Dusty Old Things

I heard from my beautiful cousin Lorraine.
Thank you for the daffodil pics. Made me feel good knowing they’ll be here soon. It was 70 today and the next 2 weeks look warm. The pic of your hand made me pause…I thought to myself, “That looks like my hand!!”
Lorraine sent me a picture of her hand.

Look familiar? … Wrinkles and all!
And it tickled me.
Yes, I would say our hands look alike. The only thing missing is the blood spot where the tree bit me. I have done a Google search on Missouri trees with thorns and have identified this particular kind of a tree as a honey locust tree.
The pods of the honey locust are editable, unlike the black locust, and are a favorite food of wildlife and domestic animals alike, which helps with seed dispersal. The thorns were thought to be a defense against browsing but the size and spacing are no defense against smaller herbivores such as deer.
The wood of the honey locust is high quality, durable and polishes well. It is used in furniture making as well as fence posts and rails since it takes a long time to rot. In the past, the hard thorns of the younger trees were used as nails while the wood itself was used to fashion treenails for shipbuilding. Isn’t that cool!

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Last Sunday (the 13th), and the reason my letter was short, was because last Sunday we were driving. We didn’t go far, just to cousin Suzy’s little town of Iola, Kansas. At 175 miles it takes us about three and half hours to get there. Mike’s brother Cork and his wife Pam, who live in Las Vegas, have an RV too. They had gone to Arizona to visit friends and while there had gotten word that Pam’s mother in Kansas City wasn’t doing well. They decided to head that way and routed their trip through Iola, Kansas to see cousin Suzy.
“Why don’t you meet us there for a couple of days?” Cork asked and Mike agreed.
“It would be nice to get out of here for a couple of days,” Mike said to me.
“Heck yeah!” I was up for a road trip.
“They’re gonna be there Monday, why don’t we go over on Sunday?” Mike doesn’t like to be late and so we packed up the RV on Sunday and by late morning we were headed out to Iola.
I got barn pictures.

Barns without cows…

…and barns with cows.

        I saw barns with horses.

And horses without barns.  

        I saw barns with big round bales of hay.

I saw barns with windmills.

I saw a barn with a whole pasture full of little donkeys. I know it’s hard to tell from my photo, but these guys are small. Are all donkeys this small or are these a special breed? There certainly were a lot of them!

And something else there were a lot of were skunks. Dead ones. All along the highway. I didn’t really think you needed or wanted to see a picture of a ‘tired’ skunk so I won’t bother.
“You took a picture of a dead skunk!” you exclaim.
Well, only as a visual reminder to tell you about all the dead ones — Did I tell you there where a lot of dead skunks! — but skunks weren’t the only thing we saw. With the advent of spring there seems to be many more dead animals along the highway than usual and it makes me sad. There were at least two hawks that lost a showdown with a vehicle, there were a couple of cats, a dog, deer, coons, possums, and even a couple of little foxes. I don’t believe I saw any ‘tired’ whistle pigs or dillos — at least not that I recognized — on this trip, and skunks were by far the most numerous. Did I tell you there were a lot of dead skunks!
“Why are there so many dead skunks?” Mike wondered.
“It’s probably their breeding season and they are looking for mates,” I guessed.
On Monday Cork and Pam pulled into the campground in Iola, the same one we had stayed in with them a few years ago. After hellos and hugs we let them get set up on the campsite next to ours, then we settled at a picnic table and had a gabfest.
“There certainly were a lot of dead skunks on the road,” Pam commented.
“Oh my gosh, yes! We saw a lot of dead skunks too!” I said.
“We were seeing so many that Cork and I started counting them,” Pam said and turned to Cork. “How many did we count on the way here, dear?”
“I don’t know…” Cork put his elbows on the picnic table and rubbed his hands together in a way that I have seen him do many times before. Not back and forth as if you were trying to start a fire with a stick, but around and around like you would do if you were washing your hands or maybe if your arthritis were hurting. “Twenty?” he guessed.
“Twenty,” Pam echoed.
“Mike, are you still looking for a well bucket?” Cork asked.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“We saw one in an antique store in Chanute.”
“Where’s Chanute?” Mike asked.
“Not far, eight or nine miles down the road,” Cork answered.
“Let’s see if Suzy wants to go with us,” Pam suggested. “I know she likes to go antiquing.”
“Let’s go see Suzy,” Cork said.
“You wanna go see Suzy?” Mike asked.
“Yeah.”
“Right now?” Mike asked patting his pocket for the car key.
“Yeah, ya ready?”
“Yep,” Mike said getting up.
Well you can’t just say ‘let’s go’ to girls. We have things to do first. Like go to the bathroom or grab a sweater or make a travel cup of coffee, but it wasn’t long until we were all piled in the Jeep and heading out to Suzy’s house.
I love Suzy’s. She always decorates so interestingly.

