What's Your Vintage Skill Set?

[LizzieMaine]

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?

 

[pigeon toe]

I can't do a thing like that! I'm totally useless, except I can bake without the use of an electric mixer (I actually hate those things and would rather use some elbow grease and go without -- everything turns out just as good!), and I can work all types of film cameras and print color and black and white in the darkroom.

 

[Fletch]

I play jazz on the clarinet, which is getting to be like buggy whip making these days. I also croon (including icky falsetto tenor), do a credible golden-age announcer voice, and play extinct substyles of saxophone like "hotel style" tenor, hot C-melody and bass, as well as subtone and Ted Lewis-style "corn" clarinet.

I can customize dance band stock arrangements, design deco- or moderne-style graphics and typography including handlettering, and it looks as tho I'll be learning to block my own hats before too long.

 

[Elaina]

Repair the old sewing machines and the old motors.
Sew from a non-printed pattern, and create my own from the books with just dimensions and no instructions.
Knit.
Canning.
Bake bread using caught wild yeast in a sourdough mix.
Rewire an electrical cord.
Do my own basic plumbing/electricity in older houses.
Carry a baby on my hip while doing 3 other things.
Cook dinner on a gas range, and not burn it.
Go all day with no television blaring in the background.
Hang my laundry outside with peg clothespins.
Tie a pretty apron before putting food on the table in less then 2 seconds.
Can make a dress that requires 3 yards of fabric out of 2.
Can create a small "Victory Garden" on the balcony of an apartment.
Know all the kids in the neighboorhood by name, and know when their mother's expect them home, I also know which kids can eat sugared cookies, which ones can't eat chocolate, and which mom's prefer them to come home and ask every time before they eat anything.
Work an ol fashioned cash register, where you had to know the prices.

I can also do some of the things Lizzie described: Do washing on a scrub board or a wringer machine, Defrost a refrigerator, Drive a manual transmission (which I prefer, and I can do column AND floor sticks), Hard-wire a telephone

 

[Paisley]

I can lindy hop, balboa, and charleston. I can also can fruit. (Spiced apple rings are big hit when I give them away.)

I can grow plants from seed trays.

I can dial a rotary phone.

Years ago, I could use a 4x5 camera (the kind where you put a black cloth over your head and see the image upside-down). I could also hand develop film and use hand-drafting tools.

My neighbor makes his own paper (he's an artist).

 

[beaucaillou]

By trade I can blind-identify wine by smell and taste. On a really good day I can also tell you the vintage and producer, though I'm not sure this is a dying art, though it is getting much harder with the boom of the wine industry and the trend of "Internationally styled" wines.

I can bake bread from scratch, though I suspect most people could. I think all of my vintage skills come in housekeeping and manners. I was taught to only wash floors on your hands and knees. I don't always do this now, but at least once a month. I know the proper rules for ironing. I can make "pants" for a crown roast. (The frilly little paper things that dress the bones). I know how to make a bed complete with hospital corners. I know the basics of cooking and baking and everything correct for setting a table. I can make soap. And I'm hoping to learn how to embroider soon. I'm a miserable seamstress, but can at least hem things.

 

[AlanC]

* Hand-set type in a composing stick

* Operate a linotype machine

I can do the former, but I've never used a linotype. I have used a C&P and an iron hand press. I'm rusty now, though.

 

[max the cat]

skill set

I have a few tricks-
I can "slap" the bass or did well enough years ago -utterly useless unless you are in a hot 20s dance band which either dont pay enough or have become costume party cults!
as Lizzie said drive a manual trans

tie a bow tie

and yes spin a top w/ string

resharpen a cactus gramophone needle-(great if you have one of those old machines -Dremel moto tool more fun.

only the 1st category made me any money -but killed my right shoulder! probably have other useless skills .

 

[staggerwing]

I can repair just about anything electrical, rib-stich the fabric covering on an old biplane wing, navigate an aircraft (or boat) by dead reckoning, plaster a wall, drive a manual transmission, fly an airplane with a tailwheel (as opposed to modern airplanes with nosewheels - although I can fly them too), hunt and fish for my dinner if I have too, and probably a few more I haven't thought of.

