It's magic....

[pennycarrol]

Today was a wonderful day... I went to do some vintage shopping in Nice at the local antique market... I bought the most beautiful 1940's compact I've ever seen lol!! At the back of this compact was engraved "Irene"... This compact must be that ladie's one... I couldn't stop thinking about "Irene" the whole day long... What was her life.... I said a little prayer for her in my head (I'm not crazy lol, too sensitive maybe...!!)!! That's why the whole "vintage thing" is magic to me... You can feel weird sensations sometimes!! I just wanted to share that particular moment with all of you... Did it happen to you?? Sorry if this subect has been post.......
pennycarrol

 

[Amy Jeanne]

I totally understand where you're coming from! I collect old movie magazines and I always love it when someone has written their name on it. Or if an address label is still affixed. I really like it when they write comments within the magazine! In one magazine from 1932, someone wrote "I Love You!" above a photo of John Boles!

I always wonder about these people and why their magazines have survived all these years. It's a great feeling.

 

[Miss Brill]

I know what you mean--I buy things that are old, and falling apart, and no one else would have them, simply because they are old, and falling apart, and no one else would have them. I'll find something that is 50-100-150 years old & all I can think is how many people have touched it. To have something that is old, and think about when it was new--it is almost spiritual to imagine who it belonged to.

 

[Story]

It makes you wonder, did Irene use that compact the night her love proposed to her?

What young girl had the crush on John Boles?

It kinda reminds us that we are just passing through this life, links in the chain of humanity.

Remember me as you pass by.
As you are now, so once was I;
As I am now, so you must be,
Therefore prepare fo follow me.

http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1960/2/1960_2_38.shtml

 

[Spatterdash]

I can thoroughly identify.

I live in a small brick cottage built in 1927. Small basement, gas fireplaces, galley kitchen, arched doorways, oak floors and tiny inset shelves.

The other day I was watching a History channel special on the crime waves of the Depression, and while the show covered the robbery sprees of Baby Face Nelson, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger, I suddenly was awash in this sense of timelessness.
The house I'm sitting once had a radio as the primary media, a large, wood case radio with tubes. My living room had once rattled with the radio announcer's voice describing the very things I was watching on television.
In the very spot I know sit a speaker once announced something like...
"The infamous Bonnie and Clyde have struck again, heartlessly killing an Oklahoma lawman and wounding another! The desperate duo took the bleeding policeman as a hostage on their way north out of the Sooner State, and may be currently at large on the roads of Missouri!"

My house remembers flapper girl fashion and fedoras and detachable collars. it remembers prohibition and the dust bowl, the depression and the rise of the nazis, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the war and the Shadow and Lil' Orphan Annie, brought to you by rich, chocolatey Ovaltine.

It was a great feeling, realizing the sights and sounds my house has known.

 

[Shearer]

Today was a wonderful day... I went to do some vintage shopping in Nice at the local antique market... I bought the most beautiful 1940's compact I've ever seen lol!! At the back of this compact was engraved "Irene"... This compact must be that ladie's one... I couldn't stop thinking about "Irene" the whole day long... What was her life.... I said a little prayer for her in my head (I'm not crazy lol, too sensitive maybe...!!)!! That's why the whole "vintage thing" is magic to me... You can feel weird sensations sometimes!! I just wanted to share that particular moment with all of you... Did it happen to you?? Sorry if this subect has been post.......
pennycarrol

I have a special Irene as well! How funny...

I wear a WWII sweetheart's ID bracelet that's engraved with "WIN... Love, Irene '43."

The bracelet always seemed very special because of all the romantic sentimentalities Irene could have written to her sweetheart as he went off to war, she said "WIN."

 

[Amy Jeanne]

My house remembers flapper girl fashion and fedoras and detachable collars. it remembers prohibition and the dust bowl, the depression and the rise of the nazis, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the war and the Shadow and Lil' Orphan Annie, brought to you by rich, chocolatey Ovaltine.

It was a great feeling, realizing the sights and sounds my house has known.

My apartment is the exact same. It was built in 1926 and there have been very few renovations over the years (I posted photos in the Display Case a few weeks ago!) My imagination goes completely WILD in here. Just the other day I was standing in my bathroom putting on makeup and I thought about all the flapper girls who probably stood in that exact spot doing that exact same thing. I always wonder who lived here back then and would just DIE if I were to ever come across a photo of this place in the 20s or 30s! I really do wish the walls would start talking!

 

[Helen Troy]

My friend has this tiny miniature book with one of Shakespears plays. She bought it on a market or something, so we don't know anything about it. On the first page is written (I'll translate for you, since it's in Norwegian.): "Dear Pus. In memory of the window-incident. Remember it allways! Love, J." The inscription is dated to the 1930s.

I am so intrigued by that. Who was "Pus."? (Literally means "Kitty", so it's a nickname.) What was the "window incident" and what relation does that have to Shakespear? And who was "J"? Friend? Boyfriend?

One can only wonder.

 

[Flivver]

I collect high school and college scrapbooks from the 1920s where the students saved momentos from their school days. More than anything else, these scrapbooks can magically transport me back in time.

After leafing through one of these scrapbooks, I almost feel like I was one of the classmates of the student that put it together!

 

[goldwyn girl]

I have a date book that belonged to a teenage girl in the fifties, It covers several years and she wrote where she went on her dates and who went with her. I love reading through it. I often think of all the places my clothes may have been. Did they meet anyone famous, what concerts and plays they attended and movies they saw, oh if they could tell me...................

 

[fourstarbanner]

I have a postcard I found at an antique store that was sent by an American soldier after WWI to a girl back home.

