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3511. judithathome - 1/20/2006 2:54:28 AM Luckily, we have a 1950s stove that is all gas...even with the electricity in the crapper, this baby cooks! 3512. Macnas - 1/20/2006 10:55:34 AM My Mam replaced her 30 something yr old gas cooker before Christmas. It was going fine but the jets had degraded and there were no replacements available anymore. I looked at them and told her that her admirable idea of getting them made would cost her 500 or so, so she sighed long and sadly and the old cooker was placed, with some reverence I might add, in a corner of the workshop.
So. off she goes to buy a new one. They are all shoddy in comparison, but eventually she gets one she thinks is suitable. When it comes it's missing a fitting at the back, the retailers have included instead a note to say that one of their gas fitters must be called (and paid of course) to complete the installation.
Snorting at this naked gougery, my Mam is throwing a fit, so I wander off to a hardware shop I know, a place where you can buy a bag of flux powder, 6 horseshoe nails and a hessian bag to carry them in. I get the fitting, (and pick up a 12 inch cakeboard while I'm there, as I know Mam needs one) and on my return I complete the installation and connect it up.
Just after Christmas the electricity goes off for a day or so, and as the ignition on the cooker is electric, it's back to good old ships matches, the long timber ones she always used. The oven however, is difficult, as trying to light it with a match would result in your hand and forearm being engulfed in blue flame, as the igniter is at the back of the oven, and is a bit of a reach.
What does she produce but a taper! I haven't seen these things in many years, and watching it being produced from what looks to be a 1940's cardboard packet takes me back to her childhood, never mind my own.
Just goes to show I suppose, when the modern things in your life fail, have some of the simpler things that work all on their own put by.
3513. PelleNilsson - 1/20/2006 12:29:51 PM I had to look up 'taper'. I don't think I have ever seen one. 3514. Macnas - 1/20/2006 1:49:16 PM Ah you have. 3515. Macnas - 1/20/2006 1:52:33 PM It's the long thin waxed wick, used for lighting church candles and the like. About 5mm in diameter, and up to 300mm long. 3516. PelleNilsson - 1/20/2006 6:49:17 PM No, Macnas. Merriam-Webster has
a: a slender candle
b: a long waxed wick used especially for lighting candles, lamps, pipes, or fires
c: a feeble light
My English-Swedish dictionary has (a) and (c), but not (b).
It must be one of those Popish devices we got rid of 400+ years ago.
3517. Macnas - 1/20/2006 7:31:47 PM My description was pretty much on the money!
Got rid of 'em eh? Proper order too.
See you next week. 3518. Ms. No - 1/20/2006 7:36:43 PM We used red-neck tapers to re-light the pilot on our water heater. That's a large page of newspaper rolled diagonally from corner to corner and then lit on one end. The tight roll limits the amount of oxygen so it burns slowly and you can extend the long paper stick into places you can't reach with regular matches. 3519. wonkers2 - 1/20/2006 7:54:39 PM Hello, Pelle. I recently visited my sister in Tucson and we went through a trunk full of family pictures, letters, etc. One of the most interesting items I found was a hand-written copy of my paternal grandmother's 1903, Stromsberg, Nebraska, high school valedictorian speech. It was entitled "Labor" and had the ring of a sermon or what I imagine as a late 19th century Swedish socialist tract. Her speech no doubt echoed what she heard in church and from her family and Swedish-American community. Samples:
There is dignity in labor, that of the hand as well as that of the mind. All labor that tends to supply man's wants, to increase man's happiness and to elevate man's nature is honorable....All that we enjoy as civilized and enlightened beings, we owe to the labors of those who have lived before us. One generation has lived and labored and brought the arts to a certain stage of development. They then die and the next generation enter into their labors and take up the work of civilization where they left it off. So the fruits of toil are perpetuated and all the grand privileges, high opportunities and glorious liberties of these later days are but the results of labors performed and battles won all along from the world's morning until now.
...it is no disgrace to labor but rather a dignity and honor. There is no reason why the so-called laboring classes, should be looked on as inferior classes, unless it be that ignorance and evil habits have laid upon them their accumulated disgraces...
