OH. MY. GOD.
Dave:
THANK YOU SO MUCH for bringing back some great memories. The GE Combination I grew up with was very similar to yours. I think yours is one year later than ours, which was purchased in Summer of '59, if memory serves (I know that's the same year your folks got theirs, but Mom always had a sharp eye for a bargain, and could well have bought the previous year's model on close-out or something - it also could have been that Talman Furniture, where she bought it, still had it in stock from the previous year).
Ours did not have the "Swing-Out" badge on the front door, and our Swing-Out shelves revolved around a centre post, instead of swinging out from the side, but otherwise, ours was identical. You might be interested to know that this was one model below the TOL, differing only in its overall height (the TOL was a little taller, to provide a bigger freezer chest size), and without the brushed metal "beauty" panel on the TOL freezer chest's front. Otherwise, the two models were the same in features. I recall a purchase price of $400 being mentioned at the time we got ours, which would be equal to about $2800 today.
I cannot tell you how much I appreciate those photos - I can feel that heavy chromed pot-metal door handle in my hand when I look at them. I remember all those little "dimples" at the bottom of the handle very well; they were a bit of a cleaning problem. I also remember that it was no fun at all to defrost the freezer (fridge portion was frostless, but the freezer still had to be defrosted on ours; later, GE made the same basic unit completely frost-free). I loved the step-on pedal, but of course no manufacturer today will spend money on any convenience feature that can't be provided with a microchip.
There is another difference, too - the pull-out crisper drawer at the bottom of the fridge. Ours were semi-circular, and swung out, same as the shelves. That semi-cicular shape was the reason that Swing-Out shelves didn't catch on. If a housewife looked at a GE next to say, a Frigidaire, she could easily see that she was not getting as much shelf space in the GE as she would in a fridge with conventional rectangular shelves that extended wall-to-wall, front-to-back. GE's shelves had to be semi-circular, so that they could swing, so eventually it was lose the swinging feature, or lose sales. GE made the only realistic choice it could make.
Too bad; those shelves definitely had their advantages, as I well remember. Again, thanks for the memories - that's not an easy fridge to find. The TOL with the bigger freezer is more common; you hardly ever see this one.
P.S.: If I ever win the lottery, I'm showing up on your doorstep with a bunch of money in hand, LOL. For the time being, I'll have to content myself with saving your photos to my hard drive.
