Model Train Journal

We on this forum are of varying backgrounds, ages, interests, homes, hometowns, education, experiences, social awareness, and personal histories, etc.

Such variety makes life interesting, doesn't it.

For example: Not too long ago, I witnessed a child come into a room at her grandparents' house and sit in front of their typewriter. She looked around and then said, "Where is the screen?" I wonder how many children, these days, would recognize the item in the photo below.

Do you recognize this slogan/remark, which appeared on a handmade sign:
I'll go when Lynda Byrd goes.

?

Circa? Reason? Can you relate?

Murph

MurphOnMillerAve wrote: I wonder how many children, these days, would recognize the item in the photo below.

I'd have to wonder how many adults will......

Rufus T. Firefly wrote:

MurphOnMillerAve wrote: I wonder how many children, these days, would recognize the item in the photo below.

I'd have to wonder how many adults will......

Good point. I think I should have expressed it better, to be more inclusive.

MurphOnMillerAve wrote:

Rufus T. Firefly wrote:

MurphOnMillerAve wrote: I wonder how many children, these days, would recognize the item in the photo below.

I'd have to wonder how many adults will......

Good point. I think I should have expressed it better, to be more inclusive.

Well, then you have to define "adult", too. Pretty sure that's more complicated than just age.

It's what the person between the banjo and mandolin players performs on.

Rufus T. Firefly wrote:

MurphOnMillerAve wrote:

Rufus T. Firefly wrote:
I'd have to wonder how many adults will......

Good point. I think I should have expressed it better, to be more inclusive.

Well, then you have to define "adult", too. Pretty sure that's more complicated than just age.

Most of us "ADULTS" are just big kids that refused to grow up.

Look at how many of us that are still playing with toy trains......

To Murph's point, I read that some schools in England are removing the traditional analog clocks from their classrooms. The stated reason is that the kids haven't been taught to read them. So what's so wrong with teaching them this simple and basic life skill? In elementary school we were taught how to use a ruler and calculate the fractions. Today?

One highly-admired Spanish teacher in high school put a cover over the clock in the room to stop clock-watching. It said: "Time will pass. Will you?"

Will humanity pass?

Tom Dempsey wrote:It's what the person between the banjo and mandolin players performs on.

And what their wives and girlfriends worked on, too, huh.

It is a ribbed metal washboard, patented on February 9th 1833 by Stephen Rust of Manlius, NY. The patent reads, "Be it known that I Stephen Rust of the Town of Manlius in the County of Onondaga and State of New York have invented a new and useful improvement in making "Wash Boards" and that the following is a full and exact description of the construction of said machine as invented or improved by me viz. "The side pieces of the frame are made of wood from one inch to three inches wide, and from twenty to thirty inches long and set from six to sixteen inches apart and parallel to each other. Between and attached to the side pieces in the upper part of the frame is inserted a plain board from one to six inches in width and slightly curved downwards. Attached to the board and also to the side pieces is inserted a piece of fluted tin, sheet iron, copper or zink [zinc] from ten to twenty inches in length and leaving an open space below and between the side pieces of from four to ten inches. The improvement claimed in this machine is in the use of the fluted tin sheet iron copper or zink."

Stephen's patented washboard was not the first washboard, just an improvement over the fluted wooden boards that had been in use before this invention.

My mom was still using one of the galvanized tin washboards in 1948, at which time my dad bought her an electric wringer washer. So... circa 1833 to 1948 in my family'

Good ideas return... my Maytag washer does not have a clothes beater paddle in it, instead the bottom of the wash tank has ribs that rub the clothes like the old washboard did, using only a couple of inches of water in the tank. Perfect water conserving machine for use in the Sonoran Desert.

Another treasured memory...

I still have one of these somewhere, Haven't used it since high school.

HONDO74 wrote:I still have one of these somewhere, Haven't used it since high school.

Got 3-4 of them in the back of the drawer of desk #1. I take them out and just cannot toss them away, yet have not used one in for ~40 years.

webenda wrote:
My mom was still using one of the galvanized tin washboards in 1948, at which time my dad bought her an electric wringer washer. So... circa 1833 to 1948 in my family'

We had one of these, I was helping mom feed some clothes into the wringer and it caught my fingers and pulled me in half way up my arm before mom got it shut off. Dang that hurt.

I haven't used one of those since college. I had a yellow Pickett slide rule "vapor lock" during a networks class in Electrical Engineering. Actually, it was my brain that vapor-locked, just like the old carb on my '64 Mercury Comet.

Half that class already owned HP calculators, and they walked out half-way through the exam. I was still slip-sliding away at the bell. After that, I begged and my folks gave me the money to buy an HP 35 scientific calculator at the college book store. WOW! That changed everything!.

OK, I don't miss those crappy speakers. We have a "drive in" in the Plymouth Whaler's parking lot but they broadcast the sound over the air (in stereo) using the cars sound system.

I still have my Lafayette Vecortlog slide rule (with case) but I did manage to loose the adjustment screwdriver

Those were the days when you had to have some idea what the answer was and you didn't blindly rely on whatever the digital calculator or computer spits out.