Many years ago now, I wrote a piece on what was then a 75 year old Toastmaster toaster that I'd rescued from the Goodwill discard bin and fixed up to use every day. It's by far the best toaster of the half-dozen or so we have these days. It was in storage in California for the past 9 years since we moved to New Mexico and it was one of the odds and ends that we had delivered here when we cleaned out the storage unit on what was probably my last trip to California last month.
And we've been using it to make toast pretty much every day since it arrived here.
It's a remarkable yet simple machine that in its day was very expensive. It's heavy -- certainly heavy compared to any toaster on the home market today. The cord is fabric wrapped and very sturdy, but when I picked the toaster out of the Goodwill bin the plug had been cut off and I had to find and attach a new one. It works fine now.
This toaster seems to work a little differently than more recent ones, and truth to tell, it makes better toast. Here's how I think this toasting miracle is accomplished:
The bread goes in the slots like any other toaster, but you have to push hard on the black lever there to make it go down, wind up the clock work and start the electric heating elements. The heating elements are encased in mica rather than being exposed, and they start to heat slowly rather than all at once. During the toasting cycle, the clockwork ticks cheerfully, and the lever slowly rises as time passes, but the toast stays in place till the end of the cycle. As the timer counts down, the heating elements get hotter and redder, till at the end of the cycle, they are cherry red and then the toast pops up done perfectly.
This perfection is, I think, accomplished by heating the bread before toasting it, and only toasting the outside of each slice at the very end of the cycle rather than toasting the bread through and through during the whole cycle -- which can dry out the bread and make it crispier and harder than ideal.
At least that's my theory of what's happening.
All I can say further is that the toast we make -- again -- in this toaster is good. Better than the toast from any other toaster we have or have ever had.
The picture above is from a 1954 home decoration volume. The room is similar in size and layout to our Library in New Mexico, the desk and the desk lamp are very similar too, as is the upholstered armchair. The far wall has two doors in our Library, though, one of which gives access to the closet. And there are no book shelves on the far wall; they are on the long walls as well as the outside wall. There is, of course, no sofa. We have many more books in our Library than are shown in this picture. We also have many more pictures on the walls, mostly prints and posters.
During the last few weeks, I've been continuing with the long term project of clearing out the house in California for the eventual permanent move to New Mexico.
The most recent project in New Mexico was getting a horse fence put up, and I don't know even now if it was ever completed (though it has been paid for.) Our property in New Mexico has never been fenced, at least not near the house according to all the signs and the neighbors, so it was kind of exciting to them when I said we were going to put up a horse fence to enclose our little patch of ground. Not that we're getting a horse any time soon. Maybe a goat?
Of course, getting the fence done -- at all -- was the issue. It always is in New Mexico. I would refer readers to the Journal of a Mud House by Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant for pointers on how... complicated... it can be to have something done in New Mexico.
At any rate, the last I heard, the fence was almost done, and it looked great from the pictures I saw, so I'm not about to fuss too much over the length of time it took and the difficulty it was to get it done.
Some have asked what kind of place we have in NM, since I've said it is adobe but I've been at some pains to explain that it does not partake of the wide spread "Santa Fe Style." After all, our place was built in about 1900, well before the flat-roofed and mud-plastered Pueblo Revival Style was officially adopted in Santa Fe. It's "style", such as it is, is late Victorian, actually almost neo-Colonial in some respects, but very, very simple.
It was one of the first houses in the area, and it is supposed to be the house where Toney Anaya grew up (though I don't believe it myself). When he was a boy, he said, the house where he grew up had dirt floors, no indoor plumbing, and no electricity. I've combed over this house many times, and it's simply impossible that there was no plumbing and no electricity fifty or sixty years ago when Toney Anaya was a boy. There are remnants of old plumbing fixtures and piping in one of the closets -- in what I'm sure was formerly the kitchen -- and there is knob and tube wiring in much of the house that had to have been put in during the early part of the 20th Century. There were porcelain light fixtures in two of the bedrooms that looked to be from the '20's or maybe '30's, there was fancy patterned linoleum from the '30's at the latest on one of the floors, and much of the original woodwork clearly dates from the early 1900's. Old fashioned baseboards are at the current floor level, and the floors are wood, some of it fine, some of it kind of sketchy. It appears the wood floors, too, date from very early in the house's history. Toney Anaya was born in 1941, well after our house was built and the basics of plumbing and electricity and such were installed.
