It is this thermometer/barometer/humidity meter:
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| Wrinkly fabric sample background, because I'm classy like that. |
Mom decided to update and rearrange the art and other items hanging in her living room, and the barometer was getting the boot.
Now I'm famous for adopting items I feel sorry for, and I certainly feel sorry for Mr. Barometer, serving so faithfully for so many decades and then being deemed dated. Oh the humidity! (Sorry. I can't help myself.)
This was one of the most fundamentally familiar objects of my childhood. I don't know how long my mother has had it, but I wouldn't be in the least surprised if I was chewing my baby fists under the weather dials. I don't remember it ever not being around.
It's actually a pretty typical decor item from the 50's and 60's. There has been one in this house before, in the den/front room. See it hanging under the clock?
Mine has the broken pediment and column style typical of a lot of Colonial style furniture popular at the time, which makes it a good fit for my house. It surprised me how sentimental I became at the idea of my mom hauling it away to Goodwill.
Right now it's gone to live with other things I have leaning against the wall on the top of my living room credenza, awaiting their perfect place and forever home. That's a Grant Wood print and a little birdie painted by my sister (my wax and airplane plants photobombed the shot, the rascals.)
Have you ever rescued something from your own history? Did it surprise you how sentimental you felt about it?
When my parents remodeled the kitchen in the house I grew up in, they had all the old cabinets, etc. torn out. They had been such a big part of my life, and I was so sad, knowing that I'd never see them again. (Yeah, I'm kind of a sentimental person, LOL.) My sister and I were talking about it (she felt the same way I did), and we ended up asking our parents for parts of the kitchen!
ReplyDeleteI took 2 cupboard doors and also the "little drawer", where we used to keep all of our pens, pencils, and miscellaneous objects. My sister took a cupboard door and the indoor window that was in the wall between a tiny bathroom and our back porch (both rooms were demolished to make the kitchen bigger).
I used the doors as big picture frames (but left them intact) and turned the drawer into kind of a shadow box. They were up on our walls in the apartment we had at the time, and at our first house. They're not up in the house we've lived in for 7 years now, but I still have them and can't imagine parting with them. (Someday I may get around to putting them up here.) They mean even more to me now that my parents have moved from my childhood home.
I've taken lots of other items when my parents didn't want them any more, but those have to be the most unusual ones. :)
I spent so much time in my Aunt's house as a child, Janelle, that when she was tearing out her pink-tiled 1960s bathroom, I asked for a few of the decorative tiles for a keepsake. I think she thought I was a little odd. :)
DeleteHas that really been in her living room the last decade or so? Where? I'm glad you rescued it though!
ReplyDeleteIt's been hanging between the front door closet and the utility closet in the living room forever. I think she took it down about a year ago? Then she decided to get rid of it completely last week.
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