Mogul This and Mogul That

Powerful "Moguls" of days gone by

Vintage image of a Mogul tractor  from dok1 

In 2013, the word "mogul" has a vaguely negative feel to it. We might speak of "shipping moguls" or "manufacturing moguls", meaning the powerful people who control those industries. But a hundred years ago, "mogul" was a positive word, often used as a brand name for powerful machines and equipment.

 Mogul Motor Trucks were manufactured in St. Louis and in Chicago.  The Mogul  Street Sprinkling Truck was probably made by that company. And certain large locomotives were called moguls.

Mogul 1629 locomotive. Image by tkksummers. Gene
Autry purchased this Mogul 1629 after it was retired
 from a long life of of service on the rails. It  was used
in several Western movies and shows. You may
remember seeing it on "Gunsmoke" or "Wyatt Earp."

Mogul tractors with kerosene engines were manufactured by the International Harvester Company of Chicago, Illinois, through 1924. (If you enjoy mechanical curiosities, watch this YouTube video:  Harry Henderson starting his old Mogul tractor.)

I've written several times on this blog about the hard-working Mogul Wagons that were manufactured in Hopkinsville, KY from the 1870s through 1925. Production was halted by a fire that destroyed the factory, but the Forbes Brothers sold their remaining inventory of Mogul wagons, wheels, axels, and other parts for another 25 years.

Moguls didn't always live up to the promise of their name. The Mogul Steamship Company is mainly remembered for a court case in England that concerned it. The Mogul Mining Company was declared a poor investment by a financial adviser of 1920.

How to look and feel like a Mogul yourself? Just light up a Mogul cigarette! (Ugh. I have a feeling they were terribly strong.)

The following definitions are from a dictionary of the period, The Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary of 1913

Mogul \Mo*gul"\, n. [From the Mongolian.]
1. A person of the Mongolian race.
2. (Railroad) A heavy locomotive for freight traffic, having three
pairs of connected driving wheels and a two-wheeled truck.

Mogul \Mo*gul"\, n.
A great personage; magnate; autocrat.

Related:
Mogul Wagons from Hopkinsville sold in Mississippi, North Carolina

Books To Keep

Sorting through the juvenile fiction

We have come to the point in our house where we need another bookcase -- or fewer books. Unless I happen to find a cheap, good-quality, used bookcase, I always feel morally obligated to build one. So I decided to spare myself that task (and the challenge of finding a place in the house for another bookcase, once built.)

I sorted through most of our juvenile fiction, discarding duplicate titles, lesser works, extremely worn books, etc., and now I have a large, very heavy box of kid books sitting on the kitchen floor, waiting to go to the Salvation Army thrift shop.

But before I take it, I will let both Keely and Isaac see if they want to keep anything from it. These are books that accumulated during their childhood years.

I also made a list of the books I decided to keep. I have quite a habit of looking through any used books I find. If I have a list with me on my tablet as I'm looking, at least maybe I won't buy a duplicate book.

Here are the keepers. Note: this is not a list of all the great books I think kids should read. It's just a list of what's on my bookshelves tonight. I notice a sad deficiency in Mary Poppins and Little House books. Keely says that's because she and Isaac wore them out so thoroughly when they were kids. Also, no Little Women!

Well, I can't own them all. Not without more bookcases...

