Day 7 was an exciting day. Though the weather was overcast it wasn't too bad. We visited the Baldwin County Heritage Museum. It's a very exciting little place you don't want to miss if you visit the coast. A little out of the way, it makes a very convenient day trip. It's plenty close enough to the beach you can get their after breakfast, see everything, and still be back in time for lunch.
Outside they preserved this old wooden pipe. It's more like a gutter really but functions well.
There were old-time tools of every description and this "Pause that refreshes."
My Aunt had one of these old wind-up record players. I think they were called "Gramophones."
She had an old recording from back in the 1920s named "What Would Robinson Crusoe Do With Friday On Saturday Night."
eI once had an old pump organ like this my aunt bought for me when I was learning to play piano at age 12. I never learned much of reading music but my friends and I had loads of fun playing the old thing. My grandmother played an old instrument just like this in church.
Now here's a fine coach you don't see every day. This would be an early version of a bus.
And these are examples of old axes. Notice the broad axe on the right.
Another broad axe and a "broad" hatchet. I have one just like this passed down from my father. it doubtless once belonged to his family. Behind it is what dad used to call a "foot adze." They didn't have much sawn lumber and sued felled trees wherever they could in home construction. My grandfather's home used such trees for floor joists. Dad and his brothers had to level them with an adze until they were flat enough to nail a sub-floor over them.
I think they said this was some sort of mechanical potato peeler.
Below is an old wagon loaded with "truck." In his autobiography, my dad's
cousin James Alfred wrote of truck farming as it was called in the old days:
I was born in Talladega, Ala, July 14, 1915... When I was five years of age,
we moved from Bessemer to the Mississippi gulf coast... The place was located
about 3 1/2 miles north of Gulfport, Miss... My Mother & Dad cared for the
place, remodeled the house and began truck farming...
I remember going with my dad on Saturday to Gulfport and selling turnip
greens, eggs, and whatever vegetables we had. This was our only source
of income. We of course went to town, as we called it, in a wagon. Very
few people had any type of automobile in those days. We would get up
and leave home around 3 A.M. so we could be in town about day break...
We purchased our first car (Model T Ford) in 1926. It was a second hand
car made in 1921. My dad paid $500 for it. This car enabled us to leave home
around 5 A.M. and get our selling done, then get home before 3 P.M. most times.
The placard says the latern was made for wagons and had a red lens that faced to the rear.
My first wife's great-aunts used to cook on an old stove just like this one.
An example of some of the produce that was grown in the county back in the days when most business was agricultural.
Millet and oranges. Not sure why they were placed together.
Before there were tillers there were one-row garden-tractors like this one.
Looks like ice tongs but tongs were also used in logging to pick up logs or rails and hold them securely. My dad used wedges just like these to split trees he cut from our property and make fence posts. I was just a small boy too little to handle a sledge hammer. I remember how tought it was for dad to drive the steel wedges through the large trees splitting them. And they were only soft pine.
Can you imagine what it was like splitting hardwoods? How hard would it be if, instead of a steel wedge and steel hammer, your hammer (called a 'beetle') and wedge was made of wood also? Maybe that's what Joseph Smith was talking about when he described how difficult something was. He said it was,
"like splitting hemlock knots with a corn-dodger for a wedge and a pumpkin for a beetle!" Hahahaha!
More old tools.
How long has it been since you've seen a minnow bucket like this one? How about that Post Office box?
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