A different sort of stash
- Thread starter BarleyBop
- Start date
BarleyBop
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2022
- Messages
- 459
... here is a bit of local history, we uncovered this newspaper spread from 1942 when we were renovating the house.
It was fused to the floorboards, probably at the time the shed attached to the back of the house was converted into a kitchen.
Poignant, trying to put a positive spin, for new brides after all, but between the lines, "... many couples, especially if he is in the service, are choosing the double ring option, an engagement ring for now, and the wedding ring later, when you can better afford it (and he makes it back)"
photographed it before pulling up the floorboards. Turned out the joists were no longer seated in the original rubble wall foundation, and many were cracked!
It was fused to the floorboards, probably at the time the shed attached to the back of the house was converted into a kitchen.
Poignant, trying to put a positive spin, for new brides after all, but between the lines, "... many couples, especially if he is in the service, are choosing the double ring option, an engagement ring for now, and the wedding ring later, when you can better afford it (and he makes it back)"
photographed it before pulling up the floorboards. Turned out the joists were no longer seated in the original rubble wall foundation, and many were cracked!
OldManModeler
Active Member
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2024
- Messages
- 132
Love it! Keep it coming @BarleyBop !
OldManModeler
Active Member
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2024
- Messages
- 132
Went to my mom's funeral last year.
Learned some things about history.
Edit: I removed the content. Too personal for the WEB. Sorry.
Be well. Model on.
Eric
Learned some things about history.
Edit: I removed the content. Too personal for the WEB. Sorry.
Be well. Model on.
Eric
Last edited:
OldManModeler
Active Member
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2024
- Messages
- 132
Semper Fidelis!
OldManModeler
Active Member
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2024
- Messages
- 132
Please keep posting this history!!
Nothing weird, it is History. We may all be mandated by a dictatorship to type in Japanese or German if the boys didn't go fight!
Last edited:
BarleyBop
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2022
- Messages
- 459
Thanks for the stories from your lives.
Real history isn't in books.
It's not on the internet.
It's in the stories and memories that we share with our families, our friends and our neighbours.
... and our hobby gives voice to some of those stories.
Real history isn't in books.
It's not on the internet.
It's in the stories and memories that we share with our families, our friends and our neighbours.
... and our hobby gives voice to some of those stories.
OldManModeler
Active Member
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2024
- Messages
- 132
@BarleyBop , Real History is at home. But what you are showing us in the thread is THE NEXT BEST genuine article for history buffs!
Thank you.
BarleyBop
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2022
- Messages
- 459
No worries.
Military history is a special category of interest.
It can quickly become personal for a lot of people.
But I understand.
A very good friend of mine in his eighties put things in perspective: he was sent to an internment camp for Japanese Canadians out west; for a little boy it was an adventure; his parents lost everything.
In Canada, the French/English split was a very real thing. The 'Two Solitudes'.
My dad's father could not serve.
My mom's father would not serve.
The one from Cape Breton, and sidelined for the Great War. Not a lot of love for what was perceived by his generation in the maritimes as a shameful relegation of duty by some French Canadians, resulting in more of their numbers brought up to the front, they believed.
The other listened to the Priests who proclaimed from the pulpit that it was an English War, a Protestant war, an unholy war, that we had no business there and to go into the deep woods and lumber camps.
When my dad fell for the French canadian girl of his dreams, those two men were destined to meet.
I saw them together; they were both family men of integrity, and they became friends.
I heard them laugh, and felt their eyes on me: from the one I learned the love of music, language and art; from the other, how to build with my hands and the satisfaction of seeing plants grow, of trying to understand how things work.
Jakko
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2024
- Messages
- 384
I had to go find the money I had left from my only trip to Canada in 1998 for that to be useful, though
Marauder1981
New Member
- Joined
- Mar 15, 2024
- Messages
- 5
Thank you so much for sharing these pictures. You have a collection worthy of any museum and I hope you'll preserve these historic artifacts with great care. Few things impress me more than the type of media you shared - incredible history! Thank you!!