• Allen, Philip Schuyler: King Arthur and His Knights, A Noble and Joyous History
• Bowman, James Cloyd: Pecos Bill
• Cameron, Eleanor: Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet
• Cleary, Beverly: Beezus and Ramona
• Colder, Soon: Artemis Fowl
• Dahl, Ronald: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• Dahl, Ronald: James and the Giant Peach
• Dodge, Mary Mapes: Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates
• Estes, Eleanor: The Middle Moffat
• Estes, Eleanor: The Moffats
• Forbes, Esther: Johnny Tremain
• Graham, Kenneth: The Wind in the Willows
• Hale, Shannon: The Princess Academy
• Krumgold, Joseph: Onion John
• L'Engle, Madeleine: A Swiftly Tilting Planet
• L'Engle, Madeleine: A Wind in the Door
• L'Engle, Madeleine: A Wrinkle in Time
• Lawson, Robert: Rabbit Hill
• Lear, Edward: Nonsense Book
• Lofting, Hugh: Doctor Doolittle
• Lovelace, Maud: Betsy and Tacy
• Lovelace, Maud: Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill
• Maclachlan, Patricia: Sarah, Plain and Tall
• McCloskey, Roberta: Henry Reed, Inc.
• McCormick, Dell J.: Paul Bunyan Swings His Ax
• Neville, Emily: It's Like This, Cat
• Norton, Mary: The Borrowers
• Norton, Mary: The Borrowers Afloat
• Norton, Mary: The Borrowers Aloft
• O'Brien, Robert C.: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh
• O'Dell, Scott: Island of the Blue Dolphins
• Paterson, Katherine: Bridge to Terabithia
• Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan: The Yearling
• Rawls, Wilson: Where the Red Fern Grows
• Sachar, Louis: Holes
• Sachar, Louis: Wayside School is Falling Down
• Sachar, Louis: Sideways Stories from Wayside School
• Sachar, Louis: Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger
• Scott, Dr. Jonathan (translator): The Arabian Nights Entertainments
• Sewell, Anna: Black Beauty
• Shelley, Mary: Frankenstein
• Spyri, Johanna: Heidi
• Stevenson, Robert Louis: Treasure Island
• Twain, Mark: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Twain, Mark: Tom Sawyer
• Verne, Jules: Around the World In Eighty Days
• Verne, Jules: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
• Wells, H. G.: The Island of Dr. Moreau
• Wells,H. G.: The Time Machine
• White, E. B.: Stuart Little
• White, E. B.: The Trumpet of the Swans
• Wyss, Johann Rudolf: The Swiss Family Robinson

I have been typing this on the Nexus tablet that the family gave me for Christmas. Now I am going to attempt to take a photo with this little machine and add it to this post. After the post reaches the internet, I guess I will have to edit it with my desktop computer, so I can italicize the titles. I'm not seeing how to do that with the Blogger app I'm using. (And that's what I did.)

Edited 1/6, 10:55 p.m.
Retrieved by Isaac from the give-away box:

• Winthrop, Elizabeth: The Castle In the Attic
• Finger, Charles J.: Tales From Silver Lands
• Juster, Norton: The Phantom Tollbooth
• Selden, George: The Cricket in Times Square

In the Meantime, Happy Easter!

Soon to return

Hello, everyone. You may have noticed I've been taking some time off from the blog. My son-in-law built a new, spiffy, fast computer for me, so I've been copying my files, moving them, and organizing them. For the first time in years, I'll have everything in one place. There are a great number of duplicate files, so this is a tedious process, but Windows 7 makes sorting them easier than I had expected.

I had a great victory mid-week when I finally got the new computer to connect to the internet via the wireless router. I learned on an internet forum that the anti-virus program was preventing the computer's network adapter from working. It seems this is a fairly common problem with Windows 7. I should have looked on the internet for answers earlier, instead of driving myself crazy trying to modify the settings.

I'll probably be back to normal blogging next week. Meanwhile, my best wishes to you and yours for a happy Easter!

Along a Christian County roadside

Resistance Is Futile

That machine in front of Kroger

I was visiting with my neighbor Sally a few weeks ago, and I mentioned that Blockbuster Video was having financial problems. "Oh, no!" she exclaimed, visibly distressed.

"Yes," I said. "It seems that Blockbuster has been hurt by Redbox and Netflix. It's just not getting enough business to turn a profit."

"If we lose Blockbuster, we won't have a video rental store in Hopkinsville." Sally paused to imagine that situation. "Just what is that Netflix?" she demanded.

I explained Netflix the best I could, from my own second-hand knowledge. People subscribe to Netflix online. They choose movies from a huge list, and Netflix delivers the movies by mail. People find the service convenient and affordable.

"So, you have to own a computer," Sally said with disgust. "Well, I don't have one, and I don't want one! Going to the video store is part of what I really enjoy about renting a movie!"

"...that machine in front of Kroger"

"If Blockbuster closes," she continued, "the only place left to rent a movie will be that machine in front of Kroger. I don't want to rent a movie from a machine on a sidewalk. I want to go to a video store." (The machine in front of Kroger is, in fact, a Redbox, part of the competition that is giving Blockbuster so much trouble.)

So far, Blockbuster in Hopkinsville is still open, and I hope that Sally is renting enough movies to help it stay in business. However, when I won a $5 Blockbuster gift card at work recently, I decided to spend it right away, just in case our store closes. I didn't want the hassle of renting and returning a movie, so I just got $5 of microwave popcorn packets.

The law of supply and demand is at work here. Blockbuster is in financial trouble because many people have decided that lower prices and convenience are more desirable than a shopping experience in a store. The internet has played a part in that change.

