Seeing the Past in the Present

I was recently at a museum and took pictures of some things we used to use, such as a butter churn, treadle sewing machine and an old ice box refrigerator. These items take me back to: The days when there was enough sour cream from the cow milking, that Mom got the butter churn out. She filled it with the old sour cream. We were tasked to turn the wheel until it thickened to butter. It seemed to take forever, but everything to a child is a long time. Rinsing the buttermilk out of the butter, adding some yellow dye and salt, was a mother's job. We liked butter until margarine came out. The novelty of it in the rectangular cubes and its salty taste took over until we were adults. Getting a finger full of margarine then sticking it into sugar, then popping it in our mouth was a divine and quick treat. Today, I can't imagine what we were thinking and can't stand margarine.

An abandoned Old Ice Box full of discarded magazines stood in my grandparents yard for years. The cousins and I played house with it, opening and closing the door as the weeds grew and were pulled to make room for our playmaking. Many a child suffocated in old refrigerators after being locked in. We never tried that because it was full of old stuff.

Talk about old stuff, Grandma Crane's Singer treadle sewing machine, was used almost everyday to make dresses, mend overalls and create master pieced quilts. Her size five feet pressed that treadle back and forth, up and down for many years until Grandpa bought her a new electric Singer. She died before it wore out, but many of us wanted to have that faithful machine. I always think of her when I see an old Singer.

We begin to appreciate our past when we see it in the present and know it no longer exists except in our mind.