        While Mike, Pam and Cork went to Suzy’s door, I explored Suzy’s yard.
Suzy has a goat!

        I took Itsy and Ginger over to see the goat but I couldn’t introduce them because the goat wouldn’t come to the fence where I was standing.
I hadn’t gotten very far in exploring Suzy’s yard when I saw Mike, Cork and Pam heading back to the Jeep. So I headed back to the Jeep too.
“Suzy’s not here?” I asked as I opened the door and climbed in.
“No one answered the door,” I was told.
“But I wasn’t done!” I exclaimed and shut my door.
“You wanna go out to the cemetery?” Mike asked Cork.
“Might as well, since we are all in the car,” he answered.
We drove out to the cemetery and visited with Cork and Mike’s mom as well as other relatives who are there and it seems like every time we go out there it’s always so windy!
Oh, wait. It’s Kansas, right?

Late afternoon, Suzy pulled into the campground. Mike and I had visited with her the evening before so we let her say her hellos to Pam and Cork. It wasn’t long until someone’s belly growled and someone else said,  “Let’s go get some dinner.”
We had dinner that night at a local Italian place called Sam & Louie’s, and made plans to check out this antique store in Chanute the next morning.
“There is the cutest little café right there in Chanute too, like a block away from the antique store, why don’t we have breakfast there first?” Pam suggested.
“Well heck yeah!” I jumped all over that. “I love breakfast.” I didn’t even give Mike a chance to vote, and we made plans to leave at nine o’clock.
“Nine!”
“I don’t think the antique store opens until ten,” Pam said.
“In that case I’m going to have to have a pre-breakfast breakfast.”
Pam laughed. She is such a happy and light hearted soul. “A pre-breakfast?”
“Yeah. We get up early and nine is too long for me to wait to have something to eat,” I explained.
The next morning Mike and I were up early, as usual, and we had a hard boiled egg to hold us over until breakfast. I walked the girls down the little nature trail there that the RV park has provided.

 I know from previous experience that there is a lot of poison ivy on this trail. I don’t know if you can get poison ivy before the leaves come on or not, but I didn’t take any chances and stayed on the trail.
At nine cousin Suzy pulled into the campground, we all piled into Mike’s Jeep and we took off for Chanute and breakfast.
Our eight or nine mile drive turned out to be more like twenty, but who’s counting.
I took a few photos as we went down the road, and I bet you would have guessed that, but I didn’t get anything worth showing off.
The little café is called The Grain Bin and when Cork sat down he said, “Look at this! A rose between two thorns!” and he laughed.
“I have to get a picture of that,” I said.

Good sports, all of them, and Cork wrapped his arms around Suzy, on his right, and Pam on his left. Especially when you know that Suzy really hates to have her picture taken. I think she abides it because it’s me and even then she will only sit still for a couple of shots. “Suzy, how else am I going to show them your beautiful face!” I tell her and she laughs. Sometimes people don’t know how truly beautiful they are and if you knew these three, you would love them as much as I do.
Our waitress’ name was Tina and boy-oh-boy! She was packed full of personality! From the moment we sat down she started interacting with us and Mike picked up on it right away and the bull started flying! Mostly it was all just good fun.

