My Trailer Park Xmas

Trailer park, mobile homes, RV's and 5th wheels are my neighbors here and their human inhabitants love to put up the Xmas lites! or Christmas lights!

 Mee toooo. In the  vintage Winnebago, on the front dash, we put a vintage light up Snowman and a vintage light up Santa. They are both blow molds, made in the USA, by Union Products, Leominster, Mass.
What's a blow mold? It's an awesome piece of Americana. We Americans saw the need to make figurines of plastic, brightly colored, and we needed them to light up and we needed them to decorate our yards and our American homes.  clicky that link up there and learn more!

In 1960 John Steinbeck, the Californian, got in a pickup truck with a custom-made camper and a poodle and went on a trip to find America. Yes Steinbeck had his own RV, his own mobile tiny house. The book is "Travels With Charley".
One of the things he found was a mobile. home. community.
And he stopped to visit and chat with people who had bought one and lived in a neighborhood of other like-minded folks. What Steinbeck found was that people loved their mobile homes, their trailers.  Some of them knew this was the only house they would ever afford, and became "house-proud" and were content.
And some used their years in a mobile home park as a jumping off place, and a chance to save a lot of money to one day, be able to afford a "real house".
And now today, we have another resurgence of people who, though they may be middle class, they may have just left the middle class, they wish they could get in to the middle class, are, once again, loving the small home movement.
No need to build a tiny house on a trailer frame, but you can if you want. If you want your own home, buy an RV, buy a trailer, buy a camper on a truck, buy a 5th wheel set-up.

yeah! Blow molds of the Nativity.

I've always chosen "marginal housing" because you get a lot of house for a little bit of money, and you live in very interesting neighborhoods.
My trailer park is no exception to that astute finding! I have the most interesting neighbors, so many of them choose to live in a manufactured home, rather than a Stick Built, or brick and mortar home, or a home built of 2x4's and permanent foundations.

Here is a little video I made with retro tiki lounge music by John Deney, to show a few of the trailers and mobile homes. Merry Christmas trailer park people!!

America, home business, and Beistle!

Shayne made me this big stuffed Jack O'Lantern when he was a wee child...he stuffed it with newspaper...from The News Tribune, Oct. 5, 1983 ! That was right before his 9th birthday, if I did the math right. I haven't uncrumpled the papers inside to read them....though I love reading history...because Shayne crumpled them with his little hands....I'm sentimental like that.

From time to time, I'm gonna highlight some Made In USA products!
As a vintage dealer I get to see, fondle, buy, own and sell......the best of American ingenuity. About 10% of the vintage I buy to sell, was made outside the US. It used to be...almost everything was made here, and very little was imported.
I've been encouraging folks to shop for the USA labels since the early 80s, because buying products made overseas destroys factories here, sends jobs away, but buying American protects our economy. Sadly, far too many people started shopping at WalMart and Target, and not giving a thought to this.......everytime you buy something new, made in China or wherever, from  a country that doesn't pay living wages...you are weakening the American economy.

One of the many reasons I'm proud to be a vintage dealer....I get to highlight the mid-century goodies that gave us a great economy until Geo. Bush the Lesser was appointed by the Supreme Court.

Here's a few of my Beistle Company Halloween decorations.
Beistle decorations have always been made in the US, and are made in Pennsylvania!!
Beistle was founded in 1900 in Pittsburgh. Martin Luther Beistle used to make decorations for hotel lobbies with his family company, working from his home basement. He worked his day job as a calender salesman until his Halloween decor company could stand on its own.
Mr. Beistle ended up buying the calender company, and Beistle Co. grew and grew, and he moved the large successful company to Shippensburg PA.

Happy Jack!
This is marked (c) Beistle Made in USA, and that makes it pre-90s.

my vintage Beistle cat sitting on the crescent moon's nose!

Vintage Beistle  skeleton....and a few of my Big Eyes....

