Well, the "Old People" mail has slacked off quite a bit lately. Maybe they'll think that I got so old that I finally died, and they'll start removing my name from their mailing lists! Ha! I got this particular piece of "Old People" mail a couple of weeks ago, but I didn't actually open it until just a while ago:
It's always funny to me to see the stock photos that they choose to advertise with. I mean, you know they've probably got about a dozen graphic designers that are mostly in their 20s picking these things out.
The stock photo above makes me think that the lady's saying "Bill! Stop it! Bill, that tickles! *sigh* If I'd known that getting us that affordable health insurance was gonna cause you to get so frisky, I would never have brought you to the beach!"
LOL!
And on the inside of this mailing, was this picture randomly placed in one corner:
A stack of books. On a little table. Because, I don't know, old people?
But the next picture in the mailing was my favorite:
Old dude wearing glasses that look like they came from the garbage pile outside the back door of Benjamin Franklin's workshop 250 years ago, squeezin' peaches at a farmer's market and grinnin' it up!
*squeeze squeeze* "Aww yeah, now these here reminds me of Sallie Mae back in nineteen hunderd an' thirty eight! Too bad now her peaches has turned to cobbler!"
O__o
LOL!
And finally, the back cover says:
And I was like:
Yesterday, the mailbox held yet another piece of "Old People" mail. I looked at it, and thought, "Dang, another ol' boring hearing aid offer":
Even the "Old People" pictured inside the mailing were excited!:
But Wait, There's More...! Turns out that if you scratch off this little silver circle, and the number somehow miraculously matches the number printed above it, then you automatically win two prizes! Guess which two?:
Spoiler: It ain't gonna be Number 2! :P
Also: what if somebody got mixed up and stuck the candy in their ears, and ate the hearing aids? :/
But that's not all the free stuff you'll receive! You'll also get all this:
Ok, so maybe I slipped that last one in...!
Hey, waitaminit! You know what I just discovered? The fine print at the bottom:
But, I thought that if your scratch-off number matched, then you automatically won two prizes...!?!
And what's this?:
Aww, crud. Not another one of these.
So not only do you NOT get to walk out of there with a free bunny nestled in half an Easter egg, but you don't even actually get the chocolates or candy! You just (might) get a dopey certificate to take to a store (and probably have to spend an hour arguing with the confused clerk about how those stupid certificates are supposed to work)!
Suddenly, out of nowhere just a little while ago, Lilly came up to me and told me that she'd like to wash the dishes to earn some money! Shocked, of course, I said SURE!!! Lilly's never washed the dishes before. I've never actually expected her to do any chores, since her ADHD makes it too difficult to deal with, for both her and me. But since it was totally her idea, I told her if she would do the dishes (and do them good), I would give her $1, and asked her if that sounded like a good deal to her. She smiled really big and said yes. So off she went to the kitchen, and with a little bit of help and guidance from me and Jamie to get her started, she began her chore. Moments later, my favorite coffee mug got dropped and busted on the floor (I'm pretty sure it was Jamie's fault, of course), and I had to pretend like it was OK (which, it really is OK, I mean it's not the end of the world). Lilly cried for a while about it because she liked that mug too since it had cartoon kitty cats all over it. But she finally dried up when I told her it was fine, and that her and Daddy could get me a new mug for Mother's Day. Jamie had thrown the broken pieces of the mug in the trash, but Lilly dug them out, wanting to glue them back together again. Sheesh. Anyway, after the mug-busting fiasco, Lilly finally calmed down and resumed washing the dishes. I just went back to the living room and let her do it all by herself. Finally, she said she was done, and I went to inspect. She actually seemed to do a decent job! (I wasn't about to criticize her first attempt at doing a chore -- it might have turned her off of doing any more chores in the future)! She hadn't noticed that there were a few more dirty pans that were sitting on the countertop next to the sink, and I slid them closer for her to do. After she finished doing those, then she wanted to dry the dishes and put them away. And that's what she's still in the middle of doing now. She's had to ask where several things needed to be put back, but that was fine. I wanted to take a picture of Lilly doing the dishes, but she didn't really want me to, so I have no proof. Hopefully all of this is not a dream...LOL! Lilly completely finished washing, drying, and putting away the dishes just a few moments ago. I went to inspect, and everything was perfectly fine, especially for her first time doing a chore! I told her how proud I was and gave her a few big hugs, and gladly handed her over a dollar. She was proud too, and treated herself to a chocolate cookie snack thing, which I told her was OK for her to have when she asked me (to celebrate getting done with her chore and doing a good job on it). I don't know what possessed her to actually want to do the dishes, but I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth! But I'm not getting my hopes up; who knows, this may be the only time that she ever does it. But maybe not...! We'll just have to wait and see...! :)