Nevertheless, it is quite possible -- indeed, likely -- that at first, there were no raised wooden floors, no indoor plumbing, and no electricity in this house. The current bathroom, for example, was clearly carved out of another room (now the South Bedroom), and the fixtures indicate it may have happened as late as the 1940's or 1950's. I've tried to get a sense of the sequence in which the house was built, but there have been a number of remodelings and expansions over the years, and it's hard now to be sure of what came first and what it looked like when time was. I've decided that what I call the West Wing was build first, though: essentially two 16' squares sections put together, with a flat roof, a mostly southern exposure, and a wide front porch or portal.
It was probably just two rooms, too: a kitchen/living room and a bedroom. Then -- and not long after, probably around 1910 or 1915, two more rooms were added in a wing on the east 16' wide and 40' long, fancier than the original house, and having a peaked roof. Quite a bit later, I'd say in the 1930's, the West Wing also got a peaked roof, the original kitchen was turned into two bedrooms, and part of the portal was enclosed to make a new kitchen. Then in the fifties, the whole portal was enclosed, new fixtures were put in the kitchen and bathroom, the house got a complete tin roof, and the whole was clad in white aluminum siding.
This picture is from the Google Street View. It was taken about 3 years ago, and there have been some changes since then...
The walls in most of the house are what they call "double adobe", which is to say they are about 24" thick. On the north side, they are actually thicker, about 30". Most of the windows are relatively small compared to the thickness of the walls, so you would think it might be dark inside much of the time, but not so. The light in the house is simply astonishing, takes my breath away. But then that's one of the benefits of living in the mountains (we're at about 6300 feet) and in New Mexico. "You're closer to the sun."
I made a little video last October of part of the interior, to get a feel for what it is like in there.
There are nominally 4 bedrooms and one bath, but we only use two of the bedrooms. The others -- in what was once the kitchen -- are used as a library and a storage/workroom which we call "The Jesus Room." The current entrance hall/ kitchen/dining area/laundry room were at one time outdoors. They were enclosed from the portal that went across the south side of the house. From the interior, it looks pretty good, but the construction was rough to say the least. The remodel was done in the Fifties some time, and it is pretty wonky now. Of course, that adds character!
There's a central living room and a couple of hallways, and that's pretty much it.
Even so, the house is close to twice the size of our place in California. Yet it is "too small."
Well, we have a lot of stuff, as you can see from the video, and that's only part of it. Though we are busily emptying out the house in California, it's still "full," and I haven't even started on the garage yet! We just don't like to throw things away (you never know when you might need them, as they say) and we are inveterate collectors of... things.
I think I did a post once on The Toasters. There are also The Waffle Irons. The Clothes Irons. Mixers. Record Players. Radios. Clocks. Jeebus the Clocks! The hundreds of Paintings. Books! Tens of thousands of them. Cameras. Quilts. Stuffed Animals. Globes. Vacuum cleaners (an extensive collection of Electrolux and Kirby vacs, want one?). Santos.
Most of what we have is old. We don't really buy much new, never have. What we do buy, we keep. And much of what we need and use (let alone collect) comes from thrift stores. I just got a dryer, for example, to replace the 30 year old model that died on us. Well, the one I got is probably close to that age, and it came from a used appliance store that's been a resource for us for a long time.
It seemed bizarre to me to pay $400 or $500 (or much more) for a new dryer when a perfectly good used one could be found for a fraction of the cost and with a guarantee and no-hassle delivery to boot.
The toaster we use in California every day is 75 years old (a 1934 two slice pop up toaster by Toastmaster, quite deluxe for its time) and it works wonderfully. It's beautiful, too. It looks like this one:
The one we use most in New Mexico is only about 60 years old, and it's not nearly as good looking. The Sunbeam Radiant, model T-35. It looks like this one:
The waffle iron we use on weekends in California is said to be the first automatic thermostatically controlled waffle iron introduced in 1931 by Hotpoint. It is identical to this one:
I had to repair it as the internal asbestos covered wiring had deteriorated, but it was a fairly easy task when I cannibalized wiring from a much newer model that was otherwise useless.
The waffle iron we use in New Mexico most often is an early model Universal dometop, just like this one:
Love that nickel plating. And it actually makes better waffles than the fancy chromium 1931 Hotpoint in California. And both of them make better waffles than the new model Belgian Waffle Makers.
Our coffee is brewed in several brands of percolators or in Silex vaccuum coffee makers like the ones in this ad:
We have lots of different mixers. This model is perhaps the earliest Sunbeam in the house (identical to the picture, except we don't have the jade green smaller bowl, but we do have other accessories including the meat chopper.)
We don't actually use it. A couple of other later model Sunbeam Mixmasters are set up to use, and a mid-sixties Hamilton Beach hand mixer gets the hardest work out because it is so convenient.
