all works except for a bulb or 2, and no cleaning was needed
and thank heavens... one couldn't wear one's heels and pearls with all that messiness!
It's a pleasant reverie to remember how Mom dressed in the '50s: white gloves, pillbox hat, Chanel #5 and fully jeweled when out to luncheon, the women's club, or for Bridge. And while no Van Cleef & Arpels or Harry Winston around the house, usually a nice plaid wrap wool skirt, sweater, and favorite scarab bracelet & brooch, even for chores. A strikingly attractive woman who died very young, sadly. Dad was also old school elegant, always with white shirt and tie at table, never without a Dobbs trilby or fedora upon leaving the house, maybe a black Homburg for more formal occasions, church, or weddings, a suede sport coat and sporty Bavarian-style "brush" hat for the lumberyard... he dressed very tastefully. There's a wonderful 1956 Buick brochure showing a graying and distinguished middle-aged banker type with neatly clipped moustache in charcoal topcoat and Homberg discussing with a similarly dressed friend the virtues of his sparkling new Carlsbad Black '56 Roadmaster. It really sums up that era for me... very different, more formal, to be certain, with a panache now all but lost... nowadays one goes to the mall and is assaulted with "public pajamas" and 2 pc. sweatsuits... haruuummph!
So, then, when did Hotpoint, in essence, swap it's role with GE and become a scaled back econo version? We rarely see any '57/8/9 Hotpoint ranges, but they do, at least in pictures, seem more lavish than the '58 Liberator we just parted with, as does the '56 Hotpoint that we now have vs the 56 Stratoliner that we once had. Walt collects mainly Hotpoints for just that reason... so glad he allowed us to be the steward of this particular one!