Vintage Car Print - Chief Halftown - The WFIL 23 Window VW Samba Bus

Treasures from THE AUTOMOTIVE COLLECTION at Lost Highways Archive & Research Library. By exclusive arrangement with The Grand Review.

Print size 20 x 24, and consciously formatted to work with a standard size store bought frame, or custom framed as you see fit.

Taking prints out and setting up at a show can be a physically exhausting. Could be because our display is elaborate, involved and heavy, but starting often well before dawn we bring it all together at several fascinating and very different types of events throughout the year. A few hours of good hard work, then we relax a bit in folding chairs and talk to people as they come through, happy to answer questions whether they're buying anything or not.

When they come to this Chief Halftown print, I find I'm listening to strangers who suddenly have a platform they weren't expecting to gush and express their love and admiration for a broadcast pioneer who never stopped giving back to the community. It is their moment to pause and reflect and spin a funny yarn or two about what the Chief meant to them, and in sharing they are actually saying thank you to a departed friend whose like we will not see again.

When the Chief passed I wrote an obit piece for the op ed page of our weekly newspaper making it clear that when I tell me kids 'it's good to be the good guy', I have the legendary Seneca Chief Traynor Halftown in mind.

The Halftown family were my neighbors growing up, and all three of his children were my schoolmates out in the countryside west of Philadelphia. I'm still close with two of them and we're regularly in touch.

While the Chief and Mrs. Halftown were still alive, I went to his eldest son, explained and showed him the sort of exciting restoration work I was doing, and asked if his father had any scrapbooks I might take a look at. He returned the next week with a huge stack of three ring binders. The images inside show a happy entertainer on the radio and on the set of his TV show with myriad famous guests, the celeb who was brought in to open every new bowling alley, hospital, shopping center, major car dealer... you name it. All those are important in their way, walking us through popular culture in a major metropolitan area with broad arms embracing the whole of the 50s and 60s. Consistent throughout is the well documented but less promoted Chief being the public face of charitable events. Endless charitable events. He didn't get paid for any of those, but was the man we all turned to to bring life and fun to what otherwise might be a less than dynamic happening. It was his genuineness at every single one of these events, and they seem endless, that left a personal and inspirational touch to people in need, rather than those that already have.

My wife and I took our then very young sons to see the Chief in what was one of his last public appearances, helping open a small craft shop in Haddonfield, New Jersey that features works by Native Americans. He was very old and suffering from crippling arthritis, but a wiseacre sprightliness still exploded, quietly, from his eyes and smile. He sat low, kids sitting all around him, and spoke quietly into a small microphone. He pulled artifacts that had practical and spiritual significance to American Indians slowly from a satchel, explaining each of them to the kids while seamlessly incorporating zingers that were aimed at the parents and grandparent standing in a circle beyond the kids. It was brilliant. We tend to forget, because his 'good guy' persona was so huge, that the Chief was also a really funny guy, and a true to life old school showman.

At the end, kids who had no broader connection to him lined up to thank him and shake his hand, but their parents and grandparents also lined up and each and every one of them was reduced to a shy and embarrassed eight year old, twisting this way and that, digging their toe into the floor back and forth as they awkwardly looked down, smiling and swaying, transformed, waiting to meet THE Chief Halftown. It was absolutely fascinating to watch.

When we were leaving, I chatted with Mrs. Halftown for a moment in the front of the store, where she had set up a table to raise funds for a Native American education charity she supported. She was there doing what she was personally called to do, without fanfare, as natural as could be.

What a team.

All that said, there are people who go completely nuts for this image because it is an early 60s 23-window VW Samba Bus, have no idea who Chief Halftown was, but love that he is there, clearly filled with joy, and that the van is totally tricked out as the WFIL promo rig! Of those people who buy one, I ask if they intend to hang it anywhere in the Greater Delaware Valley. If I get a yes, I warn them to be ready to get an earful from kids who are now of a certain age...

• Handmade item
• Materials: Art stock enhanced matte paper, archival ink
• Made to order
• Only ships within United States.

SHIPPING

All prints are shipped in a sturdy mailing tube for $8, which covers postage, tube and S & H.

BUYING MORE THAN ONE PRINT? Add a second print or any number thereafter of this or any other prints in our catalog and shipping is still just $8, total!!!

International shipping is available and reasonable. Please contact us for details.

A NOTE ON OUR PROCESS, OUR CHOICES AND THE QUALITY OF THE GRAPHIC CRAFTSMANSHIP THAT GOES INTO OUR PRINTS.

Every print we deem exciting enough to present to the public via our Etsy store or available here at our studio has gone through a number of steps. The first of those is always discovering and falling in love with an obscure image, always an original that we can hold in our hands. That image is speaking to us, sometime screaming “Don’t leave me here. See what I am, what I was, what I can be, what I SHOULD be!”

There is a real sense of excitement involved, and a great many smiles and knowing grins when we make that deal and bring that ancient print, that battered photo, that scrap of ephemera that contains some scrap of genius from an unknown commercial artist home with us, knowing already how we mean to approach its restoration.

There is the heady promise of a further hunt just as real as what drags a weekend fisherman out of bed at 3AM to work a favorite brook as we start our research, looking for that great backstory, and both ready and willing to tumble down as many rabbit holes as are revealed to us to get that story.

Then there is a meticulous digital restoration that is as often as much fun as riding a vintage Moto Guzzi on a winding coastal road. I don’t care if that sounds crazy, it really is like jumping in the saddle! So many choices, so many chances to take to subtly or spectacularly give new life to otherwise permanently obscure images.

This dedication and the ongoing rush of joy in the accomplishment of it, and the opportunity to share the results in our studio and here on Etsy, is the fire of passion that keeps these engines roaring. We make every effort to ensure our customers are not just satisfied but thrilled, and we happily stand 100% behind our work.