Retro-extremists? What are we called?

[jamespowers]

One more crazy thought to throw into the mix. it occurs to me that a person who truly feels displaced in time, and finds refuge in the past, but is not a mere collector, would not find such joy in acquiring the just right 30s suit, or victrola or phone. they would simply live as best they could in the past.

So, most atavists or what have you are also obsessive collectors. No guy in the 30s would rush to his local newspaper to share news about acquiring a hoover vacuum and print up pictures to share with his community.

It goes beyond not liking the present or feeling at home in the past. There is a love, and even a fetishishism of artifacts, music or what have you sometimes. It obviously means something deeply profound to connect with the era.

Figure it this way, sharing pictures and the like is also a way to find out how to fix such things and get parts for such things. It is hard to say I have this old vacuum or lantern on a forum like this without including a picture if you want thel identifying it or repairing it. In that sense, we are like a virtual owners manual.
I don't know about others but I am not an obsessed collector and have no commercial interest in buying or selling said obsessions. I buy such things to fill a purpose. Clothing is to wear. Phones and other machinery are to use.
Collecting stuff to put in showcases is for obsessed collectors and museums. Collecting in essence is a lot like shopping for regular folks.

 

[Miss Neecerie]

One more crazy thought to throw into the mix. it occurs to me that a person who truly feels displaced in time, and finds refuge in the past, but is not a mere collector, would not find such joy in acquiring the just right 30s suit, or victrola or phone. they would simply live as best they could in the past.

So, most atavists or what have you are also obsessive collectors. No guy in the 30s would rush to his local newspaper to share news about acquiring a hoover vacuum and print up pictures to share with his community.

Nor would -most- people in the 30's have a collection of hats or suits or whatever....they would own 2 or 3...

So honestly almost no one here 'lives as if it were that time'......you live in your recreation of that time...an -alternate- reality of the period.

(exception goes to Lizzie and Miss Joeri....who from all appearances, don't seem to -collect- items that people back then wouldn't have multiples of....)

Please note that I think its -fine- to do this....just don't mistake it for the 'real thing'....unless you are using a time machine..its not actually feasable.

 

[LizzieMaine]

One more crazy thought to throw into the mix. it occurs to me that a person who truly feels displaced in time, and finds refuge in the past, but is not a mere collector, would not find such joy in acquiring the just right 30s suit, or victrola or phone. they would simply live as best they could in the past.

So, most atavists or what have you are also obsessive collectors. No guy in the 30s would rush to his local newspaper to share news about acquiring a hoover vacuum and print up pictures to share with his community.

It goes beyond not liking the present or feeling at home in the past. There is a love, and even a fetishishism of artifacts, music or what have you sometimes. It obviously means something deeply profound to connect with the era.

Interesting points -- although I think the aforementioned vaccuum-cleaner gentleman, if he were actually rampant in 1937, would be an enthusiastic representative of the local Hoover agency, and would spend his days dumping little packets of dust on the rugs of housewives to demonstrate the vigorous suction of his machine.

There's definitely an aesthetic reaction to the "artifacts," though, no doubt about it. For me, I guess it goes back to a sense of "this is what X object is supposed to look like, because that's what it looked like when I was first exposed to it." When someone says the word "phone", the first thing I think of is a heavy black metal thing with a wheel on the front of it -- it's instinctive. I appreciate the aesthetics of a vintage phone, because to me, that's what a phone looks like. A modern phone might be an equally impressive piece of industrial design, but to me, it isn't a *phone.*

Does that make sense?

 

[LizzieMaine]

(exception goes to Lizzie and Miss Joeri....who from all appearances, don't seem to -collect- items that people back then wouldn't have multiples of....)

Well, I do have more radios in the house than the average person might -- we had two when I was growing up, one in the living room and the other in the kitchen, and I think that's about what would have been normal going back to at least the late '30s. But people keep leaving radios on my doorstep, and I feel so sorry for the poor abandoned things I have to give them a home.

