You either got it or you didn't

To make any comment would be saying too much or not nearly enough.

This pincushion rocks!

More hobby woodworking.  This time Uncle Axel's.  There were several of these little rocking chairs in existence at one time.  

This remaining one is a bit the worse for wear.

The pincushion is fine.  You could still use the little slot in the top for scissors, I suppose. Four out of six pegs to hold spools are broken off, and the little drawer has a weak floor. 

But, hey, I don't keep it around in order to use it, do I?

Here's a picture of Axel for good measure.

Somewhere there is also a picture of the Santa and Reindeer wooden cutouts that he made for lawn decorations in the 1950's,  back before it was possible to buy all your Christmas decorations made of plastic with LEDs.

EDIT 1/24/12:

Now THAT's interesting.

I found the picture of the Christmas display.  It is not Santa at all!  Memory is pretty strange.

EDIT 6/19/2012:

HA.

My memory is not completely goofed up, after all.

There really was a Santa display at Axels' house.

 

Sisters with beaded bags

I have very strong memories of hanging around Grandmom's house while Mother and Grandmom and Alice and, I think, even Swea sometimes, were crocheting these bags. They each had one like this, and there were also a couple of plainer variations. 
I was at least occasionally allowed to string the wooden beads on the gold cording. Think about it.  All the beads have to be on the thread before you start crocheting.  So please notice that the bead colors repeat in strict order.

Meaningful mineral memento

When we built the house in Range, the existing well had to be reclaimed to make it useable.
It was re-drilled deeper and a submersible pump was put in.
Before the pump was installed, Max collected this little jar full of stones and water from the well as a keepsake.  And I've kept it for over 30 years now.

In the Doghouse

 

Does anybody use that expression any more?

Anyway, this is one of Uncle Ed's projects.  Apparently he thought it would be funny to be able to see at a glance who in the family was "in the doghouse," so he made these for several of  his relatives.
The one for his own family hung in the hall just outside their kitchen for as long as I can remember.
If ours was hung at all, it was someplace inconspicuous.

Ed made a lot of things.  I don't think we should remember him primarily for this one.

EDIT:  This treasure is no longer in The Stuff.  After consultation with brothers, I 'lost' it, so don't go looking for it.

Wilmington Dry Goods, bargains, and street names

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Before there were chains of discount department stores, there was Wilmington Dry Goods on Market Street in Wilmington from 1924 to 1977.  The Wilmington Dry stores in the suburbs after that just don't count.

This site tells more than you want to know of the history of the enterprise, but skip down to the pictures.  They are great.

http://www.oldwilmington.net/oldwilmington/wdg.html
Multiple levels, wooden floors, piles of things on tables.
Going there was always an adventure.

I hardly remember the Market Street entrance.  We always went in from King Street, which meant that if it was a market day, when we were really little, Daddy would buy warm roasted peanuts from a cart there as we left - a little bag for each of us. Surely we were not allowed to eat them until we got home, though. Peanut shells in the car are just unimaginable.

I do remember thinking it was pretty strange that all those farmers' trucks were on KING Street, when MARKET street was right there, one block over.  It was not so much that the trucks were in the wrong place.  It was more that the streets must have had the wrong names.

I was reminded of all of this when I put on this jacket this morning. 

Each of my brothers had one of these coats, bought at Wilmington Dry in the 1960's.  I still use them (coats, not brothers) as 'barn jackets' for outdoor jobs in almost cold weather. The inner lining in the sleeves is shot, but I would say that they seriously turned out to be a real bargain.

Oh how I loved these books!

Childhood of Famous Americans series, bought along with a set of encyclopedia in 1953 or 54.
There were ten about women (blue), and ten about men (red).  They certainly are not heavy on history, but give a reasonable flavor of what it was like to be a child in a particular kind of family in a particular time and place. They are at a pretty elementary reading level.

I know I read Sacajawea, Jane Addams, Martha Washington, Eli Whitney, Thomas Edison, and Benjamin Franklin many times over.

After I finished the first twenty, I went to the library and borrowed as many others as I could find.
Mother would drop me off at the Wilmington library after dance class, and drive around the block once or twice while I went in and snatched up however many I was allowed to take out at a time.
I suspect that I was reading these long after I could have been taking on more challenging books.  However, by third grade or so, I had heard of a lot of people that I wouldn't have otherwise.

Recently, at a 6th grade exhibit where the kids each had to represent someone famous, I was able to impress (or maybe embarrass) a few people by asking the boy who was being Thomas Edison, "Do I need to talk louder? You are hard of hearing, aren't you?"  I knew that from reading his biography in this series over 50 years ago!

These books have not been interesting to either my children or my grandchildren.  I think they have to be encountered at just the right time or they seem kind of silly.