All this week, Lilly has had to study for her Social Studies test, which will be given on Friday. I usually read her the questions while she's taking a bath, and have her answer them out loud back to me. This question has made me laugh all week; every single time I read it:
Choice 'b' cracks me up! I picture this in my head every time I read it:
The CRCT test is coming up at Lilly's school next month, so she's been studying for it a lot lately. Yesterday evening, we went on the internet to a website Lilly's teacher recommended that asks practice CRCT test questions that you can do online. One of the questions was asking something to the effect of "What area of the United States is the Rocky Mountains in?" And the multiple-choice answers to choose from were something like "Southeast, Midwest, West, or North". Lilly pondered this question for a moment, and then she sprang up from the loveseat, stood on the floor with one hand on her hip, pointed the finger of her other hand straight up in the air and said "Never"; pointed her finger to the right and said "Eat"; pointed her finger straight down and said "Sh*tty", and lastly, pointed her finger to the left and said "Waffles". Stunned and highly amused, I began laughing at the sight of Lilly standing there basically doing a windmill spin with her arm while saying "Never Eat Sh*tty Waffles". ("Never" = North, "Eat" = East, "Sh*tty" = South, and "Waffles" = West) But hey, whatever works to help you remember...! LOL!!! XD
A few weekends ago, Jamie and Lilly were out for a walk, and on a whim, they decided to go exploring up in the woods down the road from our house. They discovered an old homestead not far from the road, and eventually came back home telling me about all the super-cool old treasures that they saw. This past Sunday I went along with them to check it all out for myself, and took my camera to document everything. It was totally awesome!!! Here's the part of the road that you walk off of to get to the place:
Not far up in the woods, you come to the old homeplace area. Apparently, you come up to what used to be a little shed or storage building first:
There aren't any traces of any wood, roofing, or any housing materials left. All there is are rocks that they evidently used for the foundations.
The reason we believe that you come up to a little shed or storage building-type of thing first is because the spacing between the corner foundation rocks was close together, and we found the following items in the area:
This old sprayer:
The two triangles (one near the top and one near the bottom) must have been where a carrying-strap was attached to it. So you would probably fill it up with some kind of chemical, sling it across your back, and go around spraying. Each of the horizontal lines indicate a half-gallon. So this canister must have held about 3 gallons of liquid.
It was imprinted with the brand name of Lowell:
Here's the top of it:
Next to the sprayer was part of an old battery:
There were a couple more metal cans nearby (one must have been an old oil can, but they were nothing but completely illegible hunks of rust, so I didn't take any pictures of them).
Walking closer up to the site of where the old house stood, there was a metal bucket laying on the ground. It looked like the kind of bucket you might have milked a cow with or used to carry water or something:
Upon closer approach to where the old house must have stood, there was an old rusted-out washtub laying on the ground. I pictured in my mind that it probably used to be hanging up on the wall on the front porch of the old house, like you see in some pictures of old farmhouses:
Closeup of the old washtub:
Standing in person at the site, you could clearly tell where the house had stood, because the front of it still had the old rock wall firmly in place:
And what was extra-cool about it to me was that the daffodils were still coming up after being planted there in the yard all those years ago:
Additional close-up pictures of the rock wall:
On the other side of the house, you could tell where the old rock fireplace had been; it was all fallen down in a mound:
Close-up of the fireplace rocks:
Another clue we had that let us know that this for sure had been the fireplace was that there was a single piece of mangled metal flashing sticking up from the ground along with the rocks:
In another area close by was a nice, flat, rectangular rock. I pictured in my mind that maybe it was used as some kind of step on the outside of the house:
Here's the view from what I thought was probably the front porch. There is a small creek ("branch") running parallel below (beyond the daffodils):
Here's a view of walking down towards the branch (Jamie's standing close to it):
Now here's where it gets really interesting.