Tina brought coffee for the four coffee drinkers at the table. “I’ll get you some cream for that,” she said turning to go.
“Oh, I don’t think any of us use cream,” Pam said trying to save her a trip.
“Really? Well I think everyone uses cream because I do. I’m a creamer kinda gal.”
Isn’t that the truth? Don’t we always think our way is the best way? Otherwise we wouldn’t do it that way, would we.
After breakfast we walked down the block to the antique store, all of us except Mike. He took the Jeep. With his back he can’t do a lot of walking before he is in pain so we decided to save his steps for walking around the antique store. About the only thing I look for is a potato masher like my mama used to have. This is not it but this one is different than the ones I normally see.

Pam and Cork have things they collect, things they like to look for. For a long time Pam collected rug beaters but she has been doing it for so long that she has about sixty of them and to find one that is different than anything she already owns seems like an impossible task, and we saw quite a few rug beaters.
Pam likes to look at old windows and door knob plates (without the knobs) and old irons and hooks and pretty much anything old.
Cork has a fancy for train memorabilia at the moment and looked at anything associated with trains.
“I don’t know where that comes from,” Pam said to me. “He’s never worked with trains and no one in his family ever did either, that I know of.”
But more surprising than trains was his interest in old vacuums. Cork picked up an old vacuum at an antique store on their way to Iola and he pulled it out to show to us.

“This is what Pam makes me use,” Cork said with a laugh and demonstrated how the old vacuum works. I didn’t take a picture of it, but this picture I found on the internet is very much like the one he bought. You have to keep pulling up and pushing down on the plunger to create a suction that sucks up the dirt. No electric!
Mike bought his well bucket and did I take a picture of that? No! At least not until we were back here at the Lake. Then I thought to do it. Boy, am I ever a slow thinker!

“I used a bucket like this many times,” Mike told me. “You lower it down the hole and it has another rope that attaches right here and when you pull on it, it closes a flap on the bottom and you pull the bucket up, dump the water into a bucket and lower it down again.”
“Peg, that doesn’t look like what I thought a well bucket looked like,” you say.
I know, right!  Me either. This bucket is designed to go down a three inch pipe rather than a well with a bucket on a crank handle and a conventional looking bucket bucket.
We drove back to Iola and strolled around antique stores and flea markets there until we were all full up of dusty old things.
Wednesday morning we headed back to the Lake with Cork and Pam in tow. Just kidding. We didn’t tow them, they followed us. We stopped off at Fort Scott to do a little more antiquing and I found these hand cut, hand painted Cars characters. They have a Velcro piece glued on the back and they are meant to be used with a felt board. The felt board and a set of characters together was thirty dollars but a set of extra characters was just twelve dollars. And they had an assortment of sets. They had the alphabet and Disney characters and Transformers, but I knew Andrew liked Cars so I picked up this set.

“I’m going to put magnets on them and let Andrew stick them on the fridge,” I told Pam. I’ll tell you what. I wouldn’t make and paint twenty pieces for twelve bucks. I think they are fabulous.
When I got up to the counter I talked with the girl there. “Is there any way you can give me an address for the people who make these? I’d love to write and tell them how much I love their work.”
Julie, daughter of the owner, looked around but couldn’t find it. “If Mom was here she could get it for you.”
“How about if I email you and you could send it to me?” I suggested.
“Sure,” Julie said and scribbled her email on a piece of paper for me.
Just east of Fort Scott on highway 54 is where I saw a pasture full of elk, but I didn’t see them in time to get a decent shot of them.
I tried this whole trip to get a decent picture of a hawk and this is the best one I got. I just can’t seem to see them in time to get my zoom focused on them.

