Bowl-Up

I found these "Bowl-Up"  playing cards at a sale a few weeks ago.  I like the artwork.  It seems recognizable, but it might just be a familiar style.   This Flickr page has a set that's signed "Vic Take" which is probably a pseudonym.

The Missing Piece

I bought this 50's Whitman Jr. Jigsaw Bowling puzzle for a quarter at a recent estate sale.

Of course, as is to be expected, it was missing a piece.  At least it didn't detract from the characters too much.

The other available puzzles appears on the side of the box.  Typical '50's fare, but I was surprised to see "Drag Racing". 

I don't think many '50's parents would condone their children building a puzzle of an amateur drag race down on Dead Man's Curve. I would guess this was a puzzle of a fully-sanctioned drag race at the local track.

I also wonder what "After Tennis" was.  I imagine it was a scene of a young man leaping the net after soundly trouncing his friend in a match.  If that puzzle was from the '70's, it would have had a whole different meaning.
 
I tried to find these puzzles on the internet and Whitman has an impressive and massive collection featuring some great licensed characters, but I couldn't find any examples of these.

By the way, this was my 100th post.  Hundreds more to go.

Whatzit?

And now for our first installment of garage sale "whatzit?". I picked this up last summer. I liked the look of it, but I'm not sure what it is. My first thought was a planter because of the open space in the bowling ball. Or it could be an ashtray...

...but there's no slot for the cigarette to rest.



Coin tray? Paper weight? Pencil holder? What's your guess?

****UPDATE****

I saw this identical DRESSER ORGANIZER at TFA on Chippewa a couple weeks ago.  I'm taking their word for it.

Bo' Ling for A Happy Marriage

One of my favorite movies is "A Christmas Story." I won't go into an overview of the movie, I think everyone has seen this one. It's on for 24 hours on TBS every Christmas Day.

The year is never actually established, however, the Radio Orphan Annie Decoder Ralphie receives is the 1940 model. Because of the era, I've always obsessed about the objects they have in the house, particuarly, their radio. The radio is a 1940 Westinghouse model 780-x. The majority of scenes from the movie were shot in Toronto, and this is actually an exclusively Candian model.

Even without the movies influences, I've always wanted an old console radio, but couldn't justify the cost of most I saw at antique malls. Several years ago, I finally came across an affordably-priced 1941 model Philco at the (now sadly closed) Arnold Antique Mall for $40. When I got it home, I found the only thing wrong with it was the speaker had become disconnected. After a 20 second warmup, it hummed to life bringing in AM stations along with shortwave broadcasts from around the world, not to mention a mysterious broadcast that simply counted off the time, second by second.


While my radio wasn't a match for Ralphie's, I still wanted to complete the look. I had long wondered what that metallic orb was that sat on top. An antenna of some sort?