 

[Feraud]

Wear a fedora at a jaunty angle
Produce counterfeit notes
Make a mean cup o' joe
Negotiate peace between two warring gangs
Handle a chopper
Avoid the bulls

 

[pretty faythe]

oohhhh

Hmm....some of my skills are more useful for frontiers times.

Make soap from scratch i.e. fat, lye, water
cook from scratch (as a matter of fact making a stew right now from items that are about to become expired, so thats pretty ww1 ww2 times)
bake from scratch
mend items that need mended, pants, shirts, etc,
create new things from old things (pants into skirts)
um, thats about all I can think of for now.
if I can think of anything else, I'll come back.
lol

 

[carebear]

Hmm....some of my skills are more useful for frontiers times.

Make soap from scratch i.e. fat, lye, water
cook from scratch (as a matter of fact making a stew right now from items that are about to become expired, so thats pretty ww1 ww2 times)
bake from scratch
mend items that need mended, pants, shirts, etc,
create new things from old things (pants into skirts)
um, thats about all I can think of for now.
if I can think of anything else, I'll come back.
lol

If you weren't in the city in the 20s-40s those weren't necessarily "frontier" skills. Just rural self-reliant ones. You'd probably do alright if all of a sudden the lights went out permanently.

It wouldn't take much of a disaster for what are now considered hobbies to return to the list of necessary skills. That C++ certification won't do any good if there's no power flowing.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

-Robert A. Heinlein

 

[Sefton]

I can find a book using the Dewey Decimal System (If I could just find a library that still uses actual card catalogs), adjust the brass bell ringer on my 67 year old rotary telephone, change the tubes on a jukebox,adjust the horizontal and vertical hold on a cathode ray tube television (very soon to be extinct),change the ribbon on a manual typewriter, fill a fountain pen, wear clothing that fits and keeps my underwear..under. (that's a skill right? )

 

[Lady Day]

I can...

*sew (duh!)
*cook with a doubble boiler
*butter and flour a cake pan
*use a kickwheel pottery wheel (the ones that stand up and require you to well kick it) better than one with a motor
* press hair with a hot comb (heated on the stove)
* plat (or braid to some) hair faster than anyone I know
*shell peas
*load a slide projector tray correctly the first time
*paint with a brush and canvis
*stretch and prime a canvis
*know how to use this

LD

 

[Diamondback]

I can immediately:
->Manage my way around a .45 and a Thompson
->Conduct myself by the standards of a WWII military officer
->Act as a small, limited personal-protection detail if need arises
->Tolerate most period entertainment, unlike the crap that mass-media spews today (my idea of "quality entertainment" is a Mozart CD and a good history book or Shakespeare--then again, I really don't slither out of my lair much...)

And could quickly learn if need arose:
->Operation, maintenance and repair of all WWII-era small arms
->Operation of most aircraft and rail equipment of same period
->Machining and metalworking (already starting, even though I'm a CNC-cheat)
->Wearing of a fedora at proper angle. (I'm usually bareheaded, that space is presently reserved for my field marshal's cap.)
->Driving a Jeep or most common wheeled vehicles of the period.

Not much, I'm afraid; I'm pretty much a "one-trick pony".

 

[Chanfan]

Hmm, vintage skills, eh? I can:

Use a small sword with fair proficiency.
Use a spear or pike with better proficiency.
Repair, strap, and make some simple armor.
Make maille armor at a basic level.
Brew beer and mead.
Shoot a recurve or cross bow.
Operate a trebuchet.

Oh, wait… wrong vintage, sorry.

Golden era - foop. Not a lot. I can use a Linotype-Hell imagesetter, but that's computer typesetting, not the same thing at all.

 

[Fletch]

In the art dep't where I once worked we had one of their scanners, which frequently didn't. Everytime the thing went south on me I would mutter, "I'm in Linotype Hell!"

Oh yeah. I've also used a photostat and a phototypositor. I liked the faint aroma of developer.

 

[Knitstuff]

I can:

Cook without using a cookbook, just with what's onhand
Garden
Sew
Knit
Use common handtools

Jen

PS to Chanfan: SCAdinan by chance?

 

[CharlieH.]

I can draw cartoons like some of the old masters, brought an antique radio back to life and have an idea of how to use a gramophone, does that count?

 

[Amy Jeanne]

Gah! I can't do anything that's completely obsolete except dance the Charleston and make perfect fingerwaves without the aid of electrical equipment!