Recently I’ve taken a shine to a new hobby, restoring stuff. First was a roll top desk my wife inherited. It was full of amazing stuff from the 1920’s, including lots of “smart pills” left behind by mice. If there were any secret hiding places full of treasure they are still there.
Next came a corn sheller. This treasure was purchased 10-15 years ago at a garage sale in a small central Texas town near my home.
Then I cleaned up and painted the remains of an antique sheep/horse shearer that my son excavated from an old trash pile on the family farm. After about a year of trying, I only figured out what the thing was after posting a picture on a Rural History page on Facebook. In what was, for me at least, an interesting and cruelly ironic twist, here’s a picture of a shearer from a 1920’s catalog found in the aforementioned roll top desk. A catalog that had been at our house for at least 6 months while I was trying to figure out what the thing was.
Feeling rather froggy, the next item I jumped off in was a Champion forge blower that I bought at an auction.
Next up? I think it’s gonna be this steamer trunk, another artifact inherited by my wife.
Then maybe I’ll start on the old horse drawn wagon whose metal parts are in a pile in my barn, or the 8N parked outside the barn, or the two other antique forge blowers I’ve recently acquired, or the two old metal lawn chairs laying in the “to do” pile behind the barn, or maybe a shed of some kind to house all these junktiques in so I can get in my barn …
