Vintage Photos Of Summer Bliss That Showcase The Wild Ways The World Has Changed

Cast your mind back to the summers of your childhood. What do you think about? Maybe those long days spent with friends riding around on your bikes, cooling off at the local pool, and eating tons of ice cream? If you were born in the 1950s, 1960s, or 1970s, then the long summer months probably looked a lot like that. But times have changed since then. Sure, some elements of

summer have certainly endured, but the world is very different today. Let’s take a look at these vintage photos to refresh our memories of how the season used to be.

Sandcastle kid

Here we see a kid having the time of his life. The year is 1954: it looks like it’s a perfect day for getting down to the beach and building some sandcastles. Sadly, the boy appears to be equipped only with a couple of watering cans. A bucket and spade would have been a lot more useful! With respect to the boy’s building skills, a bucket and spade may have helped with his construction. Without them, his castles ended up being a little, well, rough around the edges.

Cooling off New York-style

How do you deal with a heatwave? Well, if you’re a New Yorker, there’s one tried and tested tradition that’s sure to help: you open up a fire hydrant! Is there any image that captures a New York summer better than a bunch of kids on the street, playing around a fire hydrant that’s spraying water? It’s the quintessential way to keep cool in the Big Apple, as even The New York Times has acknowledged. The paper once described the fire hydrant as “the lifeline of summer.”

Poolside at the motel

Here we see the pool at Tahiti Motel, in the New Jersey city of Wildwood. Doesn’t the water look refreshing? This photo was taken in the mid-’60s, and it captures the immense popularity of the area during the summer months. Families from all over the place flocked to the Jersey Shore for their summer vacation. Wildwood isn’t the biggest place in the world, but once summer rolled around the place could expect to welcome thousands upon thousands of visitors.

Miss America contestants

The Miss America 1972 pageant took place in Atlantic City, New Jersey. It actually took place in September ’71, at a place called the Boardwalk Hall. This photo shows us the contestants, who were dipping their feet in the water not long before the winner was announced. In the end, that was Miss Ohio: Laurie Lea Schaefer. Here, looking from left to right, we see the representatives from Texas, Oregon, Ohio, Nevada, Nebraska, Hawaii, Florida, Colorado, California, and Alabama.