Trains - Little Ones

 I adore toy trains. When we were little and Dad's trains would come out, it was always such a thrill. There were big ones and little ones. An engine that produced real steam. I loved the way they smelled when the metal got hot. Though they never did go quite as fast as I wanted them to.

Naturally, in addition to 'real' trains the Railroad Museum has some lovely diorama toy trains set up. Drool.  

Do you think there is a minimum age limit to join one of those toy train clubs where old retired gents get together and build large scale sets? I think I would be quite skilled. And how fun would it be to sit around and listen to their stories.

These museum layout are so bright and cheery - I forget sometimes that the world doesn't actually look like this.

Ag Ads

At the Railroad Museum, in one of the boxcars, they have an exhibit of vintage ads for different agricultural enterprises. My apologies from the outset, for the battle I lost with the glare from the lights - the images are not flush against the wall. I did manage to resit the urge to break through the glass and improve the arrangement of the exhibit.

 I don't know what it is about vintage signs, the color scheme, the sometimes naive and entertaining marketing elements, but I find them fascinating.

 "Extra Fancy" California Pears

"Fancy" Mountain Grown Plums

 This one baffles me - "A-Okay" California Fruits...with a rocket?...in space, with the moon?

Fido Brand Citrus - doesn't the dog look slightly terrified?

It looks like the wings of this glider plane are on fire.

Did you know I love lemons? I'd like to try a meteor lemon...I had no idea lemons came from space.

Perhaps it is the winning combination of charm and hilarity that pulls me in.

Toy Store

While T was here we spent some time running around Old Sac. I don't know what it is about toy shops, but a good toy shop is amazing. Granted, usually a little more costly, but I love when they put visible effort into their displays.

 They built a giant robot, props!

 Can you spot the Tawny, Scrawny, Lion? - one of my favorites.

 One of several miniature scenes. Love the burning building.

 And, of course, the wooden trains.

They've got nothing on the train museum, but it was lovely to peruse the games, trains, and books.

Totchos!!!

I am aware that this is a pretty terrible photo and really does not capture the grandeur of what I am about to describe...totchos. Last month the lovely T took C & I to an incredibly classy joint around the corner from my place. They serve something called totchos - basically it's nachos, but with crispy tater-tots instead of chips. They are wonderful, I'm going to have to start making them at home. T and I went the night before she headed back to Cleve.

Fat City

Total props to Frank for the preservation of original architecture and all that stained glass. Something about Fat City makes me drool, and it's not food.

Back in Time

 Through the miracle of modern employment T arrived in town Saturday. After the airport pick up and lunch at the apartment we headed up to Folsom for some browsing. T requested some vintage/antique shopping during her visit and Folsom has a nice concentrated area of small shops. I don't know that I would go there for a good deal, but it's fun to observe the chaos. And in many shops it is complete chaos.

 

I was relieved that the storm broke for the afternoon.

 I also discovered what I have been missing my entire life - a $7000 Wurlitzer.

It's love.

There were also several more "modern" jute boxes.

 

As well as other beautiful older ones. 

Several stores had cases of old, scratched records - potential craft supplies.

In the end T got some jewelry pieces and I walked away with this set of books and two cake plates.

 The top white one and the far back green one.

The highlight was of course hanging out with T. We got a snack and then headed down to Elk Grove to visit J and the babes.

The Barn - Part 7 (Grandma & Nana Converge)

Let me begin by stating I love my grandma. I don't think she reads this blog. If she did she'd have bankers boxes full of color printouts of every single blog post, and we have yet to discover these boxes, though it's possible they could have escaped notice. Still, let me state that I adore her. I just happen to also find her idiosyncrasies entertaining.

As mentioned, Grandma B and her mother share a love of stories, it's all about context. I have two cubic feet of old sheet music sitting in my apartment. Grandma B is certain, despite the fact that I have had several people look at them and they state otherwise, that there are important musical documents included - because they were taken out of Germany by my great-great-grandmother before the war. Besides being old, most were purchased here in the USA, and are not priceless historical objects. I don't think she realizes that WWI did not result in the destruction of all that was classical music in Germany. Maybe I need to look up the conservatory where great-great-grandma was studying and the music stores in Leipzig and Frankfurt where she purchased music to give her a valid argument on this. The address info is stamped on the front of the music. Likely Grandma is appropriating the destruction of WWII to WWI, but the Nazi's would have glorified any musician and score that might support their perception of ethnic superiority. Unless great-great-grandma knew some brilliant Jewish composer and has an unpublished opus of his (which I wished she did) hidden in these stacks I'm afraid Grandma is over valuing things. Plus I plan to scan, alter, cut-up all this paper for projects, so grandma's paradigm doesn't conform with my plans. I will say it's cool stuff.

About half of the music.

The design/type/illustrations are fabulous.

Anything with a story, or associated with Nana, takes on relic status - Grandma would have LOVED the middle ages for that element. She'd have a house full of reliquaries. In the barn I discovered several boxes of Grandma's stuff which had my name written on them, which piqued my interest. C - who was present for the loading of the boxes explained that Grandma thought the items in those boxes were of import and merited my attention and efforts to sell them to collectors. Oh, wait until you see.

