Category: Nostalgia

Jayhawker Christmas 1935

Today’s images come from the pages of my grandpa’s December 1935 Jayhawker, from the University of Kansas. As you can see, the colors are still bright. The December issue was littered with ads for the holidays.

Home movies were the bee’s knees. Just remember that “in after years such scenes of the past should be priceless.” Sounds like Engrish. Also, do any of you have any home movies from 1935? We have zero zilch nada home movies of any kind.

In this Carl’s ad for “good clothes,” Santa is shown as morbidly obese, and his sack of toys actually balances out his belly, making perfect spinal alignment.

In this Jones’ ad, we can see inside a clothing store in 1935. Seems organized but sparse. Then again, they did carry Faultless NoBelt Pajamas.

Included in the pages were disturbing cartoons like this one.

If your wallet was fat in those Depression-era days, you might hit the Kansas City Auto Show and snag yourself a shiny Studebaker.

But if all you had was change in your pocket, you could still pick up a carton of Chesterfield’s. It’s what Rudolph would have wanted.

How Lovely Are Thy Branches

Jan 1917 National Geographic
Jan 1917 National Geographic

Over 100 years ago, a “motor-driven vehicle” and its owners somehow made it up to the top of this felled sequoia in the Sequoia National Park, presumably without 4 wheel drive.

Taking Linwood Sexton Down

Jayhawker XMas ’46

During the 1946 football season, it took five KU Jayhawks to bring down down Wichita “Wheatshockers'” Linwood Sexton. However, the final score was Kansas 14, Wichita 7. Sexton, one of the first African-Americans to play for Wichita State, went on to play halfback for the Los Angeles Dons. A member of the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame, he passed at the age of 90.

Below he is pictured in 2008 with son, Eric, in front of a mural at Koch Arena.

photo: The Wichita Eagle

Knee-Deep In Ticker Tape

Associated Press

So went the LIFE caption, as news of the Japanese surrender spread across New York on August 14, 1945.

Finally an end to the war.

I Just Want To Bang On The Drum All Day

Check out these squirts, circa WWII, conducting a “lively aluminum salvage campaign” out of pots from their neighbors on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. A grumpy bearded gramps doesn’t seem nearly as thrilled about the pursuit as the youth, but I think that’s just the face old folks make.