Abe, here was a picture on Hemings Daily. Do you recognize the place?

 

Sure do! Its called Unkel Joe's Woodshed. It's still open and doing well. This picture has been in the Old Photo section of our paper and I've seen it on Facebook.

Unkel Joe's was known for discount items. They bought over runs, seconds and so on, sort of like Big Lots or an Ollie's. Unkel Joe's was started by Joe Anderson. His business partner then opened a store in Altoona. Both are still in business after both owners have died.

The store in Lock Haven looks pretty much the same. The side of the building has been painted over. My wife still loves to shop there.

There's a lot of neat 50s iron sitting there.

 

Abe, could you post a then and now picture sometime? Dennis

 

Not a single truck or SUV in sight. Driving habits and vehicle preferences have certainly changed. How did we manage in snow without 4x4 wheel drive? In the Soo, where I grew up, 150 inches of snow was typical--200+ inches possible. My Dad had a 1950 Merc and later a 55 Olds--and CHAINS.

Jim

 

No 4wd AND just bias-ply tires. In southern Ohio the only vehicle we had with snow tires was the farm pick-up truck. I never had any experience with chains until I moved to Colorado in '76.

 

That is a 57 Chrysler New Yorker in the lower right corner (2nd car in). It would have had a 392 hemi in it. My dad still have is 57 New Yorker convertible from back in the day...

 

You are right about that , Jim. Lock Haven is not a big town but I'm sure these shoppers were from town and not the outlying farming areas. City folks didn't have trucks and most farmers would not come to town in their dirty old truck.

We lived on a small farm and my Dad had a 48 3/4 ton 5 window cab Chevy truck. He had 9 brothers and most of them lived in Lancaster and they didn't have a truck. So they would borrow Dad's. It wasn't cool to have a truck back then. If Dad had to pick up my sister when she stayed late after school she did t want him coming in the truck. That's just the way it was and the auto manufacturers really changed that with their ads.

 

I noticed that there were no trucks also Jim. Driving habits have certainly changed with the building of Interstate Highways starting in the early '50s pushed by President Eisenhower. I grew up in the Pittsburgh area with lots of hills and snow. The biggest snow that I remember was 54" in our area north of town. No school for a week. But normally everyone never had that far to go as many families lived near each other. I can count on one hand the number of times that I installed tire chains, and that included on a Jeep CJ-6 that we used to plow snow to make money for our Scout Troop (I was lucky as I was 15 and had a drivers license so I got to drive).

People's experience or ability to drive in snow in an area plays a big part. I lived in Atlanta in 1982 and experienced the Snow Jam. People just didn't know how to drive on snow and nobody had snow tires or chains. On hills people didn't wait at the bottom to see if the car in front of them made it, so they would go up the hill together and the first car would get stuck and then the whole group got stuck blocking the road. It was a mess. And that was with less than 4" of snow.


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Took a pic of Unkel Joe's today, not quite the same angle.

 

The sign says OPEN but not 1 car in sight. Unless that's a roof of a mini van under the James P. Webb sign.
Thank you for the before/after shot.

 

My aunt wouldn't let my uncle take the truck to town, if she was riding with him. He had to shave too before going.

 

Reminds me of having to get dressed up to go out to eat. Believe it or not boys and girls, even going to McDonalds was kind of a rarity for many families. We didn't have to get dressed up for that, but it was only 2 or 3 times a year maybe. A sit down restaurant? Well now that was a pretty big deal, requiring washing behind the ears and all sorts of indignities like that.

 

'57 DeSoto Fireflight. Had the 331 or 354 hemi with typewriter drive. I had one. Only the DeSoto Adventurer had the 392 with the cross-ram intake manifold.
But that's a cool pic. At first I thought it was a used car lot.

 

Thanks Abe, which view are we looking at?

 

The picture I took today is more of a straight on shot from across the street as opposed to the old one being taken farther down the street and more from the side.