Back in Lake Ozark we settled into our grouse and Cork and Pam hooked up just outside our door. Mike had the foresight to have an extra 50 amp service installed for just such occasions.
Thursday was going to be a down day, a day to catch up on cleaning and laundry, and we made plans to do a little antiquing on Friday. Jefferson City has a really huge flea market — wait a minute here. I am having some problems trying to decide if antique store or flea market is the correct label. To me they are the same thing. But I find myself going back and forth with the names and I’m trying not to confuse you. What do you think? Does it matter if I say antique store or flea market? 
So Jeff City has a huge junk store (okay, let’s throw a third name into the mix) and we made plans to take them there on Friday and then have lunch at our favorite BBQ place.
This place, this flea market, used to be an old mattress factory and is two floors stuffed full treasures. Mike does an express tour and was way ahead of us. Cork hung out with us for two or three seconds longer then he went on ahead. I had a great time poking around with Pam.
“This is a creepy doll,” Pam said and I had to come back and see what she was talking about. “Who does this kind of thing?”
“Eww,” I said. “I walked right past it and didn’t see it.” I had my camera around my neck so I took a picture of it.

“I saw something that said we only take in a small percentage of what we see at antique stores,” Pam told me and I believe it.
The tag says: My doll is creepy mama doll with trap. And the price? Forty-one fifty (or is that a seven?).

I don’t understand it. I don’t understand why you would do this and I don’t understand the price, but I guess I don’t have to.
My phone rang. I dug it from my pocket and I knew it was Mike before I looked at the caller ID. He has his own special ring. “Hello,” I answered.
“Whereyaat?” he said like it was all one word.
“Right here, where are you?”
“Upstairs. Can you come up here a minute?”
“Can’t it wait until I get there?” I asked.
“No. I found something I think you’ll want.”
Well that certainly piqued my interest and I headed for the stairs leading to the second floor. Mike was waiting at the top.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s right here,” he said leading the way around the corner to the second booth in. I followed and when we got there he looked at me expectantly.
“What?” I asked again. I guess I was supposed to spot it without any help.
“Right here,” he said and reached down and picked up a potato masher like my mama used to have.
“How much is it?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said as he reached for the tag and flipped it over. “Fifteen dollars,” he read.
“Fifteen dollars!” I was incredulous. “That’s too much and it’s in crappy shape.”
“It’s half off,” Mike said pointing to a sign. Booth #90 50% OFF EVERYTHING was hand written on pieces of paper stuck in two or three places. “And I can straighten this out.” Mike gripped it as if to straighten the side wires.
“You’ll loosen it from the furrow if you do it that way,” I said. “And half off is still too much!”
“But we never see these anymore. Just get it.”
“Whatever,” I said and headed back down to where I left Pam.
It wasn’t much longer until Mike finished his express tour of the upstairs and came down to find us. He wandered around with us for a little bit then, “My back hurts. I’m going out to Jeep.” Then Mike held the wrinkled potato masher out to me. “Here,” he said and I took it. Then he reached in his pocket and handed me some cash to pay for it. “Get whatever you want and if you don’t have enough money come and get the card.”
“Alright,” I replied, but in my mind I thought I might set it down some where and not buy it.
Pam and I finished the lower floor and headed upstairs.
“Did I tell you this was a huge place?” I asked for about the third time, but she is such a good sport and a happy soul. She laughed.
“I think you might have said something about that…” and she paused, “…a time or two.” And it was my turn to laugh.
We wandered around a little then, “An Old Judge Coffee jar,” Pam said spotting a jar in an old Hoosier Cupboard.
“Yeah?”
“Cork and I have already made our wishes known for our end-of-life. We are going to be cremated and we don’t want any ceremonies. He’s got an old coffee can for his ashes and my sister has an Old Judge coffee can for mine.” Pam’s sister lives down near Springfield in Missouri. “I’ve never heard of Old Judge brand coffee before. I wonder if it’s a local brand?”
“I don’t know. I never heard of it either,” I told her but I’m not from here and I’ve never been interested in old coffee cans and obviously not old coffee jars either or I may have seen one before now. “But I can Google it.”
  Pam unscrewed the lid and it was an old Ball canning jar lid with the glass on the inside, you know the kind I mean? “This isn’t the right lid for this jar,” Pam said and made to put it back on the shelf. She stopped mid-motion, pulled the jar back to her, and tucked it into the crook of her arm. “Maybe I’ll carry it around for a little while and see if we see anymore…or maybe I’ll find a different lid. I see baskets of old lids all the time.”
On we went poking around in the nooks and crannies looking for our treasures.
“You can help me keep an eye out for old grates,” Pam told me. “I’ve seen some really cute projects on Pinterest,” and I was happy to help her look.
“What is this Pinterest?” I hear my mother asking.
Pinterest is a social networking website that allows users to visually share, and discover new interests by posting (known as ‘pinning’ on Pinterest) images or videos to their own or others’ boards (usually with a common theme) and browsing what others have pinned.
Okay, I got that description off the internet.
Pam wandered into a corner booth were a lady was putting things out or tidying up her booth or something. There wasn’t room in there for three so I only lingered for a few seconds before deciding to walk on. “This is a beautiful quilt. My grandmother had one just like it,” Pam said as she lifted the corner of the quilt feeling it’s texture and examining the seams. “Is it handmade?” Then I was past and out of earshot, or maybe I just stopped listening, I’m not sure.
I didn’t go far and was taking my time looking at all the clutter in a booth or two past where I left Pam when she caught up with me. Just then her phone buzzed in her purse. She pulled it out and looked at it. “Oh, it’s Cork,” she said and made a few swipes with her finger then starts to laugh. “He sent me a picture and wants to know if he can have it.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“I’m not sure, but I think it’s a sweeper.”
Just about then we hear squeak squeak squeak  a pause then squeak squeak squeak all over again.
  “Oh I bet he’s pushing it,” Pam guessed and it seemed to be coming from the next aisle over. We weren’t very far away and when we caught up with him he was pushing this old sweeper back and forth.

