It would be hard to imagine our lives without a phone today and we can all thank Alexander Graham Bell for the invention, right? Well, you might be wrong. Actually, there was a good deal of controversy over the patent for the telephone that went all the way to the United States Supreme Court. Have […]
A true, personal story by Author Carmela Cattuti. One Immigrant’s Legacy By Carmela Cattuti Growing up in a small city along the Hudson River gave me easy access to New York culture. The hour’s train ride to Grand Central Station gave me ample time to plot my day’s activity. My uncle lived on east 57th […]
Pig in a poke means an offering or deal that is foolishly accepted without being examined first. A poke is a sack or bag. It has a French origin as ‘poque’ and, like several other French words, its diminutive is formed by adding ‘ette’ or ‘et’ – hence ‘pocket’ began life with the meaning ‘small […]
I ran across the following article recently and realized the advances women have made in America. This is from Are Women People by Alice Duer Miller (1874-1942) during the Suffragist era. Alice Duer Miller It was obviously written ‘tongue in cheek’ using similar reasons why women should not be given the right to vote. Advertisement for […]
He was born in a coal mining town in Shropshire, England and one of his neighbors prophesied that he would grow up to be a thief because when he was a baby, his mother cut his finger nails instead of biting them off. Worked in a coal mine at eleven years of age When he […]
Lake Dick is located northeast of Pine Bluff and south of Altheimer, Arkansas. A New Deal program which supported farming projects, established the community on the shore of Lake Dick in 1936. The Lake Dick Cooperative Association was responsible for farming the land and for operating the community’s cooperative services. These services included a general […]
In olden days, bread was put, as a raw lump of dough, straight into the bread oven by the fireplace. There was no bread tin as today. It just sat on the floor of the oven. When the oven was heated by the fire, it became very hot at the bottom. After the bread finished […]
The city of Greenhills, Ohio is the home of one of the first shopping strip malls in Ohio. The photographs below were taken in October 1938 -1939 by photojournalist, John Vachon. Store building. Greenhills, Ohio Jan. 1938 by photographer John Vachon Stores at Greenhills, Ohio Jan. 1938 by photographer John Vachon Shopping center at Greenhills, […]
Alabama Contributing Author, Dorothy Graham Gast, brings a memory back from the old days. Farmhouses had rain barrels by Dorothy Graham Gast Every farmhouse had a rain barrel. The hot dusty days of summer were modified by the 50-gallon barrel that caught rainwater and held it for the time when the sky turned brass and […]
Handle with kid gloves means to handle a situation, or a person or an object, delicately and gingerly. The phrase comes from the 1730’s when kid gloves were made from the skin of a young goat. They were not intended for use when you were working and wearing kid gloves usually indicated that the wearer […]
