Dale and Martha Hawk Museum 2018

Once again this year, my folks and I traveled to rural Wolford, North Dakota to visit the Dale and Martha Hawk Museum for their annual celebration.
Here I am in front of a 1941 Ford.  The dress is one I sumbled upon at the local consignment shop.  It is labeled Dress Barn and has kind of a late 30s-early 40s look to it.  I added the little red belt buckle and wore my "Grandma Walton" shoes which are also reproduction by Nine East and also bought second hand.
I wore a vintage string of pearls and vintage cameo earrings in black and cream.
I like the way the dress fits me, but it was warm.  The temperatures got up into the 80s and I was, to quote Ham in the Sandlot, "bakin' like a toasted cheese"

The door to the blacksmith shop had very ornate detailing, including the door knob.

My father counted 18 different kinds of pie!  And it was so reasonably priced! 3$ for a big slice of pie and large coffee.

 Yummy sour cream and raisin.

There was a little flea market/craft sale where I bought these neat little pieces.  Spent a total of 7$
The Ivory Starch box is neat because it is French on one side and English on the other (came from Canada I'm figuring).

This old projector is a neat item and fun to photograph.  If I recall, these make a kind of ticking or whirring noise when they run.  And if the film broke (which it sometimes did) the projectionist would have to quickly splice the film back together. 

Not sure why, but I like the looks of these cans.  Dirty, old, household or garage type cans that normally would've been thrown away, tell us a great deal about everyday life back in the day.

I also found it interesting that is says "Specially designed".  I quickly googled that and learned that the word specially is correct (I had no idea).  The word "especially" is used when singling out someone or something, "I like Neccos, especially those that are licorice flavored."  But when something is made special for a purpose or occasion, then the word "specially" is used.  "Shannan had a vintage refrigerator cake specially made for my birthday".

And there was your grammar lesson for today.

My mother ooohed and awed over this Royal Albert tea cup, saucer, cake plate, and maybe a salad plate and sandwich plate???  Good grief that's a lot of plates!  I like the unique shape of the plates, rather than being round they have a somewhat scalloped edging. 

This next photo is very interesting to me as I am a diary/journal keeper myself.  This is a weather diary kept by a local minister during the winter of 1935-1936.  One of the things I find interesting about it is on February 15, 1936 the lows in the area were as follows:
Gardena -61 below zero
Willow City -63 below zero
Parshall -60 below zero
Now what find strange is that Parshall, ND holds the record for coldest spot in the state at -60 below zero on Feb. 15, 1936.  But according to this diary, that honor (if you can call it that) should have gone to Willow City, ND for their -63 below zero.  Maybe it had something to do with Willow City not having an "official" weather service temperature recorder person? (what a cool job that would've been).

This child's alarm clock is quite possibly the cutest one I've ever seen!  It's a Roy Rogers clock and Trigger the horse gallops back and forth with each tick of the clock.  Yee-Ha!

As usual I had to have my photo taken next to the gas pump that sits in front of the Nanson store.

Yes, another old can.  I liked the graphics on the can below.

Inside the little house is this AMAZING linoleum! 

Cute kitchen....

One more cute kitchen picture....

Nope, one MORE cute kitchen picture.  Then I'm done I promise.

I
t was a very fun day with family food and vintage goodies all around. 

 That's all for today!  Until another time have a happy vintage day!

 

Springtime Poem

In a little red schoolhouse,

 

 

in a sunny classroom,

 

 

there is a book shelf.  And on that colorful shelf, there sits a book.

 

 

And in this book there is a little song to sing

about the joys of Spring!

 

 

Happy Spring everyone!  Until another time have a happy vintage day!

Forgotten General Store

This is so very interesting!  This forgotten General Store (I believe it's located somewhere in Britain), is amazing!  Check out the link below.

 

http://www.messynessychic.com/2014/05/12/diy-dad-buys-a-derelict-fixer-upper-restores-the-forgotten-1920s-general-store-he-finds-inside-it/

 

 Seeing this made me think of all of the "general stores" I've seen in local museums.

First, there is the General Store at the Buffalo Trails Museum in my hometown of Epping.  This "general store" is just a cubical.  The Buffalo Trails Museum is amazing and takes up most of Epping's main street.  I'm just so glad that it is still being cared for and is still open after all these years.

 

Buffalo Trails Museum--Epping, ND

My favorite part...the Cheerioats box.

 

Second, there is the general store museum building in Stanley.