“It’s bigger than I thought it was,” Pam told Cork. “Your picture didn’t do it justice, honey.”
“Can I get it?” he asked standing there looking at it and rubbing his hands together in that way that he has. “It’s says 1912 on the bottom of it.” He bent down and picked it up as if to show her.
She laughed at him; for asking I guess. “You can get it if you want it,” she told him.
Cork picked up his treasure and headed for the counter downstairs.
“I think I’m going to go back to that lady and see if she has a different lid for this jar,” Pam said to me. “She had a lot of kitchen stuff she was putting out.”
I followed, happy to look at things from a different direction, and stayed close while she talked with this lady.
“Do you have any lids that might fit this jar?” Pam asked unscrewing the lid and holding the jar out.
“I think I have a jar almost like that one,” she said. “Let’s see…” and she crossed to the other side of her booth and reached for a jar on the bottom shelf. “Let’s see if this one fits,” and she unscrewed the top. “If it does I’ll just trade you lids.”
“Oh no, you don’t have to do that,” Pam told her. In the end it didn’t fit any better than the one she had but Pam was touched by her kindness.
We kept walking and we were keeping an eye out for lids.
I’ll tell you what. These antique stores and flea markets and junk shops are so full of glassware and china and salt and pepper shakers that you wouldn’t believe it! There is a ton of it out there.
  “It’s kind of a shame,” I said. “These things meant something to someone at one time.”
“I don’t feel as sorry for peoples collections ending up in places like this as I do about other things,” Pam said. “Like photographs and more personal things like that. Things that have memories associated with them.”
“Kat had her grandmother’s china and Clara actually used it too,” I told her. “That’s why some of the pieces were chipped and broken.” We walked on and Pam was quiet as I remembered. Mike and I found another set with the same pattern and Mike bought it for her to fill out her set and it even gave her pieces she didn’t have before. I sighed. “I’m not sure we’ll ever get them back from her boyfriend but I just have to tell myself that they are only dishes.”
We passed a booth that had Vaseline glass. “My sister collects Vaseline glass.”
“What is Vaseline glass?” Pam asked. “I never heard of it before.” She picked up a piece and examined it.
“It’s green glass that has uranium in it and glows under a black light.”
“Isn’t that interesting. I wonder why it’s called Vaseline glass?”
“I don’t know.”
We walked on looking at all kinds of things and we even found a couple of more Old Judge Coffee jars, but they were more money than the one she already had.
More dishes.
Lots more dishes.
Tons of dishes!
“There’s my dishes,” Pam said.
I came around to where she was. “Which one?”
“This one,” and she pointed it out to me. It was a nice country pattern. “I can’t get anyone to take it,” and she laughed. “Matt already has my good china but no one wants this set.” Pam and Cork have three grown children. Their son Matt and daughters Trish and Jill.
Cork came back and walked around with us as we finished the tour of the upstairs. Then we all headed for the downstairs and the register to pay for our treasures. I walked up to the counter. “I’ll just take this,” I said and went to hand my potato masher over and I see the price tag is missing. “Doggone it!” I exclaimed holding the empty string. “I lost the tag! I’m so sorry.” In my minds eye I could see myself using my potato masher as a pointer and a scepter and an extension of my hand and swinging it around the whole time I was carrying it. No wonder I lost the tag!
