Although I am called a child of the 60’s, I am really a child of the 1950’s. The early 1960’s were much closer to the 1950’s than to the end of their decade. So I grew up on images of romance, marriage, and happily ever after all symbolized by the incessant magazine ads for Lane Cedar Chests. Lane advertised every month in my favorite magazine Seventeen and I learned about “hope chests” because of their ads. I had never heard of them before that.
Apparently as a girl I was to acquire a “hope chest” and then begin to fill it gradually with gifts given to me for that purpose. Lane assumed I would need a sturdy cedar(moth proof) chest to store my table linens, bed linens and wool blankets until I married and moved into my own home. I would go directly from my parents’ house where I kept the chest into the home with my husband. I absorbed all this, but felt it unlikely that I would be given either the chest or the linens.
By my college graduation in 1969, I now longer had any of the romantic ideas from my younger life. I expected to leave college, go to work, move into my own apartment and begin to build a life after college. I did, however, have a lingering sense that I should mark this transition with a domestic purchase. Just before I left Cambridge, I bought this little blue glass bird. It sits on my windowsill today reminding me of my first furnishing for a future “room of my own.”
Saved By Words 
I also left school in 1969, so consider myself very much a child of the 1950s.
I like that blue bird!
Best wishes, Pete.
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Me too.
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I like that you chose to buy something pretty and whimsical instead of boring and practical.
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And it has lasted!
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I imagine it is very smooth and weighty, and the way the light and images shine make me want to pick it up and look through and move it around.
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It does gleam in the light. And it is solid glass.
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Beautiful and unlike the excruciating custom of a hope chest, your glass bird represents freedom and light!
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Yes, for sure.
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Love the fact that your blue bird has survived as a reminder of your earlier days
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That glass figurine of a blue bird is lovely Elizabeth. Fancy keeping it all these years.
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I think I have mentioned that I tend to hang onto things.
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what a beautiful bird to remind you of your newly found independence! 🙂
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And so lovely on the windowsill too.
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i bet!
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I used to love those little blue birds! I love that you were so independent minded
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Much to my parents’ dismay, but to my benefit.
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We have a cedar chest. I don’t know how the movers are going to get it down the stairs when we move next month. They may have to take it out through the balcony.
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Was it purchased as someone’s hope chest?
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Probably one of my wife’s ancestors.
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Your blue bird is lovely. I’m glad you still have it and treasure it.
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It made my aunt laugh that I kept a No Hope Chest. I filled it with things that I wanted for my own future home, not one I shared with someone else.
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My tenth birthday was 1959, when we moved out of East London to the leafy suburbs of Woodford, so I also consider myself as much a child of the 50s as the 60s.
You are the child of your musical memories, I think. Mine are flavoured by Buddy Holly and the early Everleys, the Lettermen, Bryian Hyland, Bobby Vee… (didn’t they all look the same? apart from Buddy, of course).
The first record I owned was a 78rpm of ‘Old Yeller’ bought for me by my dad, which may go some way to explain why the first ornament I bought, which still reposes on my bedroom windowsill, is a china Great Dane.
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Oh my. I cried and cried at Old Yeller. We are children of the same era. My first record was Elvis Presley “All Shook Up” on 78rpm.
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I still have a few 78s – mostly my dad’s though… Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole (what a voice! melted chocolate), Mario Lanza…
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I would think the chests were quite sensible at the time when girls did prefer to future marriage this way. I am sure they were lovely pieces of furniture. I would have liked one, Elizabeth.
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Yes they were really lovely. And I think hope chests once did make real sense.
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