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VINTAGRAPH • WPA • WWII • YOU MEAN A WOMAN CAN OPEN IT?

Tax time

My mother in 1961, caught unawares by me as she worked on a tax filing. She's a bit dressed up because she just returned from a lunch hour rush at the steakhouse she and my dad owned, where she acted as hostess. My dad was in the bedroom, recovering from a severe heart attack (he did, and outlived three salt-free cardiologists). Mom said she didn't have time to even draw a breath in those years. That's our 1953 b&w Philco in the corner, and yes, the lampshade is scary. We thought it was beautiful then. View full size.

My mother in 1961, caught unawares by me as she worked on a tax filing. She's a bit dressed up because she just returned from a lunch hour rush at the steakhouse she and my dad owned, where she acted as hostess. My dad was in the bedroom, recovering from a severe heart attack (he did, and outlived three salt-free cardiologists). Mom said she didn't have time to even draw a breath in those years. That's our 1953 b&w Philco in the corner, and yes, the lampshade is scary. We thought it was beautiful then. View full size.

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Philco

My family had an almost identical 1951 Philco 17 incher. All of the earliest TVs had round long picture tubes. Early Zenith TVs actually had a full round tube showing, rather than havinf the top and bottom edges masked like this one.

B&W Philco and color

Sure enough, our Philco was a black and white set, and we limped along with it (smacking it sharply on the upper right hand corner of the case when the tube connections got iffy) until 1964, when we finally afforded an RCA color console model. The Early American maple loveseats, lamp table and dining chair were purchased in 1952 for our previous house, a larger ranch style with clear varnished redwood siding and a knotty pine dining room. My folks sold that to buy the restaurant in 1957, and moved into this smaller house "temporarily." We never afforded to move again. The marble lamp is Italian, circa 1920, inherited from an aunt, and its shade was considered Early American also, God knows why now, except that it has some sort of chuck wagon vibe to it. The laptop monitor I'm using at home is not correctly color-adjusted, but the walls in this room were painted Mushroom Beige, and tterrace's correction looks a little closer than my own.

Philco

I'm surprised that's a black-and-white TV, since the round tube for sets of that period generally indicate a color model, like the Philco here. The lamp notwithstanding, your folks also seem to have been relatively early adopters of the Early American furniture fashion.

I couldn't stop myself from doing a little color correction.

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