OT Another episode of "Why I Love Auctions"

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Model T Ford Forum: Forum 2012: OT Another episode of "Why I Love Auctions"
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Steve Jelf, Parkerfield KS on Saturday, December 08, 2012 - 05:59 pm:

My uncle Charles got out of the navy after the war, and he and my aunt Jerry decided to dairy. I well remember the old milk shed and the cows coming up the lane every evening. The old shed collapsed many years ago, but leaning against a volunteer tree that came up in the remains was this head of an old iron bed.



I think it's probably been there since before the war. I never paid much attention to it until recently. Last weekend at the auction I bought this foot to go with it.



At the same time I got another matching head and foot, along with a couple of oil change pans, all for $20. I think these beds will sandblast and paint up very nicely, and relatives and friends who come to visit will sleep in style.



Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By keith g barrier on Saturday, December 08, 2012 - 06:47 pm:

Nice! Steve I revamped one of those several years ago, painted it white with all the connectors gold. You are lucky the rods are not all bent up, they are hard to get back in shape. KB


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By David Dewey, N. California on Saturday, December 08, 2012 - 06:52 pm:

Steve,
Only if the mattresses you supply are better than the ones that came with those bedframes originally!
Good find!


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Aaron Griffey, Hayward Ca. on Saturday, December 08, 2012 - 06:59 pm:

I would take them to a powder coater to sandblast and powder coat. That way they will look nice forever and will not scratch.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By john kuehn on Saturday, December 08, 2012 - 07:20 pm:

We had the parts and remains around our place of old bed frames and parts but they were to far gone to use. Two were the same as pictured.
I always wondered what color they originally were. Were they white or some other color.
Anybody know for sure?
Keith did his in white and gold which look nice.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Mike Garrison on Saturday, December 08, 2012 - 07:32 pm:

When I was a kid my brother and I had matching single iron bed frames. They were very old and to the best of my knowledge had been white from the start. But as I said, I was a kid. And I haven't been that young for more than a couple years.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Charlie B actually in Toms River N.J. on Saturday, December 08, 2012 - 09:34 pm:

Epoxy enamel. Appliance epoxy I think it's called. Shiney as heck, relatively hard and cheaper than powder coating.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By William L Vanderburg on Saturday, December 08, 2012 - 09:40 pm:

I used to sleep in one of these. They were not comfortable at all!

Mine was white, then gold, and then back to white.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Mike Garrison on Saturday, December 08, 2012 - 10:10 pm:

I remember sleeping in mine and it had the old open springs and wires that would sag with the batted, striped, mattress and them hard packed striped pillows with the batting in them too. I'd get in bed between the flannel sheets, and pull the old wool army blankets up around my neck and lay on my back in the middle of the sag with my arms tight to my sides. There wasn't any heat in the upstairs of our house. The only way we'd get any heat up there was if we left the stairway door open. But Dad and Mom decided it was a waste of wood to try to heat the upstairs too. In Northern Minnesota when it gets down around -35 degrees it's important to have extra blankets. We always had ice on the inside of the windows and if it snowed outside the wind would blow the snow in around the leaky window frames. We'd wake up in the morning with snow on our beds. We use to get dressed under the covers. Then we'd get up and hustle down stairs and Dad would be making those pancakes that could soak up a quart of syrup and were still dry. I use to beg for oatmeal and fresh milk but Dad wouldn't make the oatmeal and wouldn't let us on the stove. But if you took his pancakes and poured a bunch of his syrup and put a couple eggs on them and a bunch of butter they were almost edible. Dad always told us living that way was good for us. It gave us character and an appreciation for Gods gifts. Like below zero temperatures were a gift. I always liked going to my cousins because they had feather beds and pillows. And in the morning they would have cold cereal and milk from out of a carton. It didn't taste as good as our fresh cows milk but they had to live in town.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Mike Garrison on Saturday, December 08, 2012 - 10:11 pm:

That was back in the day when we walked four miles to school in a blizzard, up hill in both directions.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Garnet on Saturday, December 08, 2012 - 10:57 pm:

Stick it up on a hill somewheres in full view Steve ... mebbe put a nightstand beside it. That outta be good for laughs !!