I could go on. We have several dial phones in New Mexico, one or two of which I think are hooked up (or were -- I may have undone them to set up the wireless internet. One forgets!) There are 6 chrome frame dining chairs, but no table yet, that are intended for the patio that we haven't had time to build in New Mexico.
You get the picture.
I've thought about all this Old Stuff we've got -- some of which I bought intending to sell during the Boom Times when all sorts of "collectibles" were salable in a twinkling for a good deal of money -- and recognized more than a simple pattern. Much of it, obviously, is evocative of my childhood, stuff we might not have actually had back then. We didn't have a stand mixer, for example. Instead, my mother used a hand-cranked egg beater -- much as her mother had used. There was no coffee maker until I was an adult (coffee didn't agree with my parental units), and I think the first ones I bought were the early "Mr. Coffee" drip models, so I had no idea how much better a percolator makes coffee, let alone the subtleties of vaccuum coffee, until I tried them for myself.
Some of the furniture in both the house in California and in New Mexico are antiques that I bought almost 40 years ago to furnish an apartment in Santa Maria that we were renting unfurnished for the summer. The pieces were late 19th/early 20th Century, imported from England or France, and they were at the time very cheap. We've hauled them from place to place ever since, and some of them are in desperate need of repair (one day, I keep saying, one day!)
In the interim, we've picked up some Mission Oak pieces, mostly tables, along with a few pieces of mahogany (a desk, bookshelves, dining furniture.) When I was a child, there were some Mission pieces in our home, a library table, a chest of drawers), and so I tend to be attracted to similar pieces when I see them. There was no mahogany (my mother preferred maple) but mahogany was very stylish among the Better Off when I was young whereas maple was considered "common." (Which, BTW, was no shame.)
I know I bought a 1942 Philco radio because it reminded me of the one in our house when I was little. Evoking childhood is a constant among collectors. I may or may not have said on this blog that the first car I had was a 1950 Packard Convertible like this one:
And the first car I bought was a 1951 Buick Roadmaster just like this:
(As an explanation, the first car I remember we had was a Packard, and my mother's best friend when I was little was the widow of the town's Buick dealer. Talk about evocations of childhood! Well!)
The question is, when does "collecting" become "hoarding?" You would think it's not a fine line, but I think it is. You "know" what hoarding is because there are shows on the teevee that demonstrate it and provides "treatment" for the victims (and plenty of judgmental blame, too) and we all know people like that. Extensive "collecting" such as we do becomes "hoarding" when it becomes overwhelming, chaotically taking over every square inch of living space. Well, maybe it's not that simple.
We have lots more collections than the ones I've described here; coins, music industry stuff from various eras (mostly the '60's), lamps, sewing machines...
While I can cheerfully dispose of things and do -- give them away, donate them, or sell them -- more stuff always seems to "show up" to take the place of what's been disposed of. So there's a constant level of stuff round about. And it is always more than is necessary, more than can be enjoyed or displayed simultaneously, too. We have no more wall space for all the paintings, for example, so more than half is in storage at any given time.
Of course while the stuff is being sorted or when we don't take the time to find places to put the various items, it can -- and does -- pile up. THAT can easily be interpreted as a "hoarding" scenario. The "pile" can grow, to the point where, at least temporarily, it is overwhelming.
And what do you do then? When the stuff is overwhelming, the answer is to leave it, at least for a while, and get on with something else. And that's where people who sit in judgement of "hoarders" may have no idea what's going on with them and don't bother to trouble themselves to find out. Judgement of them (and their possessions) is the far more important matter. A chaotic pile of unsorted stuff must be condemned simply because it's there and the owners of it aren't doing anything with it (except perhaps making the pile higher.)
I disagree, obviously.
You get to it when you can. And that may take quite a while given all the other matters one is expected to attend to right now.
Though we don't have cable teevee at either house, I have seen a couple of the "hoarding" shows online, and they tend to trouble me. The people who have been profiled in the shows I've seen seem to be buried in "stuff," and yet listening to them, it's clear enough that even if they recognize that the "stuff" has taken over their lives and sometimes burdens them so much they cannot even move from room to room in their houses, they are just trying to get by the best they can, burdened as they are. For whatever reason, their process of getting by is never recognized in the programs I've seen; instead, they are treated as if they were some kind of monsters. And they are not. In the shows I've seen, the people profiled are some of the kindest, sweetest people I think I've ever seen on teevee. They are harmless and are harming no one.
