On The Way Home... Part 2....Oddities

I stopped at a pair of side-by-side antique malls on my way from Williamsburg when I needed a break from driving in the pouring rain.  I wandered through hundreds of booths... hoping to find a featherweight.  None were available, but I did spy some interesting items.  A peek into the past and how things were done.

There was an entire booth dedicated to thread... some cones of thread .... spindles that used to hold thread!

But look at the variety of spindles that thread had come wrapped on!  There were hundreds of them.  Short with flat ends that I've seen painted and decorated to be used as candle stands. 

 Short and squat.... what's with the variety of paint drippings?  Long and thin with just a small base to stand on.  I wonder what the color coding on the ends meant?

 These shelves held spindles that were a combination of wood with metal threads on them; And a bucket full of orange pointed spindles stood nearby.

 

I wonder what all these different types were used for?  How many quilts or garments were sewn with the threads they contained?

 There was a booth dedicated to nothing but bottles... coke bottles, beer bottles, liquor bottles.  You name it, it was probably here.  Another booth was dedicated to tin lunchboxes (some plastic too).  How many of us carried our lunches to school in one of these?  I had one just like that school bus!

I remember being excited when I got my first portable turntable and playing records on it. They were 45s... small and yellow.   Or jumping for hours on end on a pogo stick in the driveway.   These days, that folding scooter would have a motor on it.  It's no wonder we are overweight... this country needs more pogo sticks!

I learned to type on a similar typewriter.  If you typed too unevenly or quickly the keys would get all jammed up and you would have to untangle them.  We graduated to the electric typewriters my senior year and it was an adjustment to just press a return button to get to the next line. 

There was a variety of irons too.  These may have been some of the first electric ones... the brand name was Universal... just flat and hot... no steam.... and they were heavy too... nothing like what we have today. The ladies really had to work to press out those wrinkles.

 This one is called the Enterprise! LOL!  It's a flat iron.. an almost solid chunk of heavy metal.  I'm guessing that you would heat it up on the top of your stove then attach some kind of handle where that tag string is, lift and press.   I didn't get a clear picture but there were other solid cast iron ones with the handles all molded in one piece.



 How about this one... a charcoal iron!  Open it up, but in your hot coals in and press!

This is a gas iron!  I guess you would attach a hose from some gas source (a propane tank?) to that connector on the right and press those wrinkles away!

There are days when I would like to step back to simpler times, but I sure do enjoy my modern conveniences!

Come back this weekend for my next post on the variety of sewing machines I found... and see what I brought home!

 HM