“It was fifteen dollars and half off, wasn’t it?” Pam asked.
“Yeah and it was booth 90,” I remembered.
“We’ll have to call the owner,” the lady said testily. “We don’t know if someone else picked it up and set it down in that booth or what.”
“I’ll help you go look for it,” Pam offered.
“Mike gave it to me when I was down here,” I told her. “I carried it all over the upstairs.” I waved my arm around to take in the huge upper floor. “We’ll never find it.”
I almost told her to forget it, I didn’t want it that bad anyway, but since I needed to use the restroom I let her walk away to make the call.
I’d walked past the restroom shortly after we arrived and read a sign on the door that said you had to ask for the key at the counter. “Can I have the restroom key?” I asked another clerk.
“It’s out,” he replied.
“I’m next,” Cork said from where he sat in a rocking chair at the husband waiting area next to the registers. “Some lady has the key right now but when she brings it back you can go next.”
“Thank you,” I said not arguing because I was really uncomfortable. I’d had to pee for a while now.
Pretty soon a lady came back carrying a single key on a big pink keychain. “I’m next,” I said reaching for the key.
She handed it over. “You might have to wait. There was a lady waiting outside the door and I let her in.”
I was sorta pissed to hear this, but only for a second. Although it didn’t seem fair to be a line jumper, what are you gonna do? Maybe she didn’t know that there were others waiting ahead of her.
I went and stood outside the door for my turn and waited for what seemed like an eternity before I heard the toilet flush.
It’s probably gonna smell good in there, I thought. But I didn’t care, I really had to go bad now. I waited and wondered if she was going to wash her hands or if the door would open first. Then the water came on in the sink. Did she have trouble getting put back together? And lastly the clicking of a paper towel dispenser.
Yes!
And I waited and waited for another eternity before the door finally opens and a lady with a cane appears in the doorway. Well, that explains the wait, I thought.
“Hi,” she greeted me pleasantly with a smile.
It’s hard to be irritated at someone when they are being so nice to you. “Hi,” I said and smiled back as I tried not to push her out of the way while I waited for her to clear the doorway. She held the door. “Thank you,” I said taking it from her and switching to mommy breathing mode.
And as I sat there letting my water down, I said a silent thank you that Cork let me go next. (Sorry. I heard that expression thirty years ago and this is the first time I’ve ever been tempted to use it.)
When I opened the door, there was Pam heading toward me! “I’m going next,” she said. I held the key out to her and she took it. “That lady called about the masher and she only wants two-fifty for it.”
“Really!”
“That was worth losing the tag for wasn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes it was.” That was all it was worth anyway.
Bladders empty, treasures paid for, we went out to the Jeep and there Mike stood talking with a man who had been striping the parking lot when we pulled in. We got in the Jeep and Mike joined us.
“I thought you were going to rest your back?” I called him out on it.
“I was but I got to talking to him and stood there talking the whole time. Man, my back is really killing me now.”
“What were you talking about?”
“Everything.”
We had lunch at a little locally owned BBQ place called Lutz’s that occupies half a gas station. If you ever get in the area, I highly recommend it. They even make homemade chips.