Garnet


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Lance Sorenson, Minnesota on Saturday, December 08, 2012 - 11:02 pm:

I sleep on a wood bed called a Jenny Lind bed. I have slept on it and used the same oak dresser since I was small boy. I did add a kit so it would hold a queen size mattress after I got married.

Mike, I could add to your cold weather stories, but I wonder if anyone believes you :-)


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Danial - Veneta OR US Earth Solar System on Saturday, December 08, 2012 - 11:08 pm:

Mike, you think you had it tough....as kids, we were served cold, bullion soup and given a picture of food to look at. It wasn't all bad though - we were allowed to choose which picture to look at from the cook books that we borrowed from the library.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Mike Garrison on Saturday, December 08, 2012 - 11:14 pm:

I don't know if they do or not Lance. But they're true. Those old farmhouses never had heat upstairs. When I went to visit my In-laws the first time by Worthington the put me upstairs in there farmhouse in one of the boys bedrooms. There were 6 girls and 5 boys in the family and only Mom and Dad slept downstairs. When I woke up in the morning there was snow on the bed. I hadn't seen that for 10 years. It was like going home again. Then after my wife and I got married we stayed at her Grandma's house in town. She had a grate in the floor that let the downstairs heat come up into the upstairs. It was better if you didn't shut the bedroom door. But of course we were newlyweds and he Dad never let me forget that I'd shut that door and then had to keep his daughter warm all night. And I know a good many people in Northern Minnesota who still live in some of those old poorly insulated houses.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Lance Sorenson, Minnesota on Saturday, December 08, 2012 - 11:31 pm:

Mike I lived it. With the iron beds we would even see frost on them. We didn't have running water and the water pail would have ice on top, but it was easily broken with the dipper. If my dad didn't feel like getting up at night, the wood stove would just go out. Our pillows would feel so cold we would sometimes heat them on the stove some before going to bed.

We are in a Blizzard warning right now and I have to drive to the airport in the morning. I hope to be in sunny North Carolina tomorrow night.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Steve Jelf, Parkerfield KS on Sunday, December 09, 2012 - 12:30 am:

I'll update these stories about sleeping upstairs in the cold. My old house has never had AC and is heated by wood downstairs. Upstairs is still unheated. With current work on the south wall, my bedroom is open to the outdoors. But these days it's no problem. I go up a half hour or so before bedtime and turn on the electric blanket. With that and a couple more blankets and a big thick comforter, I'm warm and toasty all night. Some things now are better than fifty years ago.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Mike Garrison on Sunday, December 09, 2012 - 12:32 am:

Lance I'm going to give you such a bad time when I leave for AZ on January 4th. I hope we get 2 ft of snow after your in the air. Do you have to keep your O2 on when you travel? Higher altitude and all.

On the other subject. Remember when your Mom would put the washtub up on the cookstove and heat the bathwater. Dad would carry the water from the community pump in a couple cream cans and pour it into the washtub then run after more water. The baby always got the bath in the fresh clean water. Then the girls. Then change water and I'd have clean water and then my brothers turn. I always made sure I added a little something to his bath water before I got out. I've still got a scar on my backside from getting too close to the fire box on the cookstove. Then we'd go out into the living room and stand around that big old Jungers oil burner until bedtime. At that time we were living in town by the Mississippi River on top of what had been the city dump up until the 30's.

I remember Mom wouldn't allow a slop bucket in the house so if we had to go it was out to the outhouse. I always waited until my brother got up off the hole because it would be warm. But he'd always run for the house with the light and I'd have to find my way back without it. It's a good thing those old catalogs were as big as they were or life would have been pretty miserable.

Then when I was 6 we moved out on the farm and we had running water and a toilet inside the house. And a humongous Kalamazoo wood furnace in the basement. We use to go through between 15 and 20 cord of dried split firewood every winter.

