heresy ?????????

Paul Steinberg

Paul Steinberg

PCS Life Member Past President 2012-2014 2020-2024
Super Site Supporter
A picture is worth how many words????
 

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Just one in this case...

OUTSTANDING !

There is a huge surf culture out there with surfers and old hearses.
An America heritage that is very interesting.

Anyone with other hearse/surfer/surfboard photos, please post them here or send them to me.

I will compensate for cool old photos !

Thanks Paul !
Darren
 
I can see why some people would be very disappointed in that photo.

A real nice clean hearse with some dude sitting on it and stuffing it with surf boards then driving to the beach where it will get full of sand.

I WOULD BE UPSET TOO if that was my hearse.

Looks like it doesn't need much of anything to be put back in service.


Here is the thing... back in the '60s and earlier, pick-ups and vans and any commercial vehicles were exactly that, a work vehicle. You used them for work. Once they were outdated, they were dis-guarded.

Today, vans and pick-up are more like cars and have the same luxuries as cars. They are daily drivers and lots of people don't even use them for work related vehicles.

Times have changed big time in the last 40 years and collectors are collecting these old former work vehicles.

Sometimes they remain in very good condition and sometimes they are run into the ground. That's just how things go.

Luckily for us, hearses are well cared for and driven far less than average work vehicles. Ambulances with there high speed runs, don't fair as well as there twins, the hearses.

So, in today's world... find 'em, restore 'em and drive 'em and be proud of what you have ! ...and know maybe a surfer has gotten to the surf on time and has had a blast in them along the way.

Hopefully everyone finds some all original gems that have not had this fate and treasure them even more.

I sure do,
Darren
 
Maybe the Son of the Funeral Director... "Hey Dad can I borrow the keys to the old hearse today so my friends and I can go to the beach?". It looks way too good to be sold in mint condition like that! MM
 
I have more pictures of hearses as surf wagons, but I'll have to dig through my 3TB external harddrive to find them. Could take awhile...

In the meantime, here's a similar photo to ponder. Silly Californians... :mad:
 

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Hey, that was the way it was back in the day. No one thought of these as collectibles and would sell them for whatever you could get. After all, who wanted a hearse!

A friend of mine in the 70's picked up a beautiful 58 Cadillac hearse for $2800 which we drove all over the place. We even built a coffin and Reigle Funeral Home Sunset Chapel donated the handles. His older borther picked up a 1960 3-way for $1500. I remember that hearse because of that darn table made it impossible to make a bed so we ripped it out.

That my friends is why George Hamlin had the foresight to create the "Professional Car Society".

:applause:
 
Love this '63 Superior surf wagon shot. Can't recall if I shared it here previously.

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Perhaps. Son forwarded pics of '60 Crown Royale limo combination that was used as family wagon fresh out of service in mid-'60s. Said that coach was replaced with another Superior just a few years newer and this was the only non-'60 shot included. Never questioned it. ;)
 
Judging by the Dewey Weber longboards and Keds shoes I would peg this ad for a contest from the mid-60s. I grew up on the California coast in that era and remember seeing a few hearses used a board haulers. Also used, and abused, were the now iconic woodie vehicles. As the saying goes: "If we had only know at the time .......". Even our longboards from back then are worth a lot now.
 

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As I mentioned in the other thread with this picture, even Gidget was buying a hearse in one episode.
Remember these cars were very cheap and worked great for hauling longboards.
If you look at the first TPC issues there was carved panel hearses advertized for $300-$600, just out of service. If we only new....
 
Joe Melanson said:
Judging by the Dewey Weber longboards and Keds shoes I would peg this ad for a contest from the mid-60s. I grew up on the California coast in that era and remember seeing a few hearses used a board haulers. Also used, and abused, were the now iconic woodie vehicles. As the saying goes: "If we had only know at the time .......". Even our longboards from back then are worth a lot now.
Click to expand...

A quick search online turned up this.

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Jerry McNutt is retired and owns an Avocado Ranch in the same town we are in.... maybe he put it away in his barn years ago... will have to check it out! MM
 
One good way to reconcile ourselves with the widespread use of hearses in 1960s California surf culture is to remember this was the Cheap Way In for a number of people who became more serious professional car collectors in subsquent decades once they were earning more. As for their appearance in surf movies, Gidget was not the only person out there on this wavelength; though I don't have a DVD clip handy to detail the make, I distinctly recall a 1920s hearse was owned by one of the musician characters in the original WHERE THE BOYS ARE from 1960.
 
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