A wide shot from the Ferris Wheel, looking NNE:
I have been known to claim that you can live (almost) like the 1937 well-to-do on a less-than-average 21st-Century paycheck; that Old Time Summer Kitchen lacks only an automatic clothes dryer, a dishwasher (assuming that's a washing machine at the far right) and air-conditioning to have everything a person could want in her kitchen, and has a few things mine lacks, like a proper Hoosier baking cabinet (no room in my galley kitchen!) and a wall-mounted coffee grinder. ...Hotter'n the hammers of Hades, baking in even a summer kitchen in August, though. 
Speaking of appliances, there's a nice gasoline-engine Maytag washer in this set-up. Oh, laugh --but does yours have a throttle and clutch?
The little engines on these appear to be a foundation of Maytag's runs-forever reputation.
A first glimpse of the miniature donkeys (and baby!) Tam is so taken with. They are cute!
Mascots! Fellow in the foreground is sure he's seen them before, somewhere:
And I'll close with another Ferris wheel photo, this one looking due East. See the big tan-brick Coliseum just right of center? There'll be an architectural detail from it in the next batch.
When I was a child Dad had a number of Maytag motors to pump water at remote wells on the tenant/hog farm where I grew up in Benton County. All but one of them were single cylinder motors. He always said the dual cylinder Maytags were far less common.
ReplyDeleteHow he used them was pretty simple. He ran a copper wire from the spark plug to just over the edge of the horse tank. When the water level reached the end of the wire, it shorted the spark plug out and the engine died. That way once he started it he didn't have to keep going back to check on it and shut it off when the tank was full of water.
Farmer engineering?....
All The Best,
Frank W. James
I lived in the southern tier of the Poconos for a while and some of the local subsistence farmers showed me
ReplyDeletea lot.
One of the locals had a fine house, in the family for a few generations.
I believe it was since the confederates or there abouts. It featured two kitchens. One the summer had wood stove sink and a large butcher block, more if an island with shelves then a table and one wall open to the outside with screen. Didn't eat there, just cooked. There was also an inside kitchen and was the winter kitchen, wood and gas stoves both. The winter also helped heat the place. The luxury item was real running water inside both hot and cold it was installed after the depression.
Both kitchens had doors to the dining room off the north end of the house
to keep them cooler.
He also had a few hitnmiss engines,
one ran a pump for the barn animals
water. Another large sized engine with a 3ft wheel on it in what looked like a small shed to generate power if the lines were down (frequent in winter). A third was for water tank for the outside animals, it shut off when a float lifted an arm against the plug. The really cool one ran the log cutter and splitter.
All and all they had a nice place and
a very comfortable house. You can
live well with most common mid '30s conveniences. Didn't take much work to keep it that way if you didn't
mind bringing in a days wood.
This was the way it was in 1979!
Eck!
Frank - my grandfather had the same setup with a Briggs & Stratton engine for one of his pasture wells. Worked great unless the cows pushed the wire out of position...then the engine ran until the fuel tank ran dry.
ReplyDeleteMost of the older houses featured 14 to 20 foot ceilings, and very tall double hung windows. Pull the upper sash down, and you had a very nice chimney, pulling welcome cool air through the screen door and out the window. So the old time kitchen was not unbearably hot.
ReplyDeleteIt was another story in winter. It was a good thing cutting wood warmed you twice. Because you could keep the stove cherry red without thawing the milk.
Stranger
It looks like your state fair is a lot better than our. We went last year; the thing was mostly food booths. Nothing like the last time a I went a few (well, more than a few) years ago.
ReplyDeleteDoes this mean a possible mini-burro at Roseholme?
ReplyDeleteLots of cool old stuff in your pics. Maybe with the economy, we should pay more attention to the way things used to be!
When it comes to small four-legged critters, I prefer kids to colts, just because goats are funny-lookin. (and excellent company)
ReplyDeleteYep, its a washing machine. Grandma had one when they came out,' cause she was tired of using the old scrub board and tub to wash clothes for Her, Grandpa and their nine kids, my Mom being one of them. LOTS of clothes line around the house, and you couldn't walk through the basement in the Winter because of all the wet laundry.
ReplyDeleteWatched an Amish friend of my MIL (in the Finger Lakes region of NY) using a washer just like that the other day. They're permitted (apparently) to use gasoline motors of a certain vintage for selected tasks, but no electricity.
ReplyDelete