I’m not saying every TV show when I grew up was set in the 1950s, but they were all set in the 1950s. The important ones were, anyway—I loved Happy Days and we were faithful Laverne and Shirley fans. Then the cartoons we watched endlessly were all made in the sixties—Scooby Doo, the Flintstones, the odd Wacky Races, and when the Monkees came back out we loved it.
And of course the Looney Tunes and Woody Woodpecker were even older: there were even Mussolini jokes in Bugs Bunny. The past was baked into the world when I was little.
Portrait of the Peabody Hotel (built 1925), standing in front of the Rendezvous, Memphis, Tennessee, Polaroid SX-70 (2023)
There were also just relics scattered all about. When we went to my Nana’s, any closet might still feature toys or board games from ten or twenty years before, from our uncles’ childhoods or even my dad’s. My best friend inherited a stack of coverless comics from his pop and we would spend hours poring over the faded newsprint, wondering at the blocky figures of Mike Sekowsky in an issue of Justice League printed a decade before we were born and trying to figure out Marie Severin’s jokes in Not Brand Echh.
Greenville, Mississippi, Polaroid 600 (2023)
The past was still present, and still brand new. This certainly extended to cars, which could be maintained and upgraded as needed because the parts were so modular, and people were so resourceful in patching them together and keeping them running. My first Chevrolet was six years older than I was when we drove it home from Pell City; it was only later I realized the back quarter panels had been cut off a Pontiac and welded on to replace a long ago wreck or rust from road salt. My best friend in college rode around with a spare alternator in his trunk just in case.
Detroit steel, spotted north of the border in Victoria, British Columbia, Polaroid 600 (2022)
I am still looking for the past. Whatever that might mean, and even if it’s just a trick of the light.
Jackson, Mississippi, SX-70 (2019)
Yazoo City, Mississippi, Polaroid 600 (2022)
Houston, Mississippi, SX-70 (2022)
“DELOREAN” is this week’s installment of GORJUS, an occasional dispatch devoted to art and life in the South, preserved as best I can with instant film.
If you liked what you saw and read, if you maybe felt a twang in your belly while you looked it over, then I am proud of it, and I reckon we would be friends. Consider sending this letter to a pal who is like us. I’m gorjusjxn on Instagram, and you can see more Polaroids at McCartyPolaroids.
Last week I wrote about my Nana and her brother, if you haven’t read it I think it is worth your time.
Beautiful