In 1910, Beistle bought the means to make honeycombed tissue, which used to only be made in Europe and Japan.
No product was made during WWII, but afterwards....full steam ahead!
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This witch isn't Beistle, but we love her anyway!
No markings on her, but I'm gonna guess Dennison. I bought her at a yard sale from  a retired teacher, back in the late '90s.

She's taped and stapled together....She's got a big skull medallion necklace that looks kinda gangsta...

Beistle used a few different trademarks.....Copyr H.E.Luhrs, the name of a son-in-law, and The Beistle Company, Beistle Diamond, Bee-Line with a bee, and Art Tissue Westminster Bells, the well-known honeycomb tissue bells at all those weddings in the 50s and 60s..and beyond!

Want to know more about Beistle..... clicky here!!
and if you want to see their repros from their vast archives.....go here!!
 This crazy cat is marked (c)1990 so it's a Beistle reproduction. The plastic pumpkin is probably a Union blow mold lamp. go here to read a blog post I wrote about plastic blow molds.

I had my yard all lit up with the pop-up...but the winds made me take it down...but ...it lives on in my heart!

Here's my Bela Lugosi.........
his back.....

and his face ...Booo !!!

Of course, my favorite plastic skull......
it stars in my handmade necklaces....

here's the Halloween festivities around the pad....

yummy !! 
clicky for the story and the recipe.... 

and Squash....I love it!!

Decor, vintage style.

about the only thing I really miss about having a shop ....is...display !

It's all junk...old boxes, milk crates and old books...leaves, acorns, sticks, cookie cutters,vintage photos, bones...just  making displays with my junk and the things of the daily life..... My kids will back me up on this...I love the old wood crates! I never "moved on" and bought new furniture except for a new couch from time to time and mattresses....I love using what I find on walks, and finding free stuff and shopping the yard sales and junk shops.

"If it ain't junk, it ain't much" 
the display started like this... and then it grew...

The light up snowman  seems pretty rare in the holiday blow-mold light-up universe.
Here's a flickr stream of lovely wacky blow molds....I'm far from the the only one who loves them like crazy.....

Union Products of  Leominster, Massachusetts, was known as the "Plastics City", hired Don Featherstone to create fun blow mold decorations starting right after his graduation from Worcester Art  Museum’s art school, in the mid-50s. We know him best as the creator of The Pink Flamingo in 1957. Union Products closed in 2007, and the flamingo molds were bought by HMC International LLC and are now made in New York.
Polaron, Union, Bayshore and Empire were some of the best known American companies that made the weird and wonderful light up blow mold decorations.
Reaching its hey-dey in the 60s and 70s, the blow mold decorations were in every middle class home. Easter bunnies, Santa, snowmen, angels, and the rare Candlesticks...a pair of which I had at the shop. This faded Santa was a fancy part of my "Jews in Miami Beach" theme I used in my 2009 xmas display in the shop on Broadway, and now sits in my front yard ....
I never wanted you to mistake FunkomaVintage for an ordinary boring store....I like to say " I'm a dinner and a show!"

here's how he started life...

2 light up toy soldiers....from my shop display....

crazy Easter bunny...and also from a shop display....

and of course, my pride ! Dracula by Don Featherstone....

and 2 Don Featherstone pink flamingos ...flamingii....

 and an Empire Pumpkin and cat.....

Using my stacked crates, I keep the few cookbooks I use, a few gardening books, and my bird identification book, with binoculars handy. There's a stack of Polaroids, a Mercedes hood ornament I found in the yard when I was digging a patch for sunflowers last spring.....maybe the whole car is buried in back yard!

The old canning jar was a beach find...it's covered in sea dirt and tiny barnacles. The white ironstone bowl is full of beach glass and other sandy finds, with a square of old barkcloth.
There's a Santa I made about 15 years ago.....and I think 2012 will find me making dolls again. Rolled up is a length of rustic canvas punched with grommets and cords.......I'm pretty sure it was used to cover a furled sail on a boat's boom. Helms alee !