A Busy Weekend and a Memorial Day Moment

FRIDAY: 
My friend "J" and I went to Placerville. We hit one of the biggest Thrift stores in Placerville.

 Snowline Hospice is the biggest Thrift store I've think I have ever been in. It's clean and well organized with very reasonable prices. We were in THRIFT STORE HEAVEN for hours.
Then we got hungry. I don't know Placerville very well and "J" does, so I asked her to pick a nice place for lunch. It would be my treat for her birthday and we were celebrating. So we went to
THE SEQUOIA.

This is a beautiful restaurant. It's a very old house that has been restored. If you like ghost stories you can read about this mansion and its strange happenings here. 
The food was delicious. After lunch we hit another thrift store. 
This is what you will need....

These were all my wonderful "finds".

The LEATHER purse, the wool sweater and the shirt were $3.50, $3.00 & $3.00. All the other things were $1.00 each. Oh, sorry.... the little frame with a hand painted picture in it was only $.50 
I looked up that cup on an antique site and found it for sale. They were asking $25.00 for it. I just love it when that happens. My thrifty heart just starts pumping more blood and I get a warm fuzzy feeling all over. Do bargains do that to you too?
We had a great day. The weather was beautiful and cool. The drive on highway 49 was wonderful. Everything was green and the rivers were full.
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SATURDAY:
This was my "yucky" day. The day of eating cookie dough and seeing angry Gerbera Daisys. Maybe I "thrifted" too much the day before.
The grand babies were suppose to come up here. They were bringing Mommy and Daddy with them and staying overnight but they called and said that they had a change of plans.  Too much work and not enough time. We understood... Boo hoo! We made plans to go to Micky's Grove in a couple of weeks. Life gets busy when you have kids, jobs and a house to take care of. I remember this well. It's OK. I will see them next weekend. I'm going down to my sister's tomorrow and I will be there until  next Sunday.
So Saturday was a bust. The only good thing was that I finished knitting my "Andalusian" wool scarf and went to bed early. 
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SUNDAY:
I slept until 9:00 a.m. This is just strange. Got up and had some coffee. Took a shower and The Prospector says, " Did you remember that we are going to Ione?' 
I kind of thought that he might change his mind. I should know better. When it comes to TRAINS, TRACTORS,AUTOMOBILES or the acquisition of GOLD I should never ASS/U/ME that he will forget or change his plans. We were going to take the kids to see the train show in Ione. This show is called the Ione Railfair and Vintage Motorfest. It's sponsored by the Historic Amador Central Railroad Assoc.
The Prospector still wanted to go,so we got in the car and drove down to Ione, about a 20 minute drive west of Jackson. to see the show.
This was a bigger show than I expected. You can see the website here. There were all kinds of antique farm machinery, a few classic autos like a great old fire truck.

...and a model train exhibit.

A beautiful Wells Fargo Wagon that I got to sit in and someone took my picture in it. 

I'm waving from the window. It was very elegant. Wish it had been hitched to some horses. What fun it would have been to really ride in it. There were no windows... just canvas rolls that could be lowered to protect you from the elements. I imagine that this was not enough to keep the hot, cold , dusty and windy weather from making the trip unpleasant but it was better than nothing and, back in the day, folks probably thought this was innovative . Still, what an experience it would have been and it sure would have beat walking.
We found out that the tickets for the Speeders, the individual rail cars that give rides, were sold out. This is a 20 mile trip in one of these motorcars that travels on the old railway back up toward Jackson. This was the first time that they had ever been SOLD OUT. Now I was glad that the grand boys weren't with us. They would have been so disappointed.
 We decided to go on the Skagit Motorcar. This is a 30 minute ride for $3.00  This was like a taste of the longer trip so we boarded the SKAGIT. 

