“Mother 1948 with Susie Cat at Hooker Oaks Trailer Park,” it reads in a shaky hand on the back of this photo. Although I was unable to find a location with that precise name, there was a Shady Oaks campsite in Chino, California operating in 1948; nearby was a tree called the Hooker Oak.
Given the many of photos I have of older women at camp sites, they must have been a popular vacation destination. Usually (although not always) I find them in dresses or skirts. Not this woman, though. Another photo gives more detail of our happy cat lady’s slim cut pants.
Women’s trousers were getting slimmer legs by the late 1940s, as you can see in Witness2Fashion’s post on slack suits here. However, these look even narrower than popular patterns at the time.
Another unusual style choice are her high top sneakers or basketball shoes, something I have never seen on an older woman in the forties before. If you substituted the button up white blouse for a t-shirt, she would fit right in at a campsite today.
Great picture — and amazing identification. San Francisco columnist Herb Caen (who started his column in 1938) often referred to activist women of a certain age as “Little Old Ladies in Tennis Shoes, ” (ready to march into City Hall at any time.) This would be a good year for me to become a proper LOL, as he called them for short. I do hope her two-tone tennis shoes were red.
The basketball shoes are really interesting! The only females I’ve ever seen wearing this particular style have been dressed for gym or basketball. This style was made from the 1920s on, so maybe she “inherited” them from a teen who had outgrown them.