You may know that many years ago in rural communities, they didn't have trash dumps. So everyone just threw all of their garbage in a certain area outside their house that they usually called "the garbage hole".
On our short walk down to the branch, we came across the garbage hole of this old house, and made a lot of fascinating discoveries of neat old products that were just laying scattered around all over the top of the ground.
Of course, almost all of the stuff was broken, rusted, and ruined, because after all, it was garbage to begin with that has sat out in the elements for probably at least 50 years or more. But you could still tell enough about the stuff and use your imagination to picture in your mind what the items used to look like originally. Stuff like that really fascinates me.
Here's an old glass Avon jar that we found. It wasn't broken at all; just worn, and the lid was rusty:
I knew it was Avon, because it was marked so on the bottom:
Interestingly, even though the lid was super-rusty, you could still just make out the printed image of a scallop with a pearl on it:
After we got home later, I took a notion to try to look this old Avon product up on the internet to see if I could find out any information about it. I learned that it was a product called a "Cream Sachet", (which must mean that it's a perfumed lotion of some kind), and the scent was called "Nearness". It was only manufactured in the 1950s.
Here's a picture I got off the internet of what some of the "Nearness" line of Avon products looked like when they were new (including the little cream sachet jar that I found):
Pretty cool, huh?
Next, we found this cute little white glass jar with a metal lid of what I thought must have been some kind of cold cream or something:
The jar had absolutely no markings on the bottom of it whatsoever, and if it ever had anything printed (or a sticker affixed) on its lid, none of it was legible at all at this point.
But I thought it was kind of cute, so I brought it home with me:
While we were still exploring the garbage hole, I did see another one of those identical little white jars, but it didn't have a lid, and it had a chip in the rim, so I just left it behind.
Then I found this:
It's a metal lid, and you can still make out that it says "Lanolin-Blessed Lustre-Creme Shampoo"! I thought that was hilarious! I mean, "Lanolin-Blessed"? Ha!
I looked it up on the internet when I got home, and saw that the product looked like this back when it was new:
Wait...what's that behind the lid...is that a...IT IS! It's the little white glass jar! Mystery solved! :D
This product is from the 1960s. I also thought it was highly interesting that shampoo would be packaged in a little glass jar (or at least this particular kind was). I guess you just scooped a little tad of it out with your fingertips and washed your hair with it. And I bet people didn't wash their hair all that often back then anyway! So a little jar like this would probably last you several months!
Another thing I found that was really neat was this broken-off part of an old egg-grading scale:
Do you see what it says?
ACME EGG GRADING SCALE
PAT. JUNE 24 1924
THE SPECIALTY MFG. CO.
ST. PAUL, MINN., U.S.A.
Isn't that cool? And here's a picture I found on the internet of what it looked like when it was in working condition:
I think it's supposed to tell you if the egg you're weighing in that cute little cup is Small, Medium, Large, or Extra Large. Cool!
Next, I spotted this super-neat old tin toy truck:
And I thought to myself "awwwww", as I imagined some little kid (probably a boy) years and years ago playing with this thing.
The next thing I discovered was this bottle, which at first I thought might be modern, because it wasn't glass, and the font that was used for the words "on/tap" looks like something you'd see in a store today. So I picked it up to give it a closer look and saw right away that nope, it was definitely old!:
When I turned the bottle around to look at the back of it, I got a good laugh because of what it said:
LOL! A bottle that dispenses lotion with a pump! Imagine that! It's the wave of the future! Ha ha ha! I tried to find this old product on the internet, but I didn't have any luck.
