Grandma Brooks....old things..

 

My grandmother on my mother's side had many names. She was Mabel Zella Wheeler Brown Brooks. She was born in 1897 in the Macksburg, Iowa area and died in 1973.  She lived modestly and had to work at different projects to help her income.  She was widowed from my grandfather Brown in 1937.  She remarried five or six years later taking on the Brooks name. She was widowed again in 1963. 

She and a neighbor lady saw the stuffed chicken craft at a fair. They pooled their money together, quarters and nickels I am sure, and bought it. She and her friend Mae Cook tore it apart carefully to make the pattern. Through many years my grandmother made hundreds of chickens both small and a larger size gaining profits for her income. Many of the chickens had cloth materials that she had used to also make her aprons that she wore daily. I almost forgot to mention that she sewed them on her treadle sewing machine. 

 I have many things that once belonged to her.  She gave me a solid walnut, antique table.  She made quilts and I inherited those from my mom. There are glass berry dishes with a large bowl which I use to make my jello. The small plant table has a long story behind it but I will keep it short. She attended an auction in Humeston, Iowa with here friend Mae and Mae's husband. Another older couple was with them.  She saw this table and she loved plant stands. She asked Mae's husband to bid on it but all she only had was a quarter. He bid on it for her and it sold for a quarter.  My grandmother had me paint it for her with powder blue paint.  As time passed my mom had it as a plant stand and I gladly inherited it.  It had to have that paint stripped off of it.  The feet on the table is a definite furniture style of the Federal Period.

 

You leave the iron on top of the old cast iron cook stove to heat it up, then you iron your clothes. Many times it was too hot and it scorched things. It meant that you always had to iron when the kitchen was heated up with a hot wood fire in the stove. 

My grandmother lived in a farm house with her second husband and this iron was used as a door stop. The farmhouse was so rustic, run down, and the doors swung freely mostly in the wrong way. She had a conch sea shell as a door stop also. I have that also. It was an old house and I have so many memories of it.

Things that bring back memories are fun. Sometimes one can think of the bad times for the people who owned them and other time things just make you smile. I have always been fascinated with history and items of the past help me feel closer to the past. 

Thanks for stopping by.