 

[jamespowers]

Well, I do have more radios in the house than the average person might -- we had two when I was growing up, one in the living room and the other in the kitchen, and I think that's about what would have been normal going back to at least the late '30s. But people keep leaving radios on my doorstep, and I feel so sorry for the poor abandoned things I have to give them a home.

:eusa_clap :eusa_clap :eusa_clap :eusa_clap The Home for Wayward Radios.

 

[Miss Neecerie]

Well, I do have more radios in the house than the average person might -- we had two when I was growing up, one in the living room and the other in the kitchen, and I think that's about what would have been normal going back to at least the late '30s. But people keep leaving radios on my doorstep, and I feel so sorry for the poor abandoned things I have to give them a home.

Hehe...fair enough.

I just don't think people can claim to be 'living as if it were....' , when their spare bedroom is a closet of suits or hats.....even IF they wear them all.

Alternate reality based on the time period...sure....

But unless perhaps you are living as Rockefeller and have the house to match.......then sure, you can have that many suits or dresses or whatever....and claim to be living as if it were.....but you gotta have it -all-..not just the elements of it you like.

p.s. If anyone here -is- recreating and living the life of Rockefeller, please invite me to dinner so we can discuss my adoption.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Collecting in essence is a lot like shopping for regular folks.

Interesting observation. I live a couple of blocks from an "Antique Mall," which despite its name is more focused on 20th century artifacts of various types, and I find that I do practically all my household shopping there. In just the past couple of months, I've bought a coffee table, a slotted kitchen spoon, a tablecloth and set of napkins, and a set of Pequot cotton pillowcases to fill various household needs -- most of it new-old-stock merchandise that in another time I might have gotten at Senter-Crane's Department Store downtown. And then I break it out of the wrappers and use it -- it's better quality than anything I'd get at the Giant Mega-Chain Big Box Retailer across town, and for the quality you get, it's actually a good deal price-wise.

I've actually got my eye on a Lane cedar chest that's over there now for $60, but the No Spender Bender gals would kill me if I got it.

 

[JimWagner]

Lizzy, does your house have old fashioned glass fuses and surface mounted exposed double wire stapled wiring with cloth insulation? Rotary light switches? Knob and tube I think it's called. My grandmother's did until the late 50's.

 

[Widebrim]

Yes we all get a dose of that....

If you read earlier posts you would see that I was told I was no longer welcomed here because those posters made assumptions about me that were unfounded and without merit.

?[huh]

 

[Foofoogal]

fftopic:

Best to limit discussion to clothes, antiques, music, and such from the golden era, and topics related to them, plus fun non vintage topics. I really don't want to hear about someone's core values here as they may well differ from mine and I may well want to counter back, then less level heads as yours or mine might get heated up about it.

well reetpleat. One cannot discuss the past without discussing values IMHO. As I was here quite awhile before you under another name I will leave this up to MK.
Nowhere was it stated for the record Religion cannot be discussed and certainly not values.
I think it is pretty clear at this point who is what anyway.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Lizzy, does your house have old fashioned glass fuses and surface mounted exposed double wire stapled wiring with cloth insulation? Rotary light switches? My grandmother's did until the late 50's.

The fuse box and wiring in the attic, yes, but the house was built in 1911 with the outlets and switch boxes integral to the walls. The switches were originally push buttons, but most of them were updated to toggles, probably some time in the '50s. You still see a lot of houses around here with knob-and-tube, though -- my grandparents' house didn't get electricity until 1940, and the wiring was all tacked on then.

And no, I don't put pennies in the fuse box. When I was manager of an apartment building, a tenant did that and almost burned the place down. Besides, I don't think it would work with these chintzy modern pennies anyway.

 

[Carlisle Blues]

?[huh]

Lee that refers to post #280 and a couple prior to that in this thread.

 

[vitanola]

I lost a great portion of my (admittedly extensive) collection of radios phonographs, records, appliances, furniture, and autos to fire just about a year ago today.