This was fun. We had a very informative engineer who told us a lot about these rail cars. This motorcar transported the railroad workers to jobs on the rail lines. It was very noisy and clickity clackity, but the scenery was beautiful and I saw parts of Ione that I hadn't seen before. When we came to one of the highways, two of the men got out and stopped traffic so we could cross the highway safely.
The driver reversed the car and we returned to the "station", which was really the Ione Junior High School.
We had lunch and bought some Kettle Corn to take home. 

Then we looked at all the old farm and railroad machinery. 

The Prospector found just what he was looking for but it wasn't for sale. Darn! He's been talking tractors every since.

Here are some prices for travel in that fancy Wells Fargo buggy in 1867.

Which one is the model and which is real.? Top left is a little tiny model of a lumber hauler. I thought that was a cool way to show how detailed the models are. The "logs" are small branches.
Finally the "Speeders" came back from the morning trip. We watched them all come into the "Station". 

Each one was unique. Each one is privately owned. They all belong to a club that does these trips on many different tracks that aren't being used by Railroad companies anymore. They maintain the tracks and clean up the litter along the line. Everyone looked like they were having a great time.
We watched them arrive and then we drove home.
Did you know this?

Next year we will bring the Beans (our grand kids) and get here early. I just know they would love going for a ride on these "Speeders".... and the "big kids" too. That would be their Daddy and Papa. This is like" riding the rails" without all the danger... just fun.
We got home and the dogs joined us in the living room for a nap.
Later in the evening we went over, with some cookies, to met our new neighbors. Actually not "new" but this is another story for another time.

Monday:
Today I stayed home. 
The Prospector drove up to met his brother in Pine Crest, to check out their campsite for their big week this summer. It's tradition. They always go up there to see where the site is that they have reserved..... to see how many vehicles, boats, trailers and tents they can squeeze into the space. 
They said that it was cold today. There was snow on the ground up in Pine Crest.... and  I think there will be snow there all summer. It's never going to stop this year. The fish will be frozen to the bottom of the lake all year. 
But, Oh the excitement. It's something to look forward to. It's tradition. 
I stayed home and cleaned the house, or should I say, the dog hair. Are your animals shedding. OMG! The hair is everywhere. 
Then I felted my "Andalusian" scarf. I bought this old wash board and it has come in so handy for felting.
Rub, rub, rub!! This took about 20 mins. of hot soapy water and rubbing with my hands, another 15 mins. of scrubbing on the washboard and then a few more minutes of hand rubbing. I rinsed it in cool water until all the soap was gone. 
I could feel it tightening up.  I love the feeling of the yarn going from limp and loose to heavy and strong. It's so satisfying. There's something so organic and magical about this process.

It turned out great. I stretched it, shaped it and left it to dry out on the porch.  Now I have to put some buttons on it or crochet some flowers.... or embellish it somehow.

 All day I was thinking about a boy named Barney Boyer. He was a year behind me in High School.  He was killed in the Viet Nam War in 1965. I don't know why I thought of him. I didn't know him well, but he was someone I knew who died in a war.... fighting for our country.... no wait.... not for his country. He was fighting to help the South Vietnamese against the NVC.  We were there to support South Vietnam. To fight the spread of Communism.
  Barney was probably about 20 years old. Do you think he really understood all the political implications?. I wonder...
What is a life worth? I want to say that he died in a "just" war, but I still don't think that we did the right thing over there in Viet Nam. We left the country too soon..... or maybe we should never have gone over their in the first place. But , I know one thing for sure. Barney Boyer died and he was just a boy.


I wore my POW bracelet today. It reads Maj. Henry Serex- 4/2/72.  I was 29 years old. I was pregnant with my second child.  This bracelet was my effort to support a war that I really didn't understand. When I look at this bracelet it reminds me that war is Hell on Earth and that there has got to be a better way. Don't you think so too?

Click on any of these photos to enlarge them. 
Talk to you in a week or so..... 

