Cