Hopped-up and hungry for action: cruising Florida in the Boogie Woogie Ford

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Yes, this 1940 photograph is colourized, but it seems certain that faded yellow was indeed the correct colour of the car. Why else would the name The Yellow Bullet be painted on its boot lid? It’s got another name, too: The Boogie Woogie, after the music style, of course. The original caption reads: ‘Teenagers and their jalopy, Belle Glade, Florida, June 1940’.

Can we find out a bit more than that? A slightly closer look at the background shows a shop named the Golden Eagle Bar, which looks only slightly more modern than the saloons in classic Western films. That leads us on to another photograph, showing the same bar but a year earlier: 1939. Using that address, we have been able to find two more photographs of the two-seater Ford in the Shorpy archive (picture 3 and 4), which must have been taken on that same day in June. From them, we learn that they show: “Some of the younger Osceola migratory camp members who have come to the post office in Belle Glade, Florida, for their mail. Medium format negative by Marion Post Wolcott for the Farm Security Administration.” There is also a 1939 picture of the Belle Glade Post Office. That’s right where the Ford was parked.

The colourized image can be found all over the web. We found one comment attached to it which we’re keen to promote. Robert Hach, Junior, wrote: “I had an older father (he was 55 years old when I was born). I remember him telling me that when he was in high school in 1932, he and three of his friends bought an old jalopy car for $1. He said it was a Star brand. His mom thought it was so nice his buddies would pick him up every day for school and on the weekends... she never knew my dad was 1/4th owner of the car!”

Words: Jeroen Booij; pictures: Marion Post Wolcott, Library of Congress; colourization: Lamont Cranston

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