Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Things from simpler times

Or: what we saw inside the old store at Cordes: oodles of stuff from the 20s & 30s, including my childhood days. (You may recall that I visited the place with my lady friends last Sunday.)

The kind of skate that I rolled around on. You needed a paved surface for sure; you'd barely move on any other type of surface. Not at all like today's slick roller blades.

And who doesn't remember the mighty Wurlitzer? Even though the songs are from a much later slice of time...

My kind of radios, at least if I'm going to listen to the Lone Ranger or Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. They wouldn't do for my NPR classics from KNAU today.

Soda pop bottles from the days of glass. Evidently not collected on the desert surrounding Cordes -- they'd be purple in that case.

The thrifty housewife can't have enough meat grinders. Or (below) cast iron pots, pans and ovenwear.

A well equipped tool box for the man of the house.

A hiccup in the above time line: three humming bird nests collected in and around Cordes. The Cordes Station Store holds a humming bird festival in April.

And this is an antique that's for looking only -- it belonged to Proprietor Cathy Cordes' great-grandfather and she intends to keep it in the family.

Here she wraps up a sale to my travelling companions.

6 comments:

Steve said...

Lots of familiar looking items. Do they search for those things? I would imagine they would need to resupply their store.

Antipodean Curmudgeon said...

My kind of stuff!!! Those various soft drink bottles beat a coke bottle by damn near twice the volumn, guess which I bought with my nickel.

Hermano

Anil P said...

I like the radios I see on the shelf. Somehow I'm inclined to believe the songs must sound nicer floating from those radios.

What a place indeed, hours must pass quickly looking around there, so much to see and so many memories to behold.

Unknown said...

Bring forth memories! Those roller skates did it.

Back on the farm a twenty foot length of sidewalk with lots of cracks was the course for the roller skates. The roller skate clamps and straps never lived up to the expectations of getting to the end of the sidewalk -- with the skates still attached to one's shoes.

Anonymous said...

What was the name of the company that made the cash register?

The weird thing is that I don't remember low tech cash registers holding up the checkout line as much as the high tech cash registers and bar codes.

Granny J said...

steve -- my guess is that there might be itinerant peddlers and other folk who travel the collectible shop circuit with old bottles and similar stuff. Much like those who work the used book stores.

bro -- oh, yes -- twice as much for a nickel, too...

anil -- I think you have to be pretty old at this point to actually remember most of those items (except for the songs on the juke box). As for the kind of music that should come from those radios: would you believe Bing Crosby, the Dorsey Brothers, Artie Shaw, the Andrews Sisters, Glen Miller...in other words, Real Popular music.

wandrin -- there were no sidewalks at either of my grandparents houses nor at any of our homes. However, the California grandpa had a wonderful, large expanse in front of his house that was paved, but forbidden to any cars. It was a wonderful place for skates. I never had a problem with the clamps until shoes developed those thick gum soles.

boonie -- don't know the make. Could have been NCR -- they've been around a long, long time. The problem with the modern hi-tech units is that the operators no longer can do arithmetic, so when things break down, they stand around wihh their thumbs in their mouths.

 
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