I feel a little sad for Sally.  She has set her mind against having a computer. She could easily afford one, but maybe she is afraid she couldn't learn to use it. I don't think she'd have much trouble. She has mastered her DVD/VCR player and her satellite TV. Turning on the computer and getting on the internet is hardly that complicated.

Or maybe Sally has taken her anti-computer stance solely as a protest to unwanted change. Well, she can decide that she won't participate, but that won't stop computers and computerized machines from changing things.

Eggner Ferry Bridge Repairs

In its final years

Eggner Ferry Bridge

Workmen were repairing one of the approaches to Eggner Ferry Bridge the last time I crossed Kentucky Lake. I found myself sitting on top of the bridge with twenty other cars, waiting to snake through the work zone. While I was parked in that unusual place, I took these photos of the bridge suspension from my car window.

Eggner Ferry Bridge is named for the Eggner Ferry that crossed the Tennessee River at that location for many years. The ferry ceased operation when this bridge was built across the river in 1932. In the early 1940s, the bridge was raised and extended before the Tennessee river was dammed* and Kentucky Lake was formed.

Eggner Ferry Bridge

We are now in 2010, and the Eggner River Bridge is far too narrow for the volume of traffic it sees.   A new 4-lane bridge is supposed to be completed by 2017. Highway 68/80 through Land Between the Lakes (LBL) is being made 4-lane, and a 4-lane bridge will be built over Lake Barkley on the east side of LBL.

In the meantime, the existing bridges must be repaired as necessary to keep them safe. These last few years are going to be especially rough on them because of all the heavy trucks bringing materials for the road and bridge construction.

I got these photos ready to post a couple of weeks ago, and now I see that I misspelled "Eggner" when I labeled them. They will have to stay that way for now. I've been having computer problems, and with the setup I'm using currently, I don't have much for photo-editing software to correct my error.  Like the bridges, my computers need some repair, maintenance, and eventual replacement!

__________

* Kentucky Dam on the Tennessee River and Barkley Dam on the Cumberland River are just two of many dams that were built by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) during the 1930s and 1940s.

When Kentucky Dam and Barkley Dam were built, hundreds of families were relocated from the Tennessee River valley, the Cumberland River valley, and the Land Between the Rivers near the Kentucky/Tennessee border and northward. Hundreds of homes and buildings were torn down. Cemeteries were moved to high ground. The "Land Between The Rivers" became the "Land Between The Lakes" under TVA control. Much of the two lakes' outer shore lines was put under state control.

Related:
Old Bridges at Land Between the Lakes, KY
A Very Windy Day!

Kentucky Lake seen from Eggner Ferry Bridge

 

U.S. Agriculture in the Early 1900s

Farm and ranch statistics and photos from 100 years ago

The statistics below are quoted from World Geographies: Second Book, Kentucky Edition (pp. 202-206) by Ralph S. Tarr and Frank M. McMurry, published in New York by the MacMillan Company in 1922.

I scanned the photos in this post from the same old book. I hoped to find photos that complemented the statistics, but no photos were available for some categories, such as hogs, horses, and hay. I finally decided to just scan some of the most interesting pictures of agriculture, whether or not they are related to the numbers. It's impossible to know when the photos were taken, but it seems likely that they were more up-to-date at the time of publishing than the statistics were.

Phone Conversation Overheard

Life in 2009

"I wonder if I have a text message. Where's my cell phone?! I just had it. Now what did I do with it?"

(pause)

"Oh, I forgot. I'm talking on it."

Kansas Wind Farm

Wind turbines by the dozen at the Flat Ridge Wind Farm

Earlier this month, I visited Dwight and Kathy (my brother and sister-in-law who live southwest of Wichita, Kansas). Dwight took me to see the Flat Ridge Wind Farm that is under construction south of Nashville and Zenda, Kansas. As it happens, Dwight and Kathy live on the east end of the project, and they will eventually have some wind turbines on their ranch, just south of Spivey, Kansas.

These photos were taken south of Nashville, Kansas. I believe there are about 40 wind turbines installed so far. This is Phase 1 of the Flat Ridge project. This part is jointly owned by BP Wind Energy, a subsidiary of BP, and Westar Energy, a Kansas electricity company with the motto, "Doing whatever it takes to keep the lights on."

The project so far is reported to have the capacity to produce 100 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 30,000 Kansas homes.

