Friday, February 5, 2016

Retro Mood




The other day in the mail I received a new Vermont Country Store catalog.  As I leafed through it, I got the idea to photograph some pages and do a blog post about old-fashioned items that are hard, if not impossible, to find elsewhere. 




 These photographs of old, familiar toys made me smile:




 
In my parents’ large house on the Claude Yoder farm, I remember the hours of fun I had playing Uncle Wiggly with my brothers.  I remember a board character named “The Bad Pipsisewah” and some sort of pit (among other unfortunate places) where a player could get stuck, depending on which card he drew.  According to Wikipedia, the game was created by author Howard R. Garis in 1910, to go along with his children’s book, “Uncle Wiggly Longears.”  Milton Bradley released the game in 1916, and cost sixty-seven cents!  So my parents were also familiar with the game.  [I suppose the memory of that Uncle Wiggly game is what prompted me to design a Biff and Becka board game after I published my first book, but it’s only on paper as of yet.]  However, I digress.


 
Grandpa Claude had a weather station and a mantel clock in their house.  Mom and Dad also had a wall clock/German weather station we called “Bouncing Betsy” that bounced away during Dave’s and my dates in our living room. 
 


 
I hung many a pair of men’s pants on adjustable metal stretchers on the wash line every Monday on the farm.  Imagine my surprise to find them again in Vermont Country Store Catalog!  Mom also taught me to iron men’s Sunday shirts when I was age eleven.  We starched them, and sprinkled all the clothes with water, rolled up each garment and piled them into a basket to be kept damp, then ironed with a dry iron.  The fabric was all cotton in those days, and every piece had to be ironed.  
 



 
And then there was the old-fashioned candy and treats we enjoyed…




 
Remember the old-fashioned coffee substitute made from roasted grains, called Postum?  Stores don’t carry it anymore.  The other year, I bought a very expensive jar from Vermont Country Store, but it doesn’t taste like I remembered, so I blame that on my loss of enthusiasm for it. Maybe the price had something to do with it.





 
How pleased I am to see the decorative hankies reappear in this catalog!  One never sees ladies’ handkerchiefs anymore; I’ve seen men’s in Penney’s and Sears, but not ladies’.  How well I remember my mom having a soft, pretty hankie in her purse on Sundays.  I remember as a young girl sitting beside Mom in church, and watch her make “hankie babies in a cradle” during the sermon.  When it was made, she’d pick it up by both corners and “swing” the cradle.  It always fascinated me.  I used to make those hankie babies for my kids in church, too.  I received pretty handkerchiefs for Christmas gifts during my teen years, and I still have a few of them, which I found tonight in a small drawer in my dresser, and for fun, I made those hankie babies again.  I also found some of my dad’s white handkerchiefs my mom gave me when he passed away. 








Would you believe it?  Look what is still available from Vermont Country Store!  How well I remember corrector ribbon, the carriage return, and noisy, clacking keys in my high school typing class taught by Mrs. McTigue.  I used a manual typewriter at home before we had internet in the 1990’s, and actually completed my Special Publishing Course with the Institute of Children’s Literature on a manual typewriter.  The computer changed everything; I can’t imagine going back to the laborious and tedious manual typewriter.

And remember the rectangular cassette tape players?  Wall phones and rotary dials? 
 

 
Besides warm memories, perhaps the reason we love to remember the nostalgic, is that there is an attraction, a yearning, to return to the simple days of our childhood, and be as close as possible to Grandpa and Grandma, Mom and Dad, once again.  But the hands of time don’t turn back.  The best we can do is have objects that remind us of our time with them.

Copyright © 2016 Elaine Beachy


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