Afghan of leftovers - 2

In a family tradition.

I made this afghan when we lived in the rental house on Willard Street. The idea was that I did not want to move a big bag of leftover yarn, so I had to make it into something. (Insert incredulous noise from Mother here.)

I have since tried to create similar designs on purpose, but nothing has worked out so well as this Folk Art creation.

Afghan of leftovers - I

There is a lot of needlework to include in this collection.

Grandmom Kwick made this afghan from leftover ends of yarn pulled with a crochet hook through some kind of open weave fabric. It is pretty heavy. And very much not square.

I remember taking naps under this blanket at her house when I was very small. Following the lines of color was fascinating at some point in my life. Some are very short, some go on for more than one row, some recur .... call me easily amused – or, as Mother once suggested – feverish.

Fish sans provenance

This little pitcher was in the basement at Stone's Throw Road. Where it was before that, I have no idea. That basement contained stuff from Grandmom's house, and Alice's, and Swea's, along with Mother's stuff and Keen stuff. There would be Cousin Ruth stuff in there, too. Make up your own story.

I claimed it in 1966 to take to college as unique dorm room decoration, and it has been with me ever since.

Christmas ephemera

I wish I had the actual pieces for this set, not just the instruction booklet, which is where the picture is from.

This manger scene was assembled at our (Keen's) house for several years in the 1950's in Windsor Hills, and maybe also in Ohio.

I was allowed to set it up a couple of times, which was a big deal.

Each figure had a tab to make it stand up. Small pieces of tape were involved, but carefully, since the whole thing had to be taken apart and be useable the next year.

The figures on the roof were especially challenging, even though their tabs were bigger. Can you see in the picture how the tabs match the backgrounds?

EDIT 6/19/2012
Yes, it was definitely used in Ohio
This picture was taken in 1956

 

Fjord water

We store all kinds of treasures.

This Norwegian Coke bottle contains authentic fjord water.  Paul brought it back from the Stillwater High School Band trip to Norway in 1988.

A blow for Gender Equality – 1964

History was made with the 1965 Tower Hill Yearbook.

The girls varsity field hockey team was undefeated in the fall of 1964, so the decision was made to have it be their picture on the divider page of the yearbook, opening the Athletics section.

Such a fuss!  Previously, it had always been the football team featured on this page. Always.

Elsewhere in the yearbook, in an informal calender of senior year events, it is noted in November,  "Upper School rent by schism over Evergreen athletic divider."

You see who prevailed.

The Class of '65 was solidifying its reputation.

Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform

Isn't this cool?

It is a little pin that showed up in the Kwick stuff.  I choose to assign it to Aunt Swea, since she was 22 in 1928, and it fits my impression of her.

There is lots of information available online about the WONPR.

"Pauline Sabin founded the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform with two dozen of her society friends as its nucleus. Its leadership was dominated by wives of American industry leaders. Their high social status attracted press coverage and made the movement fashionable. For housewives throughout middle America, joining the WONPR was an opportunity to mingle with high society. In less than two years, membership grew to almost 1.5 million."

Straw hat of great sentimental value - 1954

This hat is from Old MacDonald's Farm – a tourist attraction in upstate New York in the 1950's.

Each of the Keen kids got one when we visited the place on a family vacation.

The important thing about this hat is that it shows up in a famous picture of Neil, who did not enjoy everything about the farm.

This is also the place where my father refused to allow a sign to be wired to our car bumper advertising that we had been there. Bumper stickers were far in the future at that point, but the idea was forming.

Here are a few more pictures from that day.  I have no memory of the obvious fact that cousins Mary Lynne and Glenn were there with us.

Neil didn't get to hold the lamb.

Yes. It is a Rock.

This is a very special stone.

It was part of the Stone House on Naaman's Road where Grace was born in 1918.

When her kids were growing up, the house was known as “Corson's”, presumably the name of the people who lived there at the time. It was a nice looking stone farmhouse then.

The house was torn down when Naaman's Road was widened, but before it was completely gone, Grace rescued this stone so that her birthplace was not entirely obliterated.

Nils and Gerda Kwick and family moved there from Chester sometime between 1910 and 1918.

Late in her life Grace wrote:

"The stories about the time in the old house on Naaman's Road are many and varied. My father, who I think was by that time working on the Delaware River, probably on a dredge … bought this old dilapidated house with a lot of land and then told my mother. When he took her to see it she said she wouldn't move into that house, but it was a done deal so they moved into it. Stories go that the window sills were piled with manure to keep the wind out. Anyway, Pop had a crew from the boat come out and clean it up before they actually moved in."

Here is picture from before much was done with the house.

By the very early 1920's, the Kwicks had moved across the road to a new house that Nils built.