Country images you don't see much anymore

I get a kick out of these tall tale postcards.

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http://www.amusingplanet.com/2010/11/tall-tale-postcards-of-twentieth.html
 

"Short people got no reason to ask for extra-long beds, but Randy Newman will never write a song about that." - 1896 photo

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Inside a tobacco sharecropper house in Person County, North Carolina, 1939.

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Three things are interesting to me:

Homemade table and bench. Two of my aunts, both with many children, had dining tables made like picnic tables, with benches instead of chairs.

Oilcloth tablecloth.

Oil lamp. Glass pattern is called beaded peanut. One of the larger and more popular oil lamps made.

beadedpeanut1.gif
 
"The FSA was doomed to failure, but at the hands of the farmers rather than the Government. The farmers wanted full ownership of their new land – Americans could, after all, still dream. As soon as the Conservative Coalition became the dominant force in Congress in 1937 its days were numbered. Lang’s photographs show that she had a good understanding of irony, such as the1937 shot of a bill board above, advertising the good life in California where life for farmers was anything but. However – and it remains true today – there are always some who benefit from recession. This remains a rather idealized portrait of American family life in the nineteen thirties but still is a poignant reminder of the aspirations of its people".


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NancyNGA said:
Inside a tobacco sharecropper house in Person County, North Carolina, 1939.

Wife-of-tobacco-sharecropper-in-kitchen-of-home.-Person-County-North-Carolina-by-Dorothea-Lange-July-1939-e1418676907344.jpg


Three things are interesting to me:

Homemade table and bench. Two of my aunts, both with many children, had dining tables made like picnic tables, with benches instead of chairs.

Oilcloth tablecloth.

Oil lamp. Glass pattern is called beaded peanut. One of the larger and more popular oil lamps made.

View attachment 37084
Click to expand...

I like the glass of spoons on the table!

EAPG spooners were used as a symbol of hospitality years ago and the humble glass of spoons in the picture sends the same message.
 
Aunt Bea said:
I like the glass of spoons on the table!

EAPG spooners were used as a symbol of hospitality years ago and the humble glass of spoons in the picture sends the same message.
Click to expand...

Bea, I'd never heard of spooners before! Do you collect EAPG glass?

I used to collect oil lamps, until I got too many of them and nowhere to put them. Ha! Nothing fancy, just simple ones.

EAPG Clear Glass Hobnail Pattern spooner

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NancyNGA said:
Bea, I'd never heard of spooners before! Do you collect EAPG glass?

I used to collect oil lamps, until I got too many of them and nowhere to put them. Ha! Nothing fancy, just simple ones.

EAPG Clear Glass Hobnail Pattern spooner

View attachment 37108
Click to expand...

When I was little my Grandmother took care of me, while my parents worked, and she used to collect EAPG. I absorbed quite a bit of information and she used to like to have me explain the different patterns to people with very bored expressions on their faces, LOL!

I pick up odds and ends of EAPG when I see it for a dollar or two. The spooner in the picture is what I know as moon and star, pieces have different names in different parts of the country or when made by different companies. When I was younger I used the clear goblets to put homemade jelly in and seal with paraffin, they make nice little gifts. I use the spooners and celery vases for cut flowers that I snitch from along the side of the road or around the foundations of old houses, they seem to go together.

Truth be told I enjoy the thrill of the hunt for things that have a connection with the past more than I enjoy owning them, it brings back memories and it's cheap entertainment!
 
Aunt Bea said:
...Truth be told I enjoy the thrill of the hunt for things that have a connection with the past more than I enjoy owning them, it brings back memories and it's cheap entertainment!
Click to expand...
You know what?! Now that you mention it, I think it's the same with me. The fun part was finding the lamps and "getting to first know them." :) Now they are gathering dust, and I'm even afraid to light them when the power goes out, because the glass might crack. ;)

Maybe we should mention, EAPG = Early American Pressed Glass, or Pattern Glass.
 
NancyNGA said:
You know what?! Now that you mention it, I think it's the same with me. The fun part was finding the lamps and "getting to first know them." :) Now they are gathering dust, and I'm even afraid to light them when the power goes out, because the glass might crack. ;)

Maybe we should mention, EAPG = Early American Pressed Glass, or Pattern Glass.
Click to expand...

I think you should dust off a couple of them and use them on a regular basis so it is no big deal to fire them up when the lights go out.

I've read that the old timers believed that if you wrapped your lamp chimneys in a cloth or put them into an old sock, then gently into a pan of cold salt water, brought the water to a gentle simmer for fifteen minutes, allowed the chimneys to cool in the water it would prevent the chimneys from cracking when the lamp was lit. Some people even suggested letting them simmer on the back of the stove for twenty-four hours.

This is an example of a Hitchcock lamp that was made in Watertown NY. It has a key wound clock spring in the base that powers a fan to pull more air into the burner.

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Later they developed this sidewinder that was a little safer to operate.

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Aunt Bea said:
This is an example of a Hitchcock lamp that was made in Watertown NY. It has a key wound clock spring in the base that powers a fan to pull more air into the burner.
Click to expand...
I've never heard of a fan in a lamp. That is really cool. No, better say neat, or hot. :) Maybe I'll dust a couple of mine off and post them here.

Btw, I tried lighting two in one room once when the power went off in the winter. The fumes started to get to me after a while. Lamp oil, not kerosene. Don't know how folks got along with just those. Went to bed early in the winter probably.
 
The lamps remind me of a Christmas story, by Johnny Cash....how they took a jar of coal oil to a sharecropper's porch on Christmas.
 
You don't see many large families anymore.

Appalachian Baby Boom: LIFE With Kentucky's 'Fruitful Mountaineers'
(from an article in LIFE Magazine, December, 1949)

"Waltis Kilburn's family on Trace Branch of Cutshin Creek is one of Leslie County Kentucky's biggest. All his 14 children, ranging in age from three months to 25 years, were delivered by midwives. Mrs. Kilburn (left) is satisfied 'with just what come.'."

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More Pictures from Leslie County
 
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