LizzieMaine
Bartender
- Messages
- 33,825
- Location
- Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
We live in an era where a lot of skills that were once taken for granted are being lost, forgotten, or simply rendered obsolete -- between changing technology and changing interests, many vintage-era skills are all but extinct.
Except, that is, for folks like us, who, for whatever reason, have learned to do these things -- and who might well have the responsibility of preserving those skills for future generations. There aren't any 1930s-40s equivalents to Colonial Williamsburg yet, but the day might come...
I'm doing my bit. I can --
* Do washing on a scrub board or a wringer machine
* Sew from a non-printed pattern
* Bake with lard
* Defrost a refrigerator
* Wet-splice 35mm motion picture film
* Operate a carbon-arc projector
* Service vacuum-tube radio equipment
* Drive a manual transmission
* Type on a manual typewriter at 65wpm
* Hand-set type in a composing stick
* Operate a linotype machine
* Hard-wire a telephone
* Slip-cue a phonograph record
* Operate a ten-column adder
* Darn a stocking
And probably a few other things I can't think of. Most of these skills are pretty darn useless in the modern world, alas, but I feel like I'm at least doing something worthwhile by holding onto them for posterity.
How 'bout you? What vintage skills are you keeping alive?
Except, that is, for folks like us, who, for whatever reason, have learned to do these things -- and who might well have the responsibility of preserving those skills for future generations. There aren't any 1930s-40s equivalents to Colonial Williamsburg yet, but the day might come...
I'm doing my bit. I can --
* Do washing on a scrub board or a wringer machine
* Sew from a non-printed pattern
* Bake with lard
* Defrost a refrigerator
* Wet-splice 35mm motion picture film
* Operate a carbon-arc projector
* Service vacuum-tube radio equipment
* Drive a manual transmission
* Type on a manual typewriter at 65wpm
* Hand-set type in a composing stick
* Operate a linotype machine
* Hard-wire a telephone
* Slip-cue a phonograph record
* Operate a ten-column adder
* Darn a stocking
And probably a few other things I can't think of. Most of these skills are pretty darn useless in the modern world, alas, but I feel like I'm at least doing something worthwhile by holding onto them for posterity.
How 'bout you? What vintage skills are you keeping alive?