These photos don't adequately communicate the enormous size of these one-legged beasts. Dwight says that the concrete pads under them are surprisingly small, given the height of the turbines. In the contract with the landowners, it is specified that if a windmill is removed, the pad will be ground down to four feet below the soil line.

Dwight says that he and Kathy specified in their contract that the towers could not be located closer than 1/4 mile to their house. The turbines make a very loud hum when the wind is blowing the blades. I hope it doesn't affect the cattle in the pastures. I also hate to think of the birds these things kill.

I confess that I doubt if wind energy is a long-term solution to the energy problem in the United States. What I've read on PT's blog about his observations of wind turbines hasn't improved my opinion, either. I have decided reluctantly that nuclear power is our best option.

However, most who live around the Flat Ridge Wind Farm are happy about the economic boost that wind energy is promising their communities. Landowners receive a yearly fee as long as the wind turbines are located on their property. There are jobs in maintaining the wind farm, and many related services will employ people too. I hope all the promises hold true for the good folks of the Kansas prairie who live amongst the wind turbines.

Barkers Mill in Christian County, KY

Milling on the West Fork of the Red River

Old foundations of Barker's Mill and dam (at right)

Barker's Mill, on the West Fork of the Red River, was one of several mills that once operated on the river in that area. Other nearby mills included Coleman's Mill, Ringgold Mill, and Peacher's Mill.

The Barker's Mill Bridge, where I stood in mid-April to take the photo at the top of this post, is on Barker's Mill Road in extreme southeastern Christian County. Stone structures can be seen on both sides of the river. These were probably anchors for a dam.

Dates and owners

The exact construction date of Barker's Mill is unclear. Western KY History's history of Barker's Mill says that the mill had been in operation at least 20 years before 1860. Kentucky Genealogy's history of Trenton precinct is a little more specific. It says that the mill is believed to have been in operation as early as 1812.

A biography of Thomas S. Watson mentions that he was an early owner of the mill. Watson was a Tennessean who had a brief business partnership with Andrew Jackson in the Nashville area before investing in milling and ironworks along the West Fork.

[Thomas S. Watson] became owner of Barker's Mill on the West Fork of the Red River in Christian County, Kentucky by 1815; and he also built, about 1816, what later became known as Peacher's Mill in Montgomery County, Tennessee. (Source)

A historic marker, erected in 2005 by "relatives of former residents of the West Fork community" at the nearby Chapel Hill Methodist Church gives this information:

The water mill, built in 1812 by Bailey Martin, was located on West Fork downstream from a covered (later iron, now concrete) bridge. Later mill owners were: Stephen Woodward, 1826; James Miller, 1826; John T. Allensworth, 1841, Richard H. Kelly, 1853; Peter Peacher, 1859; Chiles T. Barker, 1860; and his son John W. Barker, 1884, hence the current community name, Barker's Mill. The mill operated until the late 1920s and was torn down after 1937. For a time it was known as "Glenburnie Mills.

A photograph of Barker's Mill is included in Christian County by Chris Gilkey and William Turner. These authors note that the mill was closed about 1910, but was not torn down until 1937 after a flood.

Wooden mills, gone but not forgotten

Despite the various disagreements about dates, it seems that a mill operated for about a century in a site near the Barker's Mill Bridge. It's certain that the mill was renovated or rebuilt several times within those years. The wheels of mills like this were made of wood, as were their gears. The sluices that channeled water to the wheel were also wooden.

When steam engines (and later, gasoline motors and electricity) became available for power to grind grain, watermills were abandoned. Most mills were torn down, fell down, or rotted away. They are still remembered in the names of the roads that once led to them -- such as the Barker's Mill Road of Christian County, Kentucky.

On the web:
How a gristmill works

Related post:
Two Red Barns on Edwards Mill Road

Conficker Virus Check

Simple, quick test

Maybe you've heard about the Conficker worm, a computer virus that became active on April 1. Millions of computers are said to be infected with it. It is unknown how or when the worm will be used, but it probably won't be used benevolently.

A quick, easy test for the virus has been posted by the Conficker Working Group. Visit the test page and compare your results with the charts at the bottom of the page. This is a reliable test, as long as you aren't viewing the internet through a proxy server (such as a web accelerator provided by a dial-up internet service.)

Or, simply try to visit some of the anti-virus software websites such as Symantec, Trend Micro, or F-Secure. If you can't open the websites, your computer is probably infected with Conficker.

