Tuesday Treasure: California beach-towel

This beach towel is a souvenir of a 1962 vacation to California I took with my mom when I was a kid. I was only seven, so I don't remember a lot about the trip, but vaguely recall my mom buying this towel from a souvenir stand on the street somewhere.


California was an exotic place to a kid from Michigan and I thought I was pretty cool for having been there. For the rest of my childhood I enjoyed taking this towel to beaches and pools, and also used it frequently as a bath towel.

It was always stored in a chest of drawers built into my parent's bathroom. As an adult I'd occasionally come across it there and it would fill me with nostalgia.

This is one of only a few things I saved while cleaning out my parent's house in 1999. Since then I've kept it folded up in a plastic tub of mementos. It's very thin, faded, and ragged around the edges, but it's amazing to think this towel is nearly 50 years old! What a funny thing to have kept for so long.