’s Moridura and Wings over Scotland for copyright infringement. Anyone wonder why?

    .

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    2. This wouldn’t have anything to do with the fake news stories Mp’s aren’t happy with . Looks like Mp’s of the unionist persuasion aren’t happy that their lies are challenged for all to see . This is a very dangerous road they want to go down .

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    3. Conan…….My theory is that the BBC owns the copyright to almost everything ever published, posted, or broadcast, and have a staff of hundreds whose sole corporate mission is to scream “copyright infringement” and take down….usually within minutes……almost everything posted on YouTube.

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      1. But there has been no notice of copyright infringement, Danny.

        This is the BBC trying to take down all the stuff that he’s put up that make the unionist politicians look incompetent and bad, not to mention evil lying bastards.

        They must be getting scared. They are making the UK a nightmare to live in and private polling must show that there is a majority for independence.

        Certainly, if you try to put up the programmes from which they can make money by selling it to other broadcasters, they are on you like a ton of bricks. They are fond of money to feed their VERY expensive lifestyles and gigantic salaries.

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        1. Amazing! Seems unbelievable that YouTube policies would allow that…..without some pretense at BBC images, personnel, or whatever sort of content showing up. But surely the arrogance of the BBC knows no bounds.

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          1. Pretty much no bounds, Danny.

            They are becoming unpopular.

            Once I think they were pretty well respected.

            In Scotland they lost a lot of support in 2014 by being unashamedly pro union.

            Shortly after that the English got a taste of how unfair they could be, when they decided that Corbyn wasn’t to be given a fair chance.

            I don’t think it’s helped them much that they have been seen as a hotbed of perversions amongst their so called “stars”, about which it seems the management could not have been entirely ignorant.

            Recently they got into serious bother over their coverage of some alleged sex scandal supposedly involving a well known singer from the 1950s (who never made it to your side of the Atlantic).

            But he is much loved by matrons of a certain age in the UK, there was a further outpouring of anger at them.

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  12. I thing that the horse-drawn car was once a Zaphorozhets (ZAZ). Nice TF, too (mine’s dark red), and I’ve always liked Citroen Tractions. The Cube’s a funny thing, but it’s just maximising available space and has grown on me over time.

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      1. Soviet Union. Rear-engined with a swing axle and tyres made from something approaching bakelite. Hilariously awful things to drive.

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