3646
Well, be honest, I've posted Ron Tonkin's sign before. But boy, how I love that edifice.
This is what it looked like today. A tiny little bit of the past proudly defying the march of time.
It's scarcely changed in the five-or-so years it's been up in front of Ron Tonkin's old place.
122nd belonged to the Tonkin family, in a way; Ron's brother Marv had the spot at NE 122nd and Halsey that's Courtesy Ford today; it had a distinctive architecture with roof supports that reminded one of the towers on the Saint Johns Bridge, in a reductionist-abstract sort of way (a photo of that plus stationery showing the design's use as a logo can be seen at this page: http://www.thecoralsnake.com/Tonkin). And it was the Tonkins' coinage in ads that supply the tag for this and commonly-themed posts here as well as how I think of my favorite road: Out 122nd Way, as they said.
Marv Tonkin also gave us a jingle that rings in the heads of Portlanders of A Certain Age (Keep honkin'/For Marv Tonkin/That's Maaarv Ton-kin Ford!) which remains memorable decades after Marv went out of business.
Ron sold Chevies, and Marv sold Fords. I'll bet family gatherings had a certain quality betimes.
But, Ron Tonkin remains and stands proud along 122nd between Burnside and Glisan, where it always was and, through evolution in automobile technology as we move toward the terminal phase of the internal combustion engine, likely always will be; a true Portland cultural artifact, one foot in the present, and one foot solidly in the past.
I'll always have time to snap a picture of this.
This is what it looked like today. A tiny little bit of the past proudly defying the march of time.
It's scarcely changed in the five-or-so years it's been up in front of Ron Tonkin's old place.
122nd belonged to the Tonkin family, in a way; Ron's brother Marv had the spot at NE 122nd and Halsey that's Courtesy Ford today; it had a distinctive architecture with roof supports that reminded one of the towers on the Saint Johns Bridge, in a reductionist-abstract sort of way (a photo of that plus stationery showing the design's use as a logo can be seen at this page: http://www.thecoralsnake.com/Tonkin). And it was the Tonkins' coinage in ads that supply the tag for this and commonly-themed posts here as well as how I think of my favorite road: Out 122nd Way, as they said.
Marv Tonkin also gave us a jingle that rings in the heads of Portlanders of A Certain Age (Keep honkin'/For Marv Tonkin/That's Maaarv Ton-kin Ford!) which remains memorable decades after Marv went out of business.
Ron sold Chevies, and Marv sold Fords. I'll bet family gatherings had a certain quality betimes.
But, Ron Tonkin remains and stands proud along 122nd between Burnside and Glisan, where it always was and, through evolution in automobile technology as we move toward the terminal phase of the internal combustion engine, likely always will be; a true Portland cultural artifact, one foot in the present, and one foot solidly in the past.
I'll always have time to snap a picture of this.
No comments:
Post a Comment