They are overwhelmed, to be sure. But oddly, the therapists sent in by the programs to "help" never think to help lighten the burden these people carry. Instead, they make it worse, deliberately and in some cases with malice. It's no wonder that "hoarders" wind up even more deeply depressed and suicidal when they are faced with such... "help."
Lightening the burden is not necessarily getting rid of the stuff, for that process can be horrifying and painful in the extreme for some of these people. Their "stuff" is symptomatic of the burden; it is not the literal burden itself. In many cases, the "stuff" is comforting.
Some of the therapists seem to understand that intellectually, but they cannot for the life of them act on their intellectual understanding to help these people emotionally. They don't even try. The only thing they are interested in is forcing the victims of hoarding disorder to get rid of the stuff that is overwhelming their homes.
Which can lead to panic, deeper depression, suicidal thoughts or actions, or simply rejection of assistance/treatment.
What is the point of that? Of course: entertainment for those who are convinced they are better than the people depicted on these shows.
Sigh.
We have come so far, it seems, but have so far yet to go...
From time to time, I've mentioned my acquisitive nature. I have what some might consider to be strange collecting urges. One of them is toasters.
There are only five or maybe ten of them split between the two houses, all popup models, all more or less functional, but this one is my favorite by far.
It's a 1934 Toastmaster popup toaster, model 1 B 4, sturdy and heavy as a Volvo, and chromed to within an inch of its Deco life.
When I got it out of one of the discard bins at the Goodwill, the plug had been cut off and the clockwork that runs the popup mechanism was frozen, but with a new plug and some gentle coaxing (together with several burnt offerings) I was able to get it to make toast, and we've used it every day since.
Unlike most toasters -- and pretty much all modern ones -- the heating elements of this one don't get cherry red, in fact, they show almost no color at all. They're embedded in mica sheets, and the whole heating gizmos -- mica and wires together -- get toasty warm; the timing mechanism moves the bread very slowly between the heated sections, and when it's done, the toast pops up smartly -- pretty nearly perfect every time.
I'm impressed. Pretty good for a nearly seventy-five year old appliance. But then, people paid a lot of money in 1934 for this moderne marvel. I've seen ads for a similar one (not this one exactly) for $25, the equivalent of $250-300 (or more) today.
Over the years, we've accumulated quite a lot of Old Things. We use a lot of them, too. An old Electrolux model 1205 can't be beat for vacuuming the rugs. The 1942 Philco radio is the best for AM reception, and we used to use it to listen to the Air America station, until that station had an unfortunate format change. The 1935 Crosley radio still brings in excellent shortwave, though I have no idea where most of the stations originate.
Couldn't have waffles without the service of the big, square c. 1948 Knapp-Browning waffle iron, and the coffee is made in a GE/Universal 11 cup percolator that probably dates to the 1950's. The stove is an early 1960's model Kenmore.
We have typewriters... and actually use them!
Sewing machines? Sure! My favorite is a cast iron but streamlined c. 1940 Montgomery Ward rotary that was missing a bobbin case, and so was useless. I checked online and found one available, for $70, and decided to pass. Then one day when I was driving to an appointment, I passed a sewing store, and there was the same model M/W machine sitting on the sidewalk. I went in and asked for a bobbin case for it. The man was very nice, said, "Sure, I can get you one. Come back in a couple of days." Went back, and he showed me a regular bobbin case that would fit in most modern machines. I said, "No, that's not going to work. Too big. I need one that will fit a machine just like the one on the sidewalk." Hmm, he said. So we went out there, pulled the bobbin case out of the one on the sidewalk. He said, "Is that it?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "OK, you can have that one, this machine is only to get people to look when they pass by." I said, "I guess it works!" He said, "Yep!"
So I got a bobbin case for the M/W, threaded it up, and it was perfect. (Good thing I had an operator's manual, cause I could never have figured out how to thread it on my own. Of course I wouldn't say I have any sewing skills, but that's another issue.)
Seems like our perpetually dismal prognosticators (like Uber-Gloom-and-Doomer Bonddad) may get their wish -- or if not a wish, an expectation -- fulfilled. The United States economy may well be headed to a hard landing indeed, perhaps the hardest since 1929-32.
Ooops.
The signs, of course, have long been with us: unsustainable personal and corporate debt, combined with corruption levels not seen since the age of the Robber Barons, combined with war and defense spending that far outstrips anything known during the Cold War, every bit of it financed with borrowed money, borrowed from our friends in China for the most part, paid for with bonds, which now, with the collapse of the dollar on world markets, may be getting close to worthless. Needless to say, our Chinese friends may want some satisfaction.
