Unearthing Relics

Coffee Table Book? You wouldn't believe some of the stuff you could buy out of this thing

I like to collect vintage things, but really, if you grew up in my household you would understand that it’s not an out of the ordinary fascination. Our household was always filled with relics of yesterday, odds and ends that weren’t worth much but were better off found in a museum, or a landfill. In fact, one of our favorite places to explore was an old ravine a mile or so from our house, over cattle guards, barbed wire fences and a couple of hills. It was an old dumping ground where we would cart home anything from old medicine bottles to lipstick tubes that still had lipstick in them from the 1920s. Kinda makes you think about what you’re putting on your face now days.

The great thing about most of the stuff my mom has acquired over the years, especially in her kitchen, although they’re vintage (antiques), they are more useful than anything you could buy at the store today. Merchandise today is not made to last like it was in yesteryear. Today everything is disposable and biodegradable. Wash rags are unheard of when you have a paper towel. Not a bad thing, but also aids in our consumer driven society by not giving us anything sustainable.

One thing I do have to say for my family; if ever there was a societal regression, we would be prepared. Banded together in our own commune we could probably sustain ourselves for an indefinite length of time; raise our own livestock, churn our own butter, sew our own clothes, make our own sausage. Am I over exaggerating? Yes. Do I currently have a Cast Iron Vintage Meat Grinder c. 1900s, straight out of a horror movie, in my car right now? Yes. A special birthday present request from one family member to another. Leave it to my family to want the unusual. Happy early birthday E, I’d ship it but it would probably cost more than I paid for it.