"Hello Mr. Grocer Man.  How are you today?"

"Oh, not so good.  I've been feeling a bit stiff lately."

(*sound of crickets chirping*)

Ahhh...T'ain't funny, McGee.

Flickertail Museum-Stanley, ND

This would've been back in the day when you TOLD the grocer what you wanted, or gave him a list, and he would gather your supplies for you.



Flickertail Museum-Stanley, ND



My daughter loves the checker game there in the Stanley store. 





2009







2014



Third, there is the general store in the Rugby museum.

Pioneer Village Museum-Rugby, ND

Pioneer Village Museum-Rugby, ND

The store in Rugby even has the cracker bins!  Next time I am there I will ask if I can peek around the counter to see the actual bins (I'm guessing they are made of metal--to keep the mice from chewing through, but maybe not). 

Pioneer Village Museum-Rugby, ND

The fourth general store we toured was in the museum in Kenmare. Their general store is inside a bigger building.

Pioneer Village Museum-Kenmare, ND

Pioneer Village Museum-Kenmare, ND

And last we have the general store at the Dale and Martha Hawk Museum in Rural Wolford, ND.

This store was located in the small town of Nanson, ND.  It even contained the meat cooler/display case that it used into the 1980s.

 

Dale and Martha Hawk Museum-Rural Wolford, ND

 

Dale and Martha Hawk Museum-Rural Wolford, ND

 



Dale and Martha Hawk Museum-Rural Wolford, ND



 It's so much fun to look at these photos again, to zoom in and to look at all of the interesting cans, bottles, and boxes of products from long ago.

That's all for today.  Until another time, have a happy vintage day!

Miss Ida Vedquam's Church and Gravestone

Some of you might remember my strange quest to find information about a woman named Ida Vedquam.  If you don't remember or would like a refresher, click HERE for my previous blog.

 

Independence Day weekend found us in the Bottineau area and on the highway that passed near Mouse River Lutheran Church.  I knew this to be Ida's church; the church she grew up in, played organ for, sang in the choir and her final resting place. 

 

A thought just came to mind (bear with me here).  We don't find that in our society very often anymore.  By "that" I mean having one church family...one church building for our whole lives and beyond.  I no longer attend my childhood church, nor the church I was married in, nor the church in which my child was baptized.  Until now, I never really thought much of it.  Many of our pioneer families build these little rural churches and that church was their church for the rest of their lives. How often does that happen anymore?  Not often I would suspect.

 

So, we turned the car onto the gravel road, drove the one mile south, and paid Ida a little visit.

Such a beautiful church with it's stained glass windows, covered by strong metal mesh-like screening. (I suppose that's a commentary on the world we live in now-a-days...full of vandalism and theft.  Or maybe they just don't want birds bonking into the windows).  Whatever the purpose, the screens detract a little bit from the beauty of the windows, but I'm sure they are still beautiful from the inside and maybe even at night from the outside.  That is, if the church were ever open for something like a late-night Christmas Eve service, full of singing people and warm light from the inside.  I think that would be a pretty sight to see from the gravel road.

We found the cemetery to be well kept and freshly mowed.

We found a couple of Vedquam family stones and this one above is Ida's family stone, located in the southern, front part of the cemetery.  She is buried alongside her parents.

We brushed the grass from each of the Vedquam's flat stones and could then see the names and dates.  I thought it was nice that her family was buried near the lilac hedges that grew tall and thick. Lilacs are hardy and can endure the cold winters and hot summers of North Dakota, much like these faithful pioneers.  And lilacs seem to be everywhere you look, both in small town yards and on country farms.  Ida probably lived with lilacs both on the farm and town.

A picture of the church from the south part of the cemetery. 

 

The very top of the steeple there stands a weather vane with the year 1905 on the arrow.  I found that to be really interesting.  I regret not looking for a cornerstone on the church, but we had to get going on our way.

 

It was a beautiful, calm day, and a nice little visit to Ida's grave.  Maybe someday we'll be able to see the inside of the church.

 

Until another day, have a happy, sunshiny day. 

More From the Kenmare Pioneer Village

Daughter and I went to the annual Pioneer Days in Kenmare over the weekend and had a splendid time.  We ate an early picnic lunch in the windmill park, then drove on over to the pioneer village for a fun afternoon.

The first couple of pictures are for my Dad.  Remember when we visited the museum back in June?  There were these strange objects being stored inside the Bank.  I thought maybe they were lightening rods, but Dad thought street lamps.