First came, the bookends. Now if their eye's aren't creepy I don't know what is. I have been on the hunt for some interesting bookends - but I just couldn't use these. Imagine walking into a dark room where the slightest glimmer of light was reflected in those little green eyes.

If you know anyone who wants them, please, let me know. I'm looking for a collector.

Up next, a metal frame, which held photos of my great grandparents taken around their 50th wedding anniversary. I'm sure, because it held their photos, it is precious. I love the retro sample photos. These kids are awesome. 

Then we have the box of furs. Some are fake and some are real. Mostly fur collars for jackets that have disappeared. Perhaps it's a generational thing - but if a collar goes with a coat why do you save it and not the coat? Do you plan to have another coat made to match the fur collar? This is one of the real furs, I have no idea what it is. But I'm sure it's been kept in a very safe place the last 30 years. 

The boxes were filled with all kinds of treasures. I honestly cannot wait to go back and poke through all of them. Though I shall have to be a little more circumspect in my photography. You can't imagine (unless you are someone who said it - which is likely since they read this blog) how frequently I was told Saturday to put my camera away and asked in a suspect tone if I was going to blog about something. No faith. 

The Barn - Part 6 (Random Stuff)

M & D have five children, it follows that there is quite a bit of randomness among the dust particles. 

J's carefully wrapped art (can you tell she works in a museum?) and husband J's aviators - which C and I discovered are too crooked for wearing, but the bubble wrap looked lovely in them. 

Ah, the 80's - a time when a child (J) could take a lunch box to school with a man holding a machine gun on the front.

G came out and saw the treasured noontime meal receptacle and asked "Who is that?" She didn't know who Dick Tracy was - generation gap. Have we failed her as her older siblings? I feel like we are missing out on so many opportunities for her to look at us like we are ridiculous. And we really owe that to her, for all the years of Barney she put us through - or maybe that was C. 

This is what I was thrilled to discover - stamp sets M had bought when I was little. I still think the 'Fun with Architecture' set was one of the greatest ideas ever, sadly the little stamps inside did not hold ink well, making it difficult to actually construct anything. I should credit that faulty rubber with saving me from a pursuit of the discipline leading to probable unemployment.

Fun with Hieroglyphs did work, but I remember finding it quite difficult to construct sentences. Perhaps it didn't help that there were only 24 stamps in the set...wow, I was kind of, well, I guess my educational path makes a little more sense looking at toys like that. 

The Barn - Part 5 (Nana Again)

If you haven't already realized (based on a potential knowledge of M) J and I are the recipients of genetic artistic talent, which I wish we'd both gotten a full portion of, though thinking of it, it possibly skipped my grandmother and this means there could be hope for our kids. As an example, here is the typical kind of thing one finds shoved in a drawer or collecting dust in the barn.

It is a woodcarving my Nana did. By EMS - Elizabeth Myers Simms. My art box has several pallet tools which bare the same EMS carved into them. Duncan Vail (founded 1869) was an art company in SF where she purchased the wood block for carving. They were bought in 1987 by Certified Art Supply. 

And this is what she carved. At the bottom it reads Cy & Adrianne (did I spell that right M?) - she carved it in cursive...you can see her practicing writing Cy on the back. 

Uncle Cy and Aunt Tana were Nana's sister and brother-in-law. I think the woodcut is just darling and so Pennsylvania Dutch, which some part of their family was. 

The Barn - Part 4 (Barn Taxonomy)

It might be possible to spend the rest of my life blogging about the barn...man, that would have been a much better idea for a blog. The termites, my parents never ending hope to remodel the inside, the haunted house we set up inside, contrasted with the nativity accompanied by live animals (who to my horror defecated upon the floor of what I viewed at that time as a play area).

At the very least you are going to get several more posts about it, and since I will be returning in the near future for another go...I might be able to fill at least the month of January. Perhaps, it thus behoves me to clarify that the "barn" is not really a "barn" exactly. It's a century old carriage house that sits on my parent's lot. It flanks one side of the house while another "barn", a mammoth work shed that is much more like a proper barn, flanks the other. Nestled next to it is a smaller, about 8' x 25', room/shed that we also call the "barn" sometimes. If your not confused, imagine what it's like to ask where something is and be told it's in the barn - given that this provides three possible locations that you must narrow by context or requests for clarification "upstairs or work?". You can search through all three, upstairs and down, only to find what you are looking for has actually been moved to the cellar under the house.

Quite some time ago the stairs to the upstairs barn (species, genus) collapsed with age, since that time one must climb a ladder to reach the upstairs. Getting large boxes and items (like all the Christmas decorations) has become quite a task, and C has become quite the packhorse/ladder expert. Last weekend he was tasked with a little cleaning. Here he towers above us all, with that charming, and not at all creepy, face mask. Indeed, if you are wondering, the S's are exactly the kind of family that have 40-50 face masks on hand even when there are no recent outbreaks of swine flu. Latex gloves, we've got a lot of those as well. Wonder if the supply will diminish now that Dad's retired...