It reads:

"Nice, France 1/30/19

Hello Blanche, I am on my 2 week's pass. This city is located on the Mediterranean Sea. Beautiful place, wish you were here. Hat."

The picture on the postcard is of the Hotel de Senece. Was he on the front lines of battle? What did he see before he sent the postcard? Is Blanche his sister or sweetheart?

 

[nyx]

I somehow ended up with the graduation booklet from a technical college in the 1920's. There was hardly anyone, maybe 10 men in each group, who learned mechanical engineering and chemical engineering, etc. The book was bound in leather (my college graduation booklet was on plain ole paper and was pages and pages long because so many people graduated at the same time). I think about these men and what they went on to do. Did they build bridges that we walk on or design the machines that packaged some of our favorite products?

I also have a Marian missal from the 1930's with a dedication from the woman's parents to her. It's in beautiful shape, so she must have taken care of it. I can imagine her starting her life, maybe graduating from college and going out to get her first job, or maybe it was a wedding present?

This is a great thread, because I love dreaming about this stuff.

 

[skyvue]

On my dresser stands an inlaid wood frame, which holds a portrait that, judging from its subject's hair and clothes, must surely date from the 1920's. Like those of many people seen in old photos, the age of the woman captured in the portrait is difficult to establish. Somehow, these sepia images seem peopled with creatures much like us but not exactly so. She wears finery and a corsage at her bosom, so perhaps this sitting occurred on her sweet sixteenth birthday. Maybe she has just graduated from high school. She may have just been confirmed or have celebrated her bat mitzvah. I acquired the photo in a roundabout fashion and I haven't a clue whom the young woman is.

I do have this clear image, though, that someone (and I feel certain it was her parents) dressed this young woman up in fine clothes, adorned her with a silk flower and stood to the side, beaming with pride, as the photographer captured that moment in the life of their beloved daughter for posterity's sake. It's a touching image. One is moved by the pride this couple must have felt for their daughter. To them, she must have been the most beautiful girl in the world and I'm sure they told her as much, often.

 

[ohairas]

Y'all are totally preachin' to the choir here too! What a great thread! If my 100 year old house didn't already have 'spirits', it must surely have some now as it is filled with all of my OLD goodies!

My favorite wonder is the sketch of a man and date 1907 we found when tearing plaster out of our front bedroom. Was it the builder? Just a carpenter? A youngster who was bored as his father worked? A self portrait? Did he really think anyone would ever find it? It just amazes me.
Nikki

and an enhanced version to see better,

 

[fourstarbanner]

WOW! That drawing is amazing!

 

[Story]

In the days before digital cameras, I worked odd shifts for an engineer who did museum restorations of various pieces of ordnance.

One night I was stripping 50 years of paint off of an old French cannon with this bucket of nasty chemicals. Layer after layer bubbled and peeled away until I reached a coat of coarse sand-colored paint. More of the covering layers peeled off to reveal a German cross and opposite, the palm tree insignia - pretty strong evidence that it had once been used by Irwin Rommel's Afrika Korps!

With no way to stop the process and no way to document it, all I could do is drag the boss in to watch the chemicals eat away at those markings - like a sand castle built on the beach. [huh]

 

[pennycarrol]

Thanks for sharing all those stories.... It's fabulous... I'm not the only sensitive one!! And Story it's incredible...

 

[zaika]

I feel the same way, Penny.
I have my grandfather's high school yearbook (I want to say 1927...but I'm not sure) and it's in really good condition. I never knew my grandfather, he died before I was born. My mom and grandma would talk about him, but never in detail. No stories...just general descriptions. He was funny, kind, and a hard worker. He always remained this mysterious face in the old photo albums.
So, when I first saw this yearbook, it was like discovering my grandfather...as a person, not just a memory. His classmates had signed his yearbook with funny poems and sweet sentiments. Under his picture, they listed what he had been involved in. I mean...my imagination zoomed off into the past and it was like I was getting to know this dorky high school kid with aspirations of becoming an architect, who liked to joke around, who was kind to people, and who was an okay student. lol I really felt like I got to know him.
With things I acquire that aren't from the family...I like to make up stories about their owners. It's a good writing exercise.

 

[ohairas]

Aw man! Too bad you couldn't have run and bought a disposable camera!
Nikki

With no way to stop the process and no way to document it, all I could do is drag the boss in to watch the chemicals eat away at those markings - like a sand castle built on the beach. [huh]

 

[texasgirl]

Today was a wonderful day... I went to do some vintage shopping in Nice at the local antique market... I bought the most beautiful 1940's compact I've ever seen lol!! At the back of this compact was engraved "Irene"... This compact must be that ladie's one... I couldn't stop thinking about "Irene" the whole day long... What was her life.... I said a little prayer for her in my head (I'm not crazy lol, too sensitive maybe...!!)!! That's why the whole "vintage thing" is magic to me... You can feel weird sensations sometimes!! I just wanted to share that particular moment with all of you... Did it happen to you?? Sorry if this subect has been post.......
pennycarrol

I have a special Irene as well! How funny...

I wear a WWII sweetheart's ID bracelet that's engraved with "WIN... Love, Irene '43."

The bracelet always seemed very special because of all the romantic sentimentalities Irene could have written to her sweetheart as he went off to war, she said "WIN."

Oh, I would have died! My grandmother's name was Irene. She died in 1969 before I was born. But my mother gave me the middle name of Irene, so I feel like I have a bit of her in me. So here's an Irene you can imagine. She was part Cherokee, I think you can see a bit of that in the photo. She was very strong, and gave birth to 12 children! This is one of the only pictures I have of her and it's about 1954-55.