Tuesday, February 06, 2024

When you run your own lumber corporation in the mid 1950s, you buy your own DC3, and 4000 acre ranch - just to go pheasant hunting. And Sports Illustrated sends a photographer to immortalize your success


The man at left (below image) is legendary restaurateur "Trader Vic" Bergeron; the DC-3 belongs to Albert Stanwood Murphy (1892-1963), president of Pacific Lumber & Truss of San Francisco, and retired Navy Captain and Mrs. Clayton McCauley pose before DC-3, with field dogs and one-day bag of game birds.


Lumberman Murphy's Flying M Ranch, a 4,000-acre preserve near Yerington, Nevada, is a 65-minute flight from California. It is only a short walk from the Flying M's 4,500-foot landing strip to the five-bedroom ranch house with adjacent bunkhouse, cookhouse and manager's quarters. 'Before we bought the ranch,' Murphy says, 'we didn't have any place of our own to hunt pheasants'.



What a generation... from great depression childhood, probably most had no electricity, refrigeration, car etc, to WW2 involvement somehow, either making military stuff, or in the military, or on rations, to the prosperity and invention era of the late 40s early 50s with new fridges, cool cars, great tractors, power lawnmowers and snowmobiles, and military surplus airplanes.

I love finding WW2 aircraft snapped up by companies and corporations in the 50s 

Sports Illustrated in the 50s really was a lot like  Time or Life magazines, they photographed a variety of interesting stuff, and are the best article on Lindley Bothwell's racing collection of "Banshees" https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-1957-sports-illustrated-feature-on.html 

4 comments:

  1. Very interesting. Nothing is too good for you in this life. When you die, you leave it here. So, they enjoyed more than that to which most of us can aspire. Looks like fun.

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  2. A 1955 Pontiac Star Chief, top of the model line that year. These were the glory days of the industry, combining handsome, perfectly proportioned, coherent design with utility. I read once that the 55 Buick Century was Harley Earls favorite styling. Notice the soft pastel color on the Pontiac. Just about all paint options in the period were pastels. Geez I miss those cars!

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  3. Drinks at Trader Vic's...now there is a memory!

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  4. Yeah, I just want enough money to have someone hold my cigar while I'm smoking it

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