Experts say that if a computer's anti-virus software has been kept up to date, it's unlikely that it will be infected. But visit the test page, just to be sure. If you learn that your computer is infected, see the CNET article: "Rid your computer of the Conficker Virus".

This information is a little off topic for Prairie Bluestem, I know, but I don't want any of my readers to be caught unaware. If you're not using anti-virus software currently, a good, free program is available from AVG.

A hat tip to Seth Rosenblatt at the CNET Download Blog.

Sand Tables in the 1916 Classroom

Sand table in a rural school remembered

At Duff Valley District 4, the one-room school I attended as a child, we had a sand table. It was a sturdy, wooden box about 2 feet wide, 3 feet long, and 6 inches deep, supported by 4 legs. The outside of the table was painted a sickly shade of pale green, and the inside held about two inches of sand.

I suppose that someone's father made it for the school and filled it with clean sand from a blowout in his pasture. Sand is one thing that is plentiful in the Nebraska Sandhills.

Sometimes we played at the sand table when we spent recess inside or when we finished all our schoolwork. However, I don't remember any special toys for the sand table. By the time I was in fifth grade or so, the teacher had dumped out the sand and was using the table to store a set of Funk & Wagnall encyclopedias that my mother had donated to the school.

I had never considered the age of that sand table, but after reading about sand tables in the 1916 issues of Primary Education, I suspect it might have been a couple of generations older than me.

According to Primary Education a scene constructed in a sand table was an excellent educational device. For example, a teacher's classroom activities during the county fair included a model fair in the sand table:

The children constructed a fair in the sand-table, placing booths and a merry-go-round, and pasteboard people, horses, cows, etc. Each child also made a toy merry-go-round to take home. These were made from the given pattern during the drawing and construction periods, thus giving lessons in tracing, some measurements, cutting, coloring and construction. (Source)

How-to books for sand table scenes were offered for sale in the advertisement section of the magazines. In the articles, many sand table scenes are described:

• A zoo and a cherry orchard
• Springtime
• A millinery store
• Holland
• A Dutch sand table
• A Japanese tearoom
• Animals of Africa, an African village, and the Sahara Desert
• Farming in the rain belt vs. dry farming
• A barnyard (for use in Language, Science, and Hygiene lessons)
• The Pied Piper of Hamelin

The frequent mention of the sand table in this teachers' magazine suggests that it was an effective teaching and learning tool. If it seems odd or quaint, remember the times. In 1916, the students weren't jaded by electronic wonders, and teachers didn't have today's myriad of resources.

A sand table was so simple and inexpensive to make that any school could have one -- even our little country school out in the Nebraska Sandhills. However, I think our sand table was just a relic by the time I came along in the late 1950s. Our teachers were using modern technology to enhance our learning -- the phonograph, the hectograph, and the filmstrip projector!

Also in Google Books: Primary Education magazines from 1894 through 1923

Electricity Restored

I'm happy to report that our electrical lines have been repaired and we have electricity in our house again. Counting from Tuesday of last week to today (Thursday), we had ten days that were spent at least partly without electricity.

A crew of linemen came to the house last night about 7:00 pm, but decided that our problems were too extensive to fix in the dark. They came back this morning and spent about five hours shoring up the tilted pole and repairing multiple broken lines.

One of the guys was from North Carolina, but the others were from Tennessee. All were employees of the Davis H. Elliott Company.

The Davis H. Elliot Companies, a group of professional construction service providers, specializing in transmission and distribution line construction and repair, commercial and industrial electrical construction, sub-stations, street lighting, traffic signaling, and underground utility locating. (Source)

According to a January 28, 2009, news release, Elliott sent nearly a thousand power line workers to eight states after the ice storm.

They are definitely my heroes today!

Film and Slide Scanner

New computer toy

Dennis and the kids got me a little Vupoint film and slide scanner for Christmas and I've been playing with it for a couple of days.

I have about 150-200 slides from our school teaching days in Bolivia and I'm looking forward to scanning them. I already have prints of most of the negatives I own, but I'm sure I'll play with negative scanning too.

I have mixed feelings about the scanner. It seems to do fairly well on a typical image with scenery, but it loses all the detail in any large light areas. The adjustments I can make don't have much effect.

How can I complain too much, when I've created a number of acceptable digital images of slides that I haven't viewed in years?! However, it is frustrating to look at a perfectly good image through the viewfinder and then be unable to transfer what I see.

 

Screen shot of the preview of the slide

The scanned image -- best one I got after much tinkering

The scanner came with a program called Photo Impressions 6, but I am experimenting with scanning the images into some other image processing programs.