 

Well, Dad was right, they are street lamps and as you can see below, they have found a permanent home on the museum grounds!  (I wonder if they actually work?  They would be quite an interesting thing to see in action.)

 

 

During our visit in June, we were not able to get a good glimpse inside two of the largest buildings on the museum grounds because one was being moved (and because of this move, one was without power).  But this time they were open, ready for viewing and WONDERFUL!

 

The first housed a doctors office and hospital memorabilia.

How cute is this little baby scale!? 

 

 

I wonder how many babies were weighed on this very scale?  Question asked, question answered.  There was a book further down the aisle that listed all the babies born from 19?? to 19??.  I didn't check the dates, but this page is from 1935.

 

 

Moving on...I liked the calendar wall full of calendars from local businesses in Kenmare.  There were quite a few, but I'll just show you all a couple of my favorites.

 

 

This one was my favorite.  I suppose it was from a grocery store.  I'll have to look up the Red and White brand.

 

Next time I am at the museum, I will have to take a closer look at some of these calendars and their pretty pictures. 

 

This building also house numerous, small collections.  There was a collection of antique valentines, Christmas Ornaments, greeting cards and this paper party napkin collection that I found quite interesting.

Sorry about the blurriness of the photo.  I found it's very difficult to take photos through glass.

There were many fun parts of our day at the museum, but one of the most fun activities we did was a scavenger hunt!  We picked up our questions at the beginning of the day and followed the clues to the different areas of the grounds to find these "cards".  After all of the cards were found, they spelled out a message. 

 

Our first clue was, "I can see clearly now!"  So, we stopped at the optometrist area in this first big building and found our first card.  

 

 

WHAT A HOOT we had finding all of the cards!  It helped that we had been to the museum before so we had an inkling where some cards might be.  We hope they do the scavenger hunt again next year!

 

One more thing for today, then we'll continue tomorrow.

I found this milk container fascinating!  I'd never seen one like it before.

 

 

I did some digging and found this really cool site about milk containers HERE.  It's called Doug and Linda's Dairy Antique Site.  I have some reading to do!

 

Until tomorrow, have a happy, vintage loving day!

 

 

 

 

 

 



Vintage Hats at the Millinery Shop--Kenmare Pioneer Museum

Today, we visit Cindy's Millinery Shop at the Kenmare Pioneer Museum.  This building had a large collection of vintage hats on display (non, actually for sale).

As much as I love vintage hats, I can't pull them off fashion wise.  I'm finding that you have to have just the right hairstyle to make a vintage hat look "authentic".  I'm working on the hairstyle, and maybe, if I can find just the right hat at an antique store somewhere, I will, once again, attempt to wear a hat .  Until then, here are a some 1940s gals who know how to wear hats!

Photo found at http://missamethystspowderroom.blogspot.com/ Miss Amethyst loves to live, and dress vintage!

Here is another interesting hat.  I like hats that sit off to one side.  And I'm not sure, because this photo wasn't labeled, but I'd swear that is Lucille Ball.

If I were to ever wear a 1940s hat, I would want it to be like this one that Meg Tilly wore in Bomb Girls.

I liked this red and black hat with what look like plastic cherries?  It reminded me just a bit of the hat Jeanne Crain wore in the move State Fair.

 

Jeanne Crain in State Fair with her red velvet hat with cherries attached.  I love this movie and all of its vintage goodness including dresses, hair and hats...oh and Dick Haymes isn't too tough to look at (or listen to) either haha!

If it were really shopping in this store in the 1940s I'd pick this up for my husband. 

 

 

He'd look good in a hat like this, but I'd have to glue it to his head in his sleep.  Sadly, he doesn't have a vintage bone in his body, and wouldn't be caught dead wearing a vintage hat unless it was Indiana Jones'.  

And I LOVE that vintage suitcase.  Vintage suitcases seem to be everywhere now and stacking them for decorative purposes and storage seems to be the popular thing to do (thanks to Pinterest), but there's something about this single suitcase I really like!

I like this hat box, below.  The graphics are interesting.  Hat boxes are quite large, and closet spaces back in the 30s, 40s and 50s were, from what I've seen anyways, quite small.  So it makes me wonder, did women put a number of hats in one box, or did they have a box for each hat?  I keep thinking the hats must have been worth it considering all the space their boxes took up!

Well, that's all for today!  Until another time, have a happy, vintage day!