This old Pepsi bottle was really neat. I wished it had been in better condition:
One of my favorite items that I found was this little old tube. I rubbed off some of the dirt to try to read it, and saw that the front of it was simply printed with "RIBBON DENTA CREAM WITH GARDOL". (At first, I could only see the "DENTA", since the letter "L" was crushed up inside the dirty crimp). So when I turned the tube over to try to read some of the super-tiny print to try to figure out what this product was, I saw the word "Colgate", and it dawned on me that it was a super-old tube of toothpaste ("dental cream")!:
I mean, my hand is really small, and look at how tiny this tube of toothpaste is! It was so little! I guess that's why I was surprised to discover that this was a tube of toothpaste, because the tubes of toothpaste they have these days are huge; especially in comparison to this!
I looked it up on the internet and saw that this is what it looked like when it was new:
And of course there was even an old commercial for it on YouTube!:
I think from what I can tell on the internet, this particular toothpaste was manufactured between 1955 & 1965.
And in the same way that the Lustre-Creme shampoo came in a tiny glass jar (because people probably only washed their hair once a week), I bet this toothpaste came in a tiny little tube (because people probably didn't brush their teeth as often as we do nowadays, and whenever they did, they probably only used a teeny-tiny dab of toothpaste)!
Nearby, I found the heel of an old men's shoe:
Hmm...Size 9 Medium!
And here's a picture of the bottom of the heel (the part that would touch the ground). I have no idea why there is metal on it. At first I wondered if it could be some kind of shoe for clogging, but I don't know. Maybe it was just a way to try to make it last longer. It's a mystery to me:
Interestingly, near the men's shoe heel was an old, worn-out piece of a women's shoe:
The heel of the shoe is stamped with the brand name "BILTRITE". I looked that up on the internet and found this:
And this old thermometer advertising BILTRITE:
And this old wartime ad for BILTRITE:
I think that new shoes were kind of hard to come by in those days, and whenever you did get a new (or decent used) pair, you did everything you could to make sure they lasted, so you squeezed every bit of use out of them, until they basically fell completely apart.
So apparently, this BILTRITE company made replacement shoe soles and heels that people could use to fix their worn shoes with. Because things back then were built to last, and people repaired what they had to make it last even longer, until it was so worn out that they had no other choice but to fling it down to the garbage hole. It's not like they had a whole bunch of extra money and a store just around the corner to buy a new pair every few months. And I think kids especially used to have to wear their older siblings' hand-me-down shoes. Just fix 'em up with some BILTRITEs, and they'll be good as new!
Ironically near the worn-out ladies' shoe was this really heavy, clunky old clothes iron:
The handle was gone, and Jamie said that those two prongs at the back was where it plugged in at. I don't know if it was filled up with dirt and water from being outside for decades, but that thing was really heavy! I bet if you told people back then that nowadays, many ladies go to something called a gym to exercise and lift weights, they would just laugh, hand over one of these irons, and say "here ya go...here's all the workout you need...use this for a few hours each day like ol' Ethel here does, and you'll be toned up in no time"! LOL! ;) Well, think about it...that's probably why ladies back then were built like brick sh*thouses...they had to do all that house/yard/garden/babysitting work the hard, manual way with clunky old tools like this...! Who needs a workout when just plain living is a workout in itself?