Here's one of the slides I scanned tonight. Dennis took this photo of me in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 1981. If I remember correctly, there was a monument on this hilltop to the brave women of Cochabamba who defended the city against attack when all their men were doing battle elsewhere.

I'm not sure if this was before or after someone tried to cut into my purse with a razor blade at La Cancha, the huge, crowded open market. Fortunately, the purse was made of heavy leather with lots of seams, and the thief couldn't make a big enough hole to get anything out. I didn't feel the attack, and I was shocked when I saw the slashes.

Telephone Service in 1950

A phone in every home, Bell urged

I pulled a few National Geographic magazines from 1950 off the shelf and looked through them this evening.

It was interesting to see the ads that Bell Telephone System was running. I noticed two frequent themes: 1) We're a big company, so you can count on good service, and 2) If you don't have a telephone, you need to get one.

Here are the texts of two persuasive ads of the second sort:

Big Value At Low Cost

The telephone is a big bargain in security, convenience and good times for every member of the family. Just in the steps it saves, it more than pays for itself. Its value in emergencies is often beyond price. Day and night, every day, the telephone is at your service. And the cost is only pennies per call.

Advertisement by the Bell Telephone System, in The National Geographic Magazine, January 1950.

Service That Never Sleeps . . . Whatever the need or the hour, the telephone is on the job -- ready to take you where you want to go, quickly and dependably. Telephone service is one of the few services available twenty-four hours a day -- weekdays, Sundays and holidays. Yet the cost is small -- within reach of all . . . Bell Telephone Service

Advertisement by the Bell Telephone System, in The National Geographic Magazine, February 1950.

In 1950 -- the year of these ads --  62% of American households had telephone service (source). Most of those households were served by party lines.  Many of the rural party lines were owned by small locally-owned telephone companies that had no affiliation with Bell at all.

The Bell ads show sleek black desk telephones with rotary dials, but the telephones I remember from the 1950s had crank handles. We didn't have telephones with dials in rural Rock County, Nebraska, until the mid-1960s.

- - - - - - - - - -
Related:
Prairie Bluestem: Rural Party Line Remembered

Winter Rears Its Hoary Head

And other news from our house

I haven't had enough of autumn's golden days, but winter is at hand. We had our first hard freeze last night, and early this morning, the windshields were frosted over for the first time. I need to remember the possibility of windshield-scraping when I think about my departure time for work!

Tomorrow, I'm going to get out the rakes and leaf blower and clear away the leaves around the house. Out here in the country, we don't worry about bagging them up. Mother Nature either blows them away or rots them.

Firewood

Dennis usually helps the leaves decompose a little faster by running them over with the lawn mower.This year, I guess I'll mow the leaves because Dennis is devoting all his spare time to cutting firewood. He has already hauled home enough wood to last us all winter, and he says he has a lot more waiting. He is cutting up branches from some oak and hickory trees a co-worker removed around her house.

Now someone else has offered three oak and hickory trees that fell in his pasture. We are thinking about buying a log splitter. Does anyone have comments about the brand we should get?

Books, computers, and sewing machines

In other news around the homestead, I've been working toward my goal of setting up my office and sewing center in the back bedroom, aka Keely's room. My two sewing machines have been back there for a while already.

After analysis (hauling my books back there and realizing that they greatly exceed available bookshelf space) I'm planning a large floor-to-ceiling bookshelf on each side of the south window. (Yes, Keely, when I get the shelves built, I will give you the long bookcase that has always been in your room.)

Last Saturday, I bought a used computer for my new office. It has a Pentium 2.8 GHz processor, 1 GB RAM, 2 hard drives with a little over 200 GB total, 128 MB video card, and Windows XP. The previous owner reformatted the hard drives and reinstalled XP the day before I picked up the computer.

I will upgrade to 2 GB RAM and get a new monitor, and a "roll-y chair" when my discretionary budget permits (sometime after Christmas.) All in all, I'm pleased with my latest slightly-outmoded computer. We are now a 3-computer house, but we'll probably get rid of the little Linux machine in the hallway, which is really outmoded.

Holidays

And so we go, full speed ahead, into winter and the holidays. The holiday shopping season has begun. My store has been doing fairly well despite the nation's economic problems, and I certainly hope that continues. I've been training a holiday-hire employee for the last week. She is in her early 20s, and she's the mother of two little children. This is her first job.