By gosh those weren't the good old days.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By George Clipner-Los Angeles on Sunday, December 09, 2012 - 01:11 am:

Now this may not count being here in SoCal. In our older apt. with no vents to one of the bedrooms, I found a sleeping bag unzipped to open wide (not the mummy type bags) is more effective then a standard comforter and is lighter in weight then a whole bunch blankets.
George n L.A.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By mike dixon on Sunday, December 09, 2012 - 08:02 am:

When I was little I had nothing, I still have mosst of it. Even now, I the soles of my shoes are so thin, I can step on a quarter and tell if its heads or tails


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By George_Cherry Hill NJ on Sunday, December 09, 2012 - 09:16 am:

Ah Steve,

Appreciate the story about your bed heat. That looks like a metal bed...

Do look at where the cord hangs or rather rubs against the bedrails over time :-) Don't ask me how I know..but when it starts arc-ing and you are on the mattress...!

Stories like this post are interesting for the younger generation...my grandchildren won't know the difference in their totally climate controlled houses. When I was little, we had some old mid-1800's place that the only heat was the cast iron stove in the kitchen, and a pot bellied parlor stove in the parlor and in winter time we hung blankets in the doorframes! Didn't think twice about it in the winter time, just the way it went.

When I was in the service, they had that heat by the calendar thing going and I was stationed right on the bay in Rhode Island when stateside in old WW1 uninsulated barracks. My older sister asked me what I wanted for Christmas one year and I had her stitch up a set of heavy flannel Dr. Denton's complete with footies and flap...:-)

Going back to that old unheated house, I had actually forgotten that on real cold winter nights we would all huddle next to the kitchen wood stove, then run like heck and get into a litter formation in one bed under all the blankets available...until 2 years ago when we took the whole family away for a Christmas getaway and just to be cute we had 3 generations pile on a brass bed for a photo...and my 80 something aunt saw the photo and commented....remember when?


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Warren W. Mortensen on Sunday, December 09, 2012 - 05:41 pm:

We're living in one of those cold old farmhouses in Minnesota right now. The first winter we put some of that 3M window covering (clear heat shrinkable plastic) on the windows. Didn't have a hair dryer or heat gun to shrink the stuff after we put it up but we weren't worried about looks anyway. It was fascinating to sit in the main room and watch the wind change direction. One window, the plastic was hard up against the glass, the plastic on the other window across the room was bellied out. Then the wind would come around at some point and you'd hear "FWOOMP" and the plastic coverings changed direction. A few new combination storm windows have made it a bit more bearable. <grin>

My son Erik mentioned this morning that he heard one of the cats eating something last night on his bed. He turned on a light in time to see a mouse tail disappear into the cat's mouth.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Norman T. Kling on Sunday, December 09, 2012 - 06:19 pm:

I lived in an old cabin in the mountains my grandpa built. We had open springs and a thin mattress about 2 inches thick. That cabin was used for vacations but we lived in it for a few months during the depression. The reason for the thin mattress was so we could roll it up and store in an unused galvanized garbage can with a lid on it so the mice wouldn't get into it. Here is a picture of the cabin.

The ladies are using the bed as a card table.
Norm


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Tex Holtby on Sunday, December 09, 2012 - 06:46 pm:

We live in a old farmhouse (in upstate NY) built in 1825. There are many antiques in it that we pulled out of dumpsters and refinished. The heat comes from a big wood boiler in the basement. I chunk and split 20 tons of logs per year (use about 18 tons per year to heat the old place)! They think I'm nuts at work when I tell them we turn the thermostats up to 60 degrees in the winter - although when my 97 year old father stays with us I throw a couple extra logs in the boiler just for him! No cats live with us but the mice population remains in check due to the milk snakes finding their way into the basement through the cobblestone foundation. Just don't tell my wife! Maybe if I didn't chunk, split and stack 20 tons of wood per year I'd finish the model T (lol)!


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Mike Garrison on Sunday, December 09, 2012 - 10:58 pm:

I remember many times as a child Mom would make rock soup. Then that one year we had a poor rock crop and damn near starved to death.


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