You know just how serious this economic situation may be when the President Himself is moved to act -- by demanding that Congress pass a Stimulus Package Forthwith, consisting of more tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, and some sort of check or something to the Masses to keep them from revolting outright. You know it is serious when the Presidential Stimulus Package Directive is double that of Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama, and almost double that of Populist Presidential Candidate John Edwards. You know it is serious when even Avowed Socialist Candidate Hillary Clinton's Stimulus Package pales in comparison to the Presidential One.
You know it is serious when oil prices have fallen (at least temporarily), and surprisingly and highly uncharacteristically,gasoline prices have fallen somewhat as well. Yes, yes, the claim is made that January gas prices are "always the lowest," though given the way the petroleum markets are manipulated, that's quite an absurd observation. Time of year has been almost completely divorced from consumer petroleum price.
It's serious when banks figure out it is more in their interests to work with mortgage customers than to keep pulling the rug from under them and forcing them into foreclosure.
It's serious when Civil Society in this country begins the process of turning on the predators and looters and plunderers who insist that they have a right to profit no matter what, while the value of Civil Society's holdings plummets.
A 30% drop in real estate sales and values around here (mirrored in many other parts of the country) is starting to cause some sleepless nights among the remnants of the American Bourgeoisie. The report I saw yesterday said that real estate values in California are now about where they were in 2005, before the Boom took off. Those who didn't buy at the inflated prices after 2005 are still sitting relatively pretty, but millions upon millions did buy -- and they were not necessarily fools to do so -- and are now sitting on swiftly depreciating assets.
Unemployment is rising and is expected to keep rising at least through the first quarter of 2008; how convenient for electoral politics. But high unemployment means the economic slump is sent into a worsening spiral. Few people working means less consumer spending, which fuels more unemployment, and so on.
The only bright side right now is that interest rates are not expected to rise. At least not in the short term. They may fall to rates not seen for some time. But the effects of Federal Reserve rate cuts under Bernanke seems to be the opposite of the Greenspan years.
In other words, there may be deeper flaws in the economy than the Usual Actions can remedy.
All of which has long been predicted, but the upshot of the Coming Crash is still a Mystery.
Sara Robinson over at Orcinus has been blogging on the impending 2008 catastrophe since the beginning of the year. She's said quite a bit about it, and the following struck me as key:
The upshot of all this is that we're at a point where it's all up for grabs. When the center fails to hold, the right to define the new reality belongs to whoever can move in their first with a big, compelling idea, and get people to start organizing around it. It's a moment of creative chaos that's bursting with new energy and tremendous potential -- for those who are ready to jump in there and lead.
These have always been the moments when progressives throughout history were able to make their biggest gains -- to seize entire nations, and drag them off in radically new directions. The future belongs to the group that gets there first, with the best plan and the biggest vision. If we miss this one, none of us are likely to live to see another chance like it again.
But, as usual, opportunity comes with the potential for crisis. The churn of change also leads to vast economic and political dislocations that provide perfect conditions for authoritarian movements, too. Alongside all the other problems bearing down on us, that's a very real risk that we need to keep at the front of our minds. If we don't step up and fill that yawning hole with something that brings out the best in people, inspiring them toward hope and progress -- well, then, you can bet that somebody else, selling a very different future, will get there first with something that will bring out the worst, and drive them toward madness and death. Either way, our grandchildren will be living with the consequences a century hence. It's not a moment we can afford to screw up.
As some people have pointed out, the economic mess we're headed into has been predicted for years, and actions to stave off the worst of it have been proposed from the sidelines for as long, but nothing substantive has been done. Awaiting the Presidential Command?
Or is it something else? Some hesitation about getting ahead of any curve, of being out of step with the mainstream, or of not being heard?
Now that government and candidate proposals are out there, they all seem to be too little, way too late, and, unfortunately tilted to saving the rotting asses of corporations and the upper classes while throwing what amount to scraps to the Masses. All dedicated to preserving the Palace Culture and the status quo, even though all of it may be swept away in a tide of Change like we've never seen before.
It's not so much that our Rulers are clueless (which, unfortunately, they are and they demonstrate every day), it is more that they are Rulers, and most of them have no business being in that position.
A Change is [Surely] Gonna Come.
But who will lead it? Or will it come, finally, from The People themselves?
"A Change Gon' Come" is Barack Obama's theme song, and on him has been put the dreams and aspirations of millions of Americans. He speaks such a positive and hopeful message, yet his proposals have a distinctly right wing cast to them, and in that, I see echoes of John F Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt, both of whom ran to the right of their Republican rivals on many issues, won the Presidency, and governed more from the left, especially so in the case of Roosevelt.
