It occurs to me, as I write this piece about Grandma June - which we never called her, she was just "Grandma" to Sandy and me - that I do not remember Grandma's middle name.
Grandma (June) was Dad's mother. She lived in the house that Dad and Linda now live in. Once there was an apricot tree out the front door. I have a vague memory of a dark night when their garage burnt down. She cut Sandy's and my bangs. She enjoyed filling the front room up with family. I had to work hard for it, but I now carry on her delicious fresh lettuce salad dressing recipe. I know her maiden name was Bagley, but I do not recall her middle name.
Mom's mother's middle name was Minerva. Mom donned her brace with that name. The brace she had to wear for months after we rolled down the hill in Oregon and she ended up quite injured. It was a big deal.
Grandma (June) was a collector and seller of antiques. Tables ran the east-west length of the out-of-service old dairy barn. The tables hefted the weight of old items; glass fancy painted kerosene lantern, dishes, cups, salt and pepper shakers, jewelry boxes, and more. She had a neat collection of old stuff and made sure we kids knew we were not to be poking around there by ourselves. There were items there rumored to be worth quite a bit of money.
I have a porcelain musical jewelry box from Grandma's collection. It is lovely and looks to be hand painted. Sadly, the hinges have broken and what was once one piece is now two. The music will still play.
Some things seem so genetically inspired. My interest in old things is most likely a genetic thread I acquired from my father's lineage as my DNA formed in Mom's womb.
When I got a call from a friend who had conversed with another friend and determined her old furniture pieces should be up for me to consider, I (of course) went to her house for a look. No one was home, but in the place she described sat a nice heavy oak desk chair. A serious upgrade to the dingy POS chair I have at my sewing machine. The other piece looked like a large end table with something galvanized attached. What was it, I pondered. No room in the work truck for such a thing, I opted to grab it the next day when Mike came to town with a truck.
As things sometime roll, he was not able to meet me the next day with a truck. I ventured over to the friend's house, committed to figure out a way to get it stuffed in my work rig. Many of you don't know what my work rig looks like. Imagine a Chevy 1500 with a topper. In the back under the topper, there is a pullout (very handy). On that pullout are "Accident Ahead" traffic sign; a set of collapsible traffic cones; a personal flotation device (PFD); a tool box for fire investigations; two 5 gallon buckets filled with sand (for weight in the winter; which clearly should have been removed months ago, but will remain because winter is right around the corner!); a container with a bag of incident vests and a wildland pack; a container with jumper cables, helmets, and filter mask; bunker gear (pants and jacket); SCBA bottle; fire extinguisher; a box with a bunch of miscellaneous stuff; and a broom, a flat shovel, a round shovel, a scoop shovel, and a wildland tool called a combination tool. There are times when it can be a bit of a junk show back there, but it all works for me and that's all that matters.
The cab of the truck is an extra cab. The seats behind the two front seats have the following on top or along side them. BLS (basic life support) bag, open tool bag with radios, batteries, programming cables, sunscreen, incident guide books. A USPS box (sorry, I'm just "borrowing" it!) filled with more local information, guide books, binoculars, and incident job descriptions. A box of N95 masks. A box of BSI (body substance isolation) gloves. Extrication tools in a hanging pouch behind the driver's seat as well as a MCI (mass casualty incident) kit (we had it out on Monday for the balloon crash). A nomex jump suit. Bags for the grocery store. It's kind of cluttered there too.
Anyway, with a little work, I got most of the stuff stuffed into the cab and was able to load the piece of furniture that Lori told me when I arrived was an egg incubator. Wow!! Now I was even more inspired to get it loaded up in case she changed her mind about giving it away!! This thing was made by a company called Buckeye.
Here is a picture of what it looks like off an internet search. And this is a pretty much what it looks like in person. The round thing is the water chamber. The tube that sticks into it goes inside and around the box to heat the eggs. The long piece of metal wire thing has a round cap on it that cover a hole through the water chamber. When it gets too hot inside, there is some mechanism that lifts the wire with the lid up so the chamber will cool off! How cool is that?!! The research I've done leads me to think it is made of redwood. This is such a unique piece!!
Here it is in our Freedom bedroom with the incubator and the super cool copper fire extinguisher lamp. I have now been given two of these lamps by people in this valley which really warms my heart!!
So now that I am here in this story, I realize a lot of people have given me some pretty cool things!! The egg incubator and the two fire extinguisher lamps. Grandma would have been impressed with this antique piece, I am certain.
