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Washington, D.C., circa 1926. "Washington Cadillac Co." A fancy touring car doing its best to keep us from finding out about the "101 Ranch Real Wild West" show. National Photo Company Collection glass negative. View full size.
My great-uncle was in that show. Charlie Mulhall eventually followed his best friend, Tom Mix, to Hollywood to be his stunt double in silent westerns. He also performed with his his sister, Lucille Mulhall, in his father's own wild west show -- Zach Mulhall's Congress of Rough Riders and Ropers in Ponca City and Mulhall, Oklahoma.
My '31 Cadillac also cost new about 10 times as much as a basic Ford or Chevrolet. By some quirk of the numbers, I was able to buy it 75 years later for only about 5 times what a Ford or Chevy in like condition would have been. It's still ten times the automobile, though.
The Attentive Viewer will note all the latest accessories - extra wide Goodyear Balloon tires for skwooshing small animals, four wheel brakes, more road-holding weight - even comes with "automatic driver" and intruder warning system. Surely the radiator mascot is not really "mooning" the owner however!
Without getting too technical, you could buy maybe 10 new Fords for the price of that Cadillac.
It sounded familiar and then I remembered that it was recently involved in a segment of "History Detectives" on PBS. A bit of the story here.
Looks to be a Series 314 dual-cowl Sport Phaeton from 1926 or 1927. An impressive machine.
[What looks like the second cowl is the windshield of another car. Or else there's a steering wheel in the back seat! - Dave]
The wheelbase was about 150 inches. No power steering. No power brakes. Compared to a Model T at just over 100 inches. (Thanks, Dave, for this website. I'm not sure why you do it, but I'm sure glad you do. I look at it every day and I've recommended the site to more than one young teacher. This is such an amazing window into who we were, and by extension, into who we are.)
is between the Caddy and the nice shiny Model T to the right. How many Fords could you buy for the price of the Cadillac ?
Interesting to see posters for the Johnny J. Jones Exposition.
This was a very famous circus and traveling fair where Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk, better known as Elvis' Colonel Tom Parker, got his first job out of the army running "the fat-man competition."
I'm hoping there weren't swimsuits involved.
re: Anonymous's comment about the shifting focus of the street cleaner's task: by 1926 the horse manure problem was but a fraction of what it had once been, and twenty-five years later was just a memory, but a persistent enough one to fuel the culminating punch line of the running gag in the 1951 Warner Bros. cartoon "Drip-Along Daffy." The shelf-life of obsolete cultural references is a lot briefer these day, I feel.
Cadillac owners have always parked wherever they please.
Wikipedia has some interesting stuff on the Johnny J. Jones Exposition and the 101 Ranch Wild West Show. 101 experienced a great mystery while touring Europe that could be a project for someone with better research skills than mine.
Washington Cadillac Co. was at 1138 Connecticut Ave. NW.
The site's now occupied by looming, sterile office building:
http://smithcommercialrealty.com/properties/washington_dc/1140_connectic...
I like the juxtaposition of that shiny new car and the street cleaner who is soon to lose his main job -- cleaning up horse manure. Now, it's cigaret butts and any other kind of detritus people wish to dispose of.
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