In the months since the loss, I began examining (perhaps for the first time in my life) my reasons for the accumulation of one-hundred-sixty cubic yards (after the fire) of detritus. I realised that my collection had always been lacking in focus because I what I had really been doing was acquiring a stock to use in curating a lifestyle impression.

When the time came to decide on how to rebuild, I found that a perfect little house was available in our depressed real estate market for far less than the cost of replacing my carriage house, and so I purchased it. After considering what I wanted to do with the bungalow, I decided not to turn it into a storage facility, and instead restore it and "curate" it, in the fashion of a good living history museum restoration.

This had seemed to be a bit of an extreme choice, but I was really suprised to find how supportive was even the BH, who has really taken an interest.


So, now, In addition to restoring this little place, I'm also in the process of winnowing the remainder of my collection, and disposing of the surplus, no easy job, as my surviving inventory is still in the tens of thousands of items, most of which are of little cash value, interesting though they might be. For example, I still retain a hundred or so three-dial battery radio sets, none of which are terribly collectable, and have dozens of early AC sets, none of which are of any particular value, as they are too ordinary to be of any great collector interest, thought they would be perfect for any who wished to re-create a typical middle class living room of the 1927-33 period.

 

[LizzieMaine]

fftopic:

well reetpleat. One cannot discuss the past without discussing values IMHO. As I was here quite awhile before you under another name I will leave this up to MK.
Nowhere was it stated for the record Religion cannot be discussed and certainly not values.
I think it is pretty clear at this point who is what anyway.

I think it's probably just as well to keep that angle out of this thread, otherwise it's going to become a slug-down over whether old high Mennonites are more vintage than the River Brethren. And we know how ugly that got last time.

 

[scotrace]

...I picked this forum years ago because I thought it was for very conservative people that liked to dress in the formal attire.

Well. No. We've never been that.
We started as a bunch of like-minded men and women who liked to wear hats and wanted to learn more about mid-20th century style and culture beyond the Indiana Jones gear. That's all. I don't think there was any ideology behind it beyond the Golden Rule. We mostly posted a lot of "Gee! That's a swell hat ya got there Root!" and "Anybody know where I can get some good hair goop?"

 

[Carlisle Blues]

We started as a bunch of like-minded men and women who liked to wear hats and wanted to learn more about mid-20th century style and culture beyond the Indiana Jones gear. That's all. I don't think there was any ideology behind it beyond the Golden Rule.

Thank you for explaining that....

 

[dhermann1]

OT . . . . OT . . . . OT . . . .

I think Foofoo meant conservative more in style than in politics. But let's not flagellate that unfortunate expiring equine any more.
The River Brethren! They did manage to give us one pretty cool president, in the form of one D. Eisenhower.

 

[jamespowers]

Interesting observation. I live a couple of blocks from an "Antique Mall," which despite its name is more focused on 20th century artifacts of various types, and I find that I do practically all my household shopping there. In just the past couple of months, I've bought a coffee table, a slotted kitchen spoon, a tablecloth and set of napkins, and a set of Pequot cotton pillowcases to fill various household needs -- most of it new-old-stock merchandise that in another time I might have gotten at Senter-Crane's Department Store downtown. And then I break it out of the wrappers and use it -- it's better quality than anything I'd get at the Giant Mega-Chain Big Box Retailer across town, and for the quality you get, it's actually a good deal price-wise.

I've actually got my eye on a Lane cedar chest that's over there now for $60, but the No Spender Bender gals would kill me if I got it.

lol lol Buy the chest. Those are great and only get better with age--at least my mother's has.
Yep, shopping at the antique mall isn't only cheaper but you get better bang for the buck in terms of quality. They might have even been made in this country.

 

[Tango Yankee]

I've actually got my eye on a Lane cedar chest that's over there now for $60, but the No Spender Bender gals would kill me if I got it.

But we'd certainly understand if you did!

Cheers,
Tom

 

[reetpleat]

Okay, how about this. men, or women, of the century. A term taken from the film "the Man of THe Century" in which Johnny Twennies, the titular character, lives his life as if it were the mid 1920s.

I know, silly. But I like it.