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I FOUND WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR. This isn't it. This is another thing I
found while looking.

It was in HEM in the May/June 1999 issue:

"Your House as a Museum"

Once my kids were watching something or other on TV about woodcuts and block
printing, and somehow the subject turned to printed cloth. I told them I had
some block-printed cloth and they got pretty excited about seeing it.

I found an Indian bedspread, printed in two passes, with blocks, and we
looked at where they had made some great matches, where they had missed, and
how it all might work (because I don't know what their work stations look
like, whether they do edges first, or what). I found two scarves made of
fine cotton, block-printed each in one color only. Then I found some
screen-printed silk handkerchiefs from China that a friend had given me after
his mother died. Still in the packages, and some matching pairs, so we could
compare. They might have been mass produced, but still... Then I found a
piece of Hawaiian cloth. I don't know the name of it, but my husband's mom
brought it from Hawaii. I think it's a kind of Polynesian kilt

I also had a piece of woven paisley, a batik sari and a sari with gold woven
into it. I didn't go into details about those except to point out that most
of those examples were made in India. Someday I'll read them _The Road to
Agra_ which is a kids' adventure novel and which deals in passing with the
child labor involved in weaving.

With that my children decided that anything they might want to see, I would
have. There have been many times that they were right!

When they asked what pogs were supposed to be REALLY, I found an old
milk-bottle that had been stuck up in the top of a cabinet just in case a kid
might ever want to see it, next to the old molded Pepsi bottle, and the
not-so-old Coca Cola bottle. I told them stories of picking up bottles to
turn in for the two-cent deposit. It's the equivalent of picking up aluminum
cans now, but they're heavy and fragile. The kids had never known about
bottle deposits like that, where the bottles were reused instead of melted
down. I told them about people throwing bottles out of car windows on the
highways, and all the broken glass we walked on and around as kids, and that
people used to shoot at bottles for practice.

Kids nowadays take "Keep American Beautiful" for granted. They can't believe
there used to be rusting bedsprings and old washing machines dumped all over
the place, and that hamburger wrappers were as likely as not to go out the
window of a car. I told them about how the old glass would weather, and what
had been in the sand and sun of New Mexico for long enough would turn into
smooth-edged, opaque little jewels we used for hopscotch markers. Pogs to
hopscotch--full circle, because I had those bottles.

My maiden name was Adams, and I remember being taunted by kids singing the
theme song to The Addams Family TV show, but that line "Their house is a
museum where people come to see 'em" stuck with me always. When I go to
other people's houses I love to see what they have. The things they've
chosen to keep, or collected over the years, teach me a good deal about those
people themselves--their interests, their history, their sense of humor, and
philosophy.

Sometimes my kids get bored, and I can light up a half hour by digging into
some box or drawer and producing something they've never yet seen. Like a
magician pulling a bouquet of flowers out of a wand, I pull out a little
doll, or some Australian coins, electric curlers (for sorting, putting back
on the rods, and discussing), muffin tins, poker chips, grandpa's bow ties, a
hand-cranked egg beater to froth up soapy water (I wish I had a hand-cranked
drill; my dad did). Whenever I pull these things out I tell the kids why I
have them and what I know about them. I told about the gold strip in
Australian paper money, about ties my dad used to have with cowboys and
bucking broncos on them, about patterned muffin tins being pressed kind of
like steel car parts are pressed, of getting my hair stuck in electric
curlers when I was a teenager and crying because I was afraid my long hair
would have to be cut off.

Can you remember visiting grandparents or older relatives when you were young
and finding cool "stuff" in their storerooms? My granny had "carding combs"
I think she called them--steel brushes for cleaning cotton and lining up the
fibres. She never spun, as far as I know, but she would use raw cotton to
put into quilts, taking the seeds out herself and carding the cotton. When
my mom was little, their whole family had picked cotton by hand for a living,
moving from town to town in West Texas. My other grandmother, my Mamaw, had
an ironing machine, and said they used to iron sheets and pillow cases with
it.

There are probably things in your house that would fascinate your children
but you haven't thought to offer or they haven't found the good stuff yet.
Consider interesting things you have which might be of interest for being
old, foreign, specially made or obtained under special circumstances:

ornaments
dishes / pots /molds
silverware--even one old piece you know something about
egg beater
flour sifter
can openers ("church keys")
old bottles or other containers
your old clothes from the 60's or 70's
recordings--reel to reel, 45's, 78's, 8-tracks
manual typewriter
push mower
pre-transistor radio
musical instruments
jewelry (and any old photos of people wearing that actual jewelry)
photos of people with cars (I try to get cars in photos to date them)
books, magazines
clippings
ribbons from 4-H, scout badges, school certificates, class photos, report
cards
toys from your childhood
awards / trophies (photos of the activity?)
funeral cards
wedding announcements/certificates
birth announcements
games (any old monopoly games in your attic?)
teach clapping games or jump rope (living history museum <g>)
foods no longer commonly used (find a fondue pot and make them something)
poker chips (patterns, counting, sorting)
sewing supplies / buttons
old shoes
uniforms
curlers / bobby pins
drafting supplies
typewriter eraser with a brush
old pens, paper, ancient stationery
flip-open address book like people had on desks in 1963
old phone
old phonebook or school annual with alpha prefixes--find out what your local
prefix used to be (if it's old enough)
art
music
things relating to WWII, Korea, Viet Nam

Many people in the southwest have wagon wheels. They're not flat—the hub is
out at an angle from the wheel, and the spokes hold it at that angle for
strength and stability. It's fascinating to look at one, and touch it, and
know that it took an experienced wheelwright to make that wheel, and a
blacksmith to put the iron on it, and that the very wheel came here from
somewhere else—maybe Mexico, maybe Missouri, maybe Kansas. It was made
somewhere, and came here, and now it's sitting in someone's yard.

Do you have rocks or mineral samples?
Do you have an emerald or a ruby or a diamond?
Do you have a really old camera?
Any leather-bound books or boxes?

My husband has something the kids haven't seen yet--a set of bongo drums.

So what's at your house?