Isaac, who works part-time at a grocery store, is dreading the season. He remembers how busy they were last year between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It's hard to predict what this year will be like.

Keely says she is going to cook Thanksgiving dinner this year, and I'm glad to let her do it, to tell the truth. I'll contribute the pumpkin cheesecake and anything else she tells me to bring.

Computer Shenanigans

Acccckkk, blarg, and bleccchhh!

We've been having some strange computer problems lately. The so-called "good" computer thinks that the connector cable for some disk is missing. I've taken it to Keely's boyfriend Taurus to see if he can figure out what's wrong.

That leaves us with the little Linux computer in the back hallway. I use it often anyway, because Isaac ties up the other computer. Usually, it works fine, but not lately.

First, it could barely connect to the internet. I finally discovered that the network cable plug-in on the back of the computer was missing some of its little wires. I don't know why. Maybe they just got old and fell off!

While crawling around on the floor and fumbling with computer cords, I knocked the goose-neck lamp off the desk. Later when I turned it off, a big, loud spark popped, and the computer lost power. This electrical event fried the surge protector.

Meanwhile, I couldn't log onto Blogger or access any Blogspot sites, including my own blog! I kept getting a "Server not found" message. This was making me crazy!

The new network card had no effect at all on the Blogger/Blogspot problem. I finally changed the DNS (Dynamic Name Server) numbers, and that was the necessary magic. Here I am at last, happy to see with my own eyes that my blogs still exist.

The little computer is plugging along valiantly again and doing the best it can (much like its owner.)

The Cream Separator

A big advance in farm technology

The Cream Separator. — Another great change which has come into Nebraska farming, in the past twenty years, has been brought about largely by the cream separator, by which the milk fresh from the cows is separated into cream and skimmed milk, the cream going to butter factories, while the milk is fed upon the farm. Dairy farming, which was almost unknown in the early years of Nebraska settlement, is thus becoming one of the chief industries of Nebraska farming.

Source: History and Stories of Nebraska: With Maps and Illustrations by Addison Erwin Sheldon. Published by University Pub. Co., 1915

Many older people who grew up in the country remember the cream separator. At our house, it sat on a table in the corner of the back porch. I vaguely remember an old black separator, and I have a clearer memory of a later, smaller separator with an electric motor.

At the top of the separator was a big metal bowl that had a gridwork of holes in the bottom of it. A round, paper filter was fastened over the grid to strain out foreign matter as the milk drained. Then the filtered milk went into a centrifuge that spun the cream (butter fat) to the center and the "skimmed" milk to the outside. The two liquids were then dispensed through separate spouts.

Every time the separator was used, it had to be taken apart and washed. At our house, that was always once a day, and often twice a day. The milk from the morning milking was nearly always separated, and the whirr of the separator's motor woke me, many mornings. The milk from the evening milking might be strained and left whole, or it might be separated.

The separator had about a dozen stainless steel parts.I particularly hated washing the disks, a set of nested cones. I suppose there were 12 or 15 of them. Each disk had a little hole in its side, and a giant safety pin was slid through the holes to keep the stack of disks in order while washing.

We usually had just one or two milk cows, so my mother had a small cream can that held just a couple of gallons. We took the cream to the Rose Store to sell. When the Rose Store got out of the cream business, my mother did, too. She wasn't making enough profit to mess with taking the cream to Bassett, roughly 35 miles away.

Until I read the quote at the top of this post, I'd never thought of the cream separator as a high-tech machine. The cream separator was not considered a great marvel at our house. It was just an appliance. But, like many of the great technologies we enjoy today, I can imagine that it seemed miraculous when it was first invented.

Radio Days

A revolutionary invention

Imagine America at the end of World War I. Brief notices of important events were still sent by telegraph, the fastest communication that existed.

People read newspapers and magazines to learn details about happenings in the world beyond their hometowns. In small towns, the news was often out-of-date before the publications arrived. For that matter, much of the news was old even when it was written.

A decade later, a surge of interest, development, and investment in commercial radio had transformed the nation.

Election results were broadcast by radio for the first time ever in 1920 (by KDKA in Pittsburg.) Owners of radio sets heard the news first. They didn't have to wait for printing presses to grind out an extra and newsboys to run it through the streets.

With that broadcast, radio gained a new measure of respectability. Its potential was examined and found promising; it was recognized as more than a curious hobby.

By 1927, radio frequencies were so crowded that Congress set up a regulatory agency, the Federal Radio Commission, to issue broadcast licenses.

