One good example of our vanishing americana is the corner grocery
store. These independently-operated, full-service markets were at one time
staples of local communities, and have now been replaced for the most part
by chain-owned superstores. My father, H. F. Teague, operated until 1970
such a store, Teague's Fairway Market,
located in Lynchburg, Virginia. Click on the image to the right for a 1959
grocer magazine account of my dad's business, and get a taste of an
all-but-gone tradition.
In today's world of VCRs, cable and direct-satellite TV, and home theaters
with digital surround sound, the notion of driving to a large parking lot,
attaching a metal-encased speaker to your window, and staring through your
windshield at a large outdoor movie screen seems quite archaic, not to
mention downright inconvenient. In the not-too-distant past, however,
drive-in movies were very popular entertainment. According to Going,
Going, Gone, there were over 6000 drive-in theaters in existence in
1961. Today, there are very few remaining. Click on the image to the
left for a visit to Harvey's Drive-In
Theatre, another icon of the past.
What better counterpart to the drive-in theater than a drive-in
restaurant! Chains like Sonic have kept the concept alive in the 1990's, but at
one time they were everywhere. At a true drive-in restaurant, one didn't simply
drive up to a window as one would at most fast-food restaurants today. A customer instead
parked their car in one of dozens of outdoor "booths," ordered over a microphone,
then waited for the food to be delivered to the car by a "car hop." At some restaurants,
the car hops rode on rollerskates. Click on the image to the right for Twig
Gravely's page honoring the drive-in tradition, specifically Central Virginia's
chain of Lendy's restaurants
from the 1950's and '60s.
It took America many years to collectively realize that nuclear war would
result in substantially more than a temporary inconvenience. Long before
scientists theorized about nuclear winter and the likelihood of global
extinction of life following an atomic war, the notion of survivability
was popularized by our government and its
Civil Defense program. Click on the image of the family in the fallout
shelter for a sampling of Civil Defense publications.
Despite the popularity of television's "The X-Files," the phenomenom of the
flying saucer sighting is essentially a thing of the past. What happened?
Where did the saucers go? For an answer, click on the UFO photograph to the
left to visit the RetroWeb Flying Saucers page.
 A McDonald's - Golden Arches Style (location unknown - mid-1960's) |
 Teague's Soda Shop in Asheville, N.C. with proprietor M. Paul Teague at register (1945) |
 Gas Station / Full Service (from a late 1960's Esso road map) |
 The Beatles (composite from 4 Beatle cards - 1964) |
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Comments / Questions ?Copyright © Kipp Teague