And just think...that clunky old clothes iron was probably the cutting-edge of technology for its time. After all, it ran on electricity! And that was better than using the older versions of irons that you had to fill up with kerosene, charcoal, or simply place near an open flame every minute just to keep it hot so it would even work! :/
Near the iron, in what must have been the "woman's section" of the garbage hole, was a really smartly-designed measuring cup. It was a 2-cup measure, and I thought it was awesome. If it hadn't been all dented and messed up, I would have brought it home to use for myself!:
I gathered together some random pretty broken dishware and vases, etc. and made a picture of all of it together. The white pieces to the left were hobnail-designed:
There were two of these old rusty Luzianne tins laying on the ground. When I saw the name Luzianne, I instantly assumed that it was tea (because that's all I've ever known the Luzianne company to produce), but upon closer inspection, I discovered that they were coffee cans! I never knew that Luzianne made coffee (or as the can says "Coffee and Chicory")! Neat!:
When I started looking for this old product on the internet to see what it looked like when it was new (and to find out how old it was), I assumed that the original can obviously must have been yellow, but I couldn't find a picture of a yellow Luzianne can on the internet. They were all either red or white. Lilly pointed out to me that the can that we found is white on the right-hand side of it, so it must have originally been white all over, and over many years of being outside and rusting, it turned yellow with age.
So I finally found a picture on the internet of what I think the can looked very similar to originally:
And according to the internet, this can is from the 1920s, and the white-colored Luzianne cans are VERY RARE! Wow!
Of course, no self-respecting old-timey garbage hole would be complete without dozens and dozens of old brownish-amber-colored glass Clorox bottles. There were many broken ones, but there were several that were intact. This particular Clorox bottle was even in such good condition that it still had its cap firmly screwed down on it. And you could still plainly read that it said "Rust-Proof Cap"! They weren't kidding! There wasn't a bit of rust on it!:
I saw a plain piece of broken glazed crockery which I assumed was just a simple old piece of churn or pottery or something, but when I turned it over in my hand, it had an unexpected pretty design on it, so maybe it was a cute bowl or a flowerpot or something:
Then I ran across "Man Land" in the garbage hole.
First, there was this old flashlight:
I thought the phrase "A National Carbon Company Product" was interesting.
Next was this old rusty ax head:
Gee, I wonder how much wood that thing chopped that was burned in that old fireplace that's been fallen down for no telling how many years now...?
And then there was this rusty old barely-legible ancient aerosol spray can, and you could just barely tell that it was bug spray. There were kitschy old illustrations of roaches, silverfish, and some other big yucky beetle-kind of bugs printed on the can. You could see it better in person, but I still tried to take a picture of it. I couldn't tell what brand it was, but it was funny to me:
We'd been there exploring for a while, and it came time for us to start heading back home. We walked a little bit further up, and I saw this old metal part of a garden hoe sticking up out of the ground:
When I found that hoe and looked around, I realized that we must have stumbled upon the garden spot, since it was flat and there weren't any trees growing in it.
We did take a few of the treasures that we found home with us to collect, namely, a few little bottles that we thought were interesting. We figured that since they were in a garbage hole, that whoever it was that lived there all those years ago wouldn't mind us hauling off with a few little pieces of their discarded garbage! :)
Here are pictures of the small bottles we brought home that I didn't picture previously.
This one was little and cute, and it still had its lid (which of course is too rusted to screw off)! I don't know if the clear fluid inside the bottle is what was originally in it, or if it's just old trapped rainwater. The rusted lid doesn't have any visible markings. The bottle does have some markings on the bottom, but it isn't readily apparent as to what this product was. I'll probably try looking it up on the internet soon to see if I can get any information about it. If I find anything out, I'll let you know:
Lilly thought that this bottle had a couple of worms in it, but upon closer inspection, nope, it's just a couple of old torn-off fern leaves, LOL! The bump on top of the lid is just a droplet of water. It has an interesting shape, and a few ridges near the top, on each side of the bottle. I bet it held some kind of medicine. I'll try to look it up on the internet sometime, too.
This next bottle was one of my favorites. It has kind of an art deco design on the sides. It just caught my eye and I thought it was cool:
And finally, this little bottle. I knew almost instantly that it was an old vanilla bottle because of its size, color, and shape, and my suspicion was confirmed when I looked at the bottom of the bottle and saw the "McCormick" name stamped into the glass:
We haven't cleaned any of these cute little bottles up yet, but we will soon. And maybe we'll display them on a little shelf in our kitchen or something.
It just goes to show you...one person's trash (even from 50 years ago --heck, especially from 50 years ago--) is another person's treasure! ;D
