Source: Wikimedia Commons
When a chair seat gave out, nobody threw the chair away. The frame was the expensive part and the seat was the part designed to wear, so a…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Every autumn, in the cold parts of the country, American households packed the bottom of the house.
Straw, spoiled hay, cornstalks, raked leaves, spent bedding or soil was…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
A great many older American houses have a hole under them that nobody uses. A brick or concrete chamber, sometimes plastered smooth inside, sometimes arched over, with a…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
There is one in a lot of American front yards: a cast iron bell, usually painted black or left to rust, mounted on a short post or a…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
It hung on a nail on the back of a closet door, or inside the pantry, or on the cellar stairs. A sack - usually itself made from…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
They turn up in the same drawer as the darning egg and the shoe horn, and neither of them makes any sense to anybody under seventy.
One is…