BarleyBop
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2022
- Messages
- 459
Haha, sorry Jakko, I wasn't thinking of you when I took the photo in the winter of 2021! And never would have imagined I'd be showing this stuff to all of you!
I have a little box in a drawer somewhere as well, with 'travel' coins and currency from a time when half your trip spent was exchanging traveller's cheques and US greenbacks for cash!
BarleyBop
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2022
- Messages
- 459
While I'm at it, I also found a photo I know will get the attention of @urumomo
The house was built in 1876 or thereabouts, and in the walls are buried just about every Canadian residential technology since then!
Everything from pipes used for steam heat, knob and tubes (not functional electrical), the grounding cable leading from the roof (and lightening rods I presume), cast iron, lead, galvanized, copper and plastic plumbing, dressed and non-dressed lumber, ceramic and porcelain, layers of paint and wall paper. Leaded glass and some window panes so thin I wondered how they hadn't shattered, single and double hung windows, counterweights and pulleys still in the frames.
A clawfoot 66" tub from 1903.
More crumbling plaster lath than I want to talk about. (at least it was laced with horse hair and not asbestos!)
30 foot long solid joists, probably milled just down the hill when Ottawa was a booming lumber town! The Empire had a ravenous appetite for wood, and Ottawa sits at the confluence of three rivers.
It occurred to me that a lot of the wood would have been from old growth forest, given the dimensions and time period.
So the house was ancient, even before it was completed! I digress.
There were cracks visible in the original cast iron sanitary pipes, and other short bits of galvanized and lead would have to go.
I get called to the not so deep, but very dark basement by the plumbers (we call it the dungeon), to have a look at this:
A bunch of affable lads, they wondered: "WTF"?
Judging by wire leads and cathodes, my guess was batteries!
They were tucked up under the floor (yes, some of the subfloor planks are up to 15 inches wide), unnoticed by me since 2003, when I first bought the house.
Unfortunately, they crumpled and cracked when they were disturbed.
So glad I was there to take the photo!
I think they may have been refillable with the appropriate liquids, and possibly powered a few dim light bulbs, or an early telephone?
Mystery unsolved.
Cheers!
The house was built in 1876 or thereabouts, and in the walls are buried just about every Canadian residential technology since then!
Everything from pipes used for steam heat, knob and tubes (not functional electrical), the grounding cable leading from the roof (and lightening rods I presume), cast iron, lead, galvanized, copper and plastic plumbing, dressed and non-dressed lumber, ceramic and porcelain, layers of paint and wall paper. Leaded glass and some window panes so thin I wondered how they hadn't shattered, single and double hung windows, counterweights and pulleys still in the frames.
A clawfoot 66" tub from 1903.
More crumbling plaster lath than I want to talk about. (at least it was laced with horse hair and not asbestos!)
30 foot long solid joists, probably milled just down the hill when Ottawa was a booming lumber town! The Empire had a ravenous appetite for wood, and Ottawa sits at the confluence of three rivers.
It occurred to me that a lot of the wood would have been from old growth forest, given the dimensions and time period.
So the house was ancient, even before it was completed! I digress.
There were cracks visible in the original cast iron sanitary pipes, and other short bits of galvanized and lead would have to go.
I get called to the not so deep, but very dark basement by the plumbers (we call it the dungeon), to have a look at this:
A bunch of affable lads, they wondered: "WTF"?
Judging by wire leads and cathodes, my guess was batteries!
They were tucked up under the floor (yes, some of the subfloor planks are up to 15 inches wide), unnoticed by me since 2003, when I first bought the house.
Unfortunately, they crumpled and cracked when they were disturbed.
So glad I was there to take the photo!
I think they may have been refillable with the appropriate liquids, and possibly powered a few dim light bulbs, or an early telephone?
Mystery unsolved.
Cheers!