It is the great question that agitates our great nation today and many and varied are the reasons given for the enmity between Labor and Capital...These two forces must work together...The true point of antagonism lies between the employer and employed and there is error on both sides...
But these facts alone do not account for the dissatisfaction of the laboring man. The knowledge that wealth brings social power, position, luxuries and influence to which the worker remains a stranger, rankles in his breast. He is born with passions, ambitions, hopes and emotions; but he sees that to all intents and purposes, he and his children must be shut out from association with the rich and influential. This arouses a feeling harder to control than the knowledge that he does not receive a just compensation for his daily labor. The capitalist in his greedy desire for wealth does not attempt to improve the condition of his employees but taxes them to the limit of their strength...
Then let us remember that although the industrial world is agitated today, yet we must labor if we wish to succeed, for today it is the man who is not afraid to work and who is full of energy that succeeds and makes his way in the world, and if we would avoid the temptations that beset us and lead useful, happy lives, then we must work for labor is rest from the sorrows that greet us; rest from all petty vexations that meet us; rest from sin promptings that ever entreat us; rest from world sirens that lure us to ill. Work and pure slumbers shall wait on thy pillow. Work, then shalt ride over Care's coming billow. Lie not down wearied neath woes weeping willow, but work with a stout heart and a resolute will.
Ruth Ethel Malm, Age 17, June 1, 1903 3520. PelleNilsson - 1/21/2006 6:46:35 PM I don't think it is inspired by any socialist tract. Socialism is about the class struggle and the need to overthrow capitalism, but the speech is about class cooperation. It also shows a von oben perspective on the working class.
To the extent that your grandmother's speech is the fruit of any political idea it would rather be what we now call corporatism, the notion that the working class and the capitalists can work together in harmony for their common good under the paternal guidance of the state.
The best-known example of a corporatist state is Italy under Mussolini. But it would be wrong to think of it as a fascist idea per se. It can - and has been - argued that all the countries in north-western Europe are more or less corporatist.
3521. PelleNilsson - 1/21/2006 7:38:24 PM We, too went through some old stuff and this class photo from 1951 or -52 surfaced.
Over the years I have posted many photos of myself at various ages. You should be able to pinpoint my position on the photo. Can you? Click on the pic for a larger version. 3522. wonkers2 - 1/21/2006 7:46:48 PM I'm aware of the definition of socialism and your observation is correct that her theme was more one of cooperation than overthrow. I hesitate to hold forth on Sweden in a discussion with you, but I seem to recall hearing Sweden's political/economic system referred to as democratic socialism or welfare capitalism. Whatever it's called, it didn't work out as a struggle to overthrow capitalism. I'm sure my grandmother didn't make up the speech out of thin air, but rather from what she heard in the Swedish-American community around the turn of the century. Your characterization of her theme as more one of cooperation than overthrow albeit with a class conscious overtone. Her father worked with his hands as a carpenter and cabinet maker. Her maternal grandfather as we previously discussed was a ship captain/farmer (not a ship owner) which I'm guessing was considered lower-middle class? 3523. robertjayb - 1/21/2006 8:09:24 PM The kid with the beanie seated to the left of the group. 3524. wonkers2 - 1/21/2006 8:31:16 PM And I doubt seriously that there were any Italians in Stromsburg at the turn of the last century or this century for that matter! 3525. judithathome - 1/21/2006 9:21:31 PM Pelle was into hats at a very young age, evidently! 3526. RickNelson - 1/21/2006 9:26:09 PM either that kid with the hat or the one looking with a side glance. 3527. alistairConnor - 1/21/2006 9:48:12 PM I'm thinking the little blond kid, dead centre. 3528. Marc-Albert - 1/21/2006 9:53:35 PM Has to be the boy in the back row, far left, looking at the photographer with amused skepticism. 3529. PelleNilsson - 1/21/2006 10:10:31 PM No hit so far. Tomorrow I may post a hint. 3530. alistairConnor - 1/21/2006 10:14:06 PM That's an invitation for a second guess... on reflection, you're the one to the left of the stern-looking teacher, beside the beanie boy.
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