“How did they get the potatoes sliced so thin?” Pam wondered.
“They use a drill,” Mike told her. “Like you see them use at the fairs.” Just then we heard the sound of a drill. “Hear it?” Mike asked.
I think Pam must have nodded because I didn’t hear her answer, but honestly I was more interested in eating my parmesan seasoned chips and wonderfully moist pulled chicken than anything else.
After a while, and mid sentence, Mike says, “There it is again. Hear it?”
I guess he didn’t hear her answer the first time either.
“We can see it when we go out,” I told Pam.
This place does a fabulous business and opened a second location in Columbia last year. We tried to get them to open a place down at the Lake but it was in the opposite direction from where they lived and they declined our offer to rent them a building.
“When we leave here let’s stop at the flea markets in Eldon,” I said to Mike.
“Picker’s Junction and Red’s?” he asked.
“Yeah and there’s that one right by the highway too if we want to stop there.”
And the drill goes off again.
“Hear it, Pam, hear it?”
“Mike!” I exclaimed. “She heard it already!” Now I know where I get it from.
Pam and Cork stopped at the counter on the way out of Lutz’s and watched them use a drill slicer to slice up a potato.
We stopped off in Eldon on our way back to Lake Ozark and while doing an express tour of one of the junk shops, I heard a familiar clack clack clack.
My ears perked up. Clackers! I wandered over to where the sound emanated and as I watched the lady took a picture of them and set them back on a table. Not wanting to appear too eager, I moseyed over to the table as she walked away and before she could change her mind, I picked them up.
Ten bucks!
“Will you take less,” I asked the man.
“Everything’s half off, so yeah. Five bucks.”
I pulled a five from my pocket and paid the man his five bucks plus a little for the governor. I’m sure it was too much money for what it is, but it is a childhood memory for me and I have never ever seen another set of these since I was thirteen years old.
“They pulled’em from the market because they were shattering and kids were getting hurt,” I told Pam.
This set is made from a hard plastic of some sort and not glass. I don’t know if they would shatter or not, but other than showing them off a little, I’m not playing with them anyway.
It wasn’t until we were home and I was thinking about writing that I even thought about taking pictures, so here is my wrinkled potato masher and a set of Clackers from my childhood memories.

“Peg, your masher doesn’t look that bad,” you say.
I know, right! It photographed much better than it really is.
At one of the other junk shops there in Eldon was a display of Vaseline glass with a black light on them and Pam got to see them glowing.
“I had no idea,” she said.
I also showed Pam Koeze jars. She didn’t know about them either. With a Koeze jar the lid doubles as a serving dish. The one I was showing her was priced at ten dollars, but I only paid between one and three dollars for each of mine.

Well, guys, I don’t know if you are tired of all my jibber-jabber yet or not but let me say that this story has taken me many hours and eighteen pages to write so far and the story isn’t over yet!
Speaking of stories, I haven’t gotten my mother to Arizona yet in The Great RV Adventure. There is a least one more chapter in that saga but possibly two and in the meantime life keeps happening all around me.