Old Stuff

I've been thinking about a tour of a home I took two days ago that opens itself up to tours. I happened to be there because that was where I was a guest at a bridal shower tea that was happening. The home seemed to be open for nothing except tours. It was a beautiful, spacious, historic home, but I couldn't figure out why it was significant or special enough for a tour. I wondered how much a person might pay to take a tour. It was "included" if you were a guest at the bridal shower. I saw the servant's quarters in the basement, where the kitchen, icebox and pantry, and living area for servants were. Half of the basement, where the servants lived, used to have a dirt floor, but the floor had been covered with bricks. It was cold and the ceilings were very low down there. I saw six bedrooms on the second floor; a back porch that had been made into a bathroom; two other rooms that had once been porches and had been enclosed; a giant dining room; three living rooms; and a gift shop. There had been a dumbwaiter and an elevator (you had to pull your own weight) at one point, but the dumbwaiter had been removed and the elevator was just to look at. The ceiling on the first floor was 13 feet high; the ceiling on the second floor was 12 feet high; and the third floor ceiling was 11 feet. There was a third floor with several more bedrooms, but it was not open for the tour part. The furniture was all very beautiful, but none of it was original to the home of the only two families that had lived there. There were decorations on the walls that women had made from family hair. I had no idea that was how women used to spend their time. The tour guide said that this was what was called "tatting," so I went away thinking that tatting was something it is not. It sounded like she was saying that tatting was related to making art out of hair; but it turns out that tatting is the art of making lace out of thread. Anyway, the hair art looked like over-dried floral arrangements. I learned something else from the art on the wall -- some old needlework, and an alphabet sewed onto some material, created before there was a "J" in our alphabet. Since when did we not have a "J" in our alphabet? The cloth only looked about a hundred years old.