Home today after our annual trip to Kentucky. As promised, I went back to Magaline’s Antique Mall where I was pleased to see Magaline still presiding over the store in full Red Hat regalia. She was busy with other customers so I did not get to speak with her regarding the election or other politics – disappointing, but I was glad to see business was up. I knew from last year that I wouldn’t really need to bother with the other stores in the antique district, so I spent a few hours leisurely browsing at Magaline’s – concentrating heavily on the extensive paper section in the back.
I had a really large stack of these Florida/Georgia brochures which i’d culled from an even larger stack of brochures from around the country. Maybe I was a little homesick, or maybe I was just in love with “tropical paradise” vibe of the Florida ones. Wandering about in the cold, wet, February-in-Kentucky weather certainly made me understand just how much these brochures would have appealed to an average family back then!
In the end, I selected just a few – either places I’d been to or brochures with good aerial photos to show what these places originally looked like. When I was a child in the 80’s, these kind of attractions were falling into disrepair or going under completely. I remember being curious about the wacky architecture but creeped out at the abandonment. Really, these places hold the exact same appeal for me today! (If I was brave at all I’d totally be into Urban Exploration, but i’m content to just admire the photos those folks take from the comfort of my home.)
then
now
Marineland has been significantly updated in the last few years, but the basic layout seems to be the same.
then
now
I’ve driven by the Miami Seaquarium so many times on my way to golf and tennis events for work – but I’ve never stopped. Looks like some things have been added through the years, but that crazy dome is still there! Love it!
Jekyll Island has a very large convention center now, but I can’t find a good picture of it. I am pretty sure it doesn’t look like this anymore…
…and I think the motels are probably toast, too. All I remember from last time we were there were condos and resorts. How great are those signs?
I also picked up two Amy Vanderbilt books from Magaline’s:
I’ve learned that these are part of a series that women received in the mail via a membership club. Some of the titles would appear to be full of advice that today would be considered, at best, corny – and at worst straight up sexist. “How to Give Successful Dinner Parties” (1963, Adele Whitely Fletcher; line drawings by Frank Lacano) does seem to run that way… but it’s also got some fun photos and illustrations within:
I’m thinking that a few enlargements from the book might just be a fun addition on our dining room wall, as i’ve been seaching for some kitschy art lately. 
And as silly as the dinner party booklet can be, “How to Get Along with People” (1964, Michael Drury) is just the opposite. I was really surprised at how good the advice and commentary is. For instance:
The creatures who try us beyond endurance are simply people like ourselves, with noses and feet and tastes and aims of their own, and who often find it inordinately difficult to get along with us – unlikely as that may seem. If we could somehow get over our astonishment that human beings are human, a large quantity of high-grade oil would pour into the gritty machinery of relationships. How little we truly know of other people’s interior climate and condition. A writer friend of mine says that as he walks home in the evening along crowded streets, he is often struck by the unseen complexities behind the faces streaming past.
“Inside every person,” he says, “is a vast network of events, hopes, frustrations, cares, all immensely important to him. One man doesn’t want to go home because he is feuding with his wife. Another has gallstones. Another just got promoted and feels himself the master of his fate. A woman hurries because a special man may call her. And on, and on. Each person is a universe that we can never really see.”
Sounds similar to a tag Sara used to use…maybe she can talk more about it…?
The two archfoes of good relationship are suspicion and possession, the attempt to wall some people out and wall others in. Of “the enemy” – foreigners, strangers, people outside our background, income, beliefs, age group, sex, and so on – we suspect all kinds of evils. If some one of them reaches out a hand in friendship, perhaps even with a gift in it, we immediately conclues he meant to hit us. The gift becomes a club. If he listens to us we grow wary of a trap; if he pays no attention, we accuse him of cruelty and neglect. He cannot win because nobody can win against suspicion. Only the truth can do that.
…
Neither suspicion nor possession happens because human beings are evil, though. Both originate in a natural hunger for permanence and security. We long to love and be loved beyond all question, and to eliminate once and for all whatever rasises a doubt. We also want to hate and be hated, in the sense that by pinpointing the enemy, we shut out the unknown, and the greatest of all fears. What you can see or name, you can at least oppose and, possibly, defeat. What remains amorphous is terrifying.
See? It’s a little deeper than how to iron your aprons or how to greet your husband at the door with his favorite drink.
Never before in history has the need for congeniality been more urgent or more compliated. It exists in our homes, our schools, our factories and offices; in the community, among nations, in the world. You may say that your personal relationships can have no possible bearing on the vaster problems of mankind, but that is not true. Nations are only people. Nations do not make decisions or sit down and negotiate. Individual men and women do that, and they take with them the habits of thought and mein observed in the homely departments of their lives. There is an old saying, “As is the house, so is the town.” And so is the nation, the world. How you get along with your immediate family and friends can sway history – as can the way you vote.
We live in exciting times, and progress is being made. With many more of us and fewer places to which we can retreat in isolatation, the demand grows steadily. But with increased literacy, and jet planes and Telstar broadcasting, knitting the world together, our awareness of each other and of our common humanity incrases, too. With faith and good will, people are getting along with people. From such global enterprises as the Peace Corps, Care, the World Health Organization, to the effort in your town to help high school drop outs and the dinner you cooked for you new neighbors on moving day, people are reaching out to one another. The old neighborliness is not so much gone as expanded.
All still true today, I’d say. These are exciting times! And I’d like to think with faith and goodwill, people are getting along with people more. I wish i’d asked Magaline about it…