The 1930 census inquired whether the household owned a radio set. Many people did. The wealthy purchased a commercial model, and the poor built their own crystal sets or vacuum tube radios using the plans published in hobby magazines.

Americans tuned in regularly for the news, farm reports, and weather reports, and for other favorite programs -- music, drama, quiz shows, humor, and more. The radio often became the family gathering place, assuming a role that the piano or the phonograph had previously enjoyed.

Franklin D. Roosevelt used radio to bring his "Fireside Chats" into American living rooms, starting in 1933. He employed the cutting edge of technology to speak directly to the people in an unprecedented way.

From that era, here are two interesting quotes:

I live in a strictly rural community, and people here speak of “The Radio” in the large sense, with an over-meaning. When they say “The Radio” they don’t mean a cabinet, an electrical phenomenon, or a man in a studio, they refer to a pervading and somewhat godlike presence which has come into their lives and homes.

—E. B. White, 1933

God Hears Prayer

If radio's slim fingers can pluck a melody
From night -- and toss it over a continent or sea;
If the petalled white notes of a violin
Are blown across the mountains or the city's din;
If songs, like crimson roses, are culled from thin blue air --
Why should mortals wonder if God hears prayer?

-Ethel Romig Fuller (from the 1937 anthology, 1000 Quotable Poems)

Related post: I Grew Up in Radio Land

DOS Games

Vintage computer games

Isaac was intrigued when he came across these early computer games at a local thrift shop. All are still in their original boxes with their instruction books. They run from diskettes.

These games pre-date Windows, so most people no longer have a computer with the operating system (DOS) to run them. Keely's boyfriend, Taurus, is taking Windows 95 off an old computer from our house and restoring it to its original DOS. It should run these games just fine, so Isaac bought the games at the bargain price of $1.00 each.

The old computer that Taurus is restoring has a 115 MB hard drive, as I recall. With Windows installed, it had around 93 MB free space.  Yes, I do mean MB.

Cheapest Watch I've Ever Owned

My romance with Timex is over for now.

I've owned a series of Timex Indiglo water-resistant (WR) watches. I like the way the watch face lights up (the Indiglo feature), and I like a watch that survives an occasional shower or a little dishwater (the WR feature).

My first watch of the series was great. It withstood a lot of dousing, and it ran for several years. I probably could have revived it with a new battery, but (in my experience) water-resistant watches often leak after their case is opened, so I didn't bother.

I bought a second Timex Indiglo WR watch that was very similar to the first one. A few weeks after I got it, it developed a few tiny water droplets inside its crystal. The watch stayed wet inside for most of the next two years, but it kept good time.

A Timex that wouldn't tick

I was glad when the second Timex finally quit running last month. Finally, I had an excuse to buy a new watch. I purchased a third Timex Indiglo WR watch, expecting to be very pleased with it.

Instead, I'm disappointed. Water appeared under the watch crystal after two weeks of wear. Right after that, the watch quit running. I'm going to look up the receipt and send it back to Timex. (That's on my to-do list, right under completing the bathroom paint job, moving everything back in there, and restoring some order to the rest of the house.)

An M.Z.Berger Watch

Meanwhile, I needed a watch. I went to Wal-Mart yesterday and bought a cheap, water-resistant watch with easy-to-read numbers on the dial.

The box said "White Stag", but the watch face has no name on it. The name M.Z.Berger is incised on the back of the watch in tiny letters. When I looked up M.Z.Berger, I was surprised.

We're the owners of such classic American brands as Gruen®, Elgin®, Waltham®, and Sharp®, in addition to licensing some of the most recognizable brands and character licenses today, including Nickelodeon®, CareBears®, Bratz®, Hello Kitty®, NASCAR® , ©Disney. (Source: M.Z.Berger & Company: Watch Collection)

I hope it will be a trusty little soldier of a watch, though I'll miss the Indiglo.
The watchband has the word "China" on the first link. I'm not sure if that applies to the entire watch or just the band. (Probably the entire watch!)

The watch has a three-year warranty, but if it quits before then, I won't bother sending it in. M.Z.Berger wants $5.95 for shipping and handling, and the watch cost only $11.88.

It's the cheapest watch I've ever owned. It's an amazing bit of technology for such a small price.

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Update 9/20/08

Oops. At work last night, I tore up the M.Z. Berger's Chinese watchband beyond repair. When I got home, I took the band off the dead Timex and put it on the Berger. Otherwise, the little watch is doing just fine.