 

Two books and a Clipboard

I was thinking that I have been "puppydogging" all of you to death lately, so today will be a "no puppy" picture day.
Yesterday I had some errands to do in town. I have been looking for an old Johnson Bros. bread&butter plate for a friend ,so I stopped by the thrift stores in town to see if I could get lucky and find one before it got to an antique store and the price quadrupled. No luck with the plate but I did find a few cool things.
The Elbe clipboard is in perfect condition. I may just keep it for it's intended purpose or I may "alter" it. The Masonite board is dark and very beautiful, no chips or marks, and the clip works great. I don't know why but I LOVE CLIPBOARDS. Call me crazy. They are so useful and some old ones are really beautiful. This one was $1.50.

This book was in it's third printing in 1946; the year they made the movie with Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones. It's a Forum Book Motion Picture Adition( Yes, that's how they spelled "addition".). I can't wait to read it and compare it to the movie ,to see if they did right by Niven Busch's book. The book doesn't open with the same words as the movie.... Do you remember?...
"Deep among the lonely sun-baked hills of Texas, the great and weather beaten stone still stands. The Comanches call it 'Squaw's Head Rock.' Time cannot change its impassive face nor dim the legend of the wild young lovers who found heaven, and hell, in the shadows of the rock. For when the sun is low and the cold wind blows across the desert, there are those who still speak of Pearl Chavez, the half-breed girl from down along the border, and of the laughing outlaw with whom she had kept a final rendezvous, never to be seen again. And this is what the legend says:'A flower, known nowhere else, grows from out of the desperate crags where Pearl vanished...Pearl, who was herself a wild flower, sprung from the hard clay, quick to blossom...and early to die."
Oh it's all so romantic and tragic. I love stories like this.

The other book is by one of my favorite poets. This book is older than me (being published in 1941) and in better shape. It's not antique but it's definitely VINTAGE. Ogden Nash was a very cleaver and funny poet who told folks things that they didn't want to hear in a way that made them listen and laugh. He made up words so they would rhyme and he wrote silly two line poems that , I thought, were hysterical.
"God in his wisdom made the fly
And then forgot to tell us why."
This was a man who said "Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker." I would like to have met Mr. Nash. I have to imagine that he was as funny, in person, as he was with his verse. If you need a good laugh, buy yourself one of his books of poetry. It will make your day.
Both of these books cost me $2.00. I'll keep looking for the plate but I thought this was an inexpensive and successful trip to the thrift store. What do you think?

Vintage Thursday

After weighing in at Weight Watchers yesterday( yes, I have lost 19 lbs.) and losing one more pound, I celebrated by going to one of my favorite thrift stores in town. ( Can you believe it Sis, I consumed half that box of See's candy and still lost 1 lb.) This must have been my LUCKY day because I found 10 silver spoons in a zip-lock bag for $6.00. Can you believe it? Most of them shined beautifully with some silver polish and a little elbow grease. The one on the right was in the worst shape and didn't have much silver left on it . It was very tarnished. I can use it for digging in the creeks around here for gold bearing gravel. (Yep! I only use the best equipment on my quest for California gold.)

These are two of my favorites. The left one, with the "B" on it, doesn't have any mark on the back. I love initials on silver. It makes the piece so personal and you know someone probably had lovely place settings of these to fashion a beautiful table for some long ago celebration.
The spoon on the right is my very favorite. It's so delicate and has the mark 1847 Rogers Bros.A on the back. I could see my grandmother serving tea or coffee with this one, and maybe a few Italian cookies.

I don't crochet, so I have undying admiration for folks who do. This piece is large; about 20 inches across. It's off-white, trimmed with a dark blue edge. There are two or three small ,but pale, stains on it. They're not too noticeable and only near the middle. I will try to wash them out. I would probably have a plate or something sitting in the middle anyway so I'm not too concerned about these small discolorations.
I have no idea what the little scrunchee thing is for. It was attached with the tag. Does anyone have a clue what this might be?
The store was having a "yellow tag sale" and the $4.50 price for this lovely handiwork was 50% off so it was only $2.25.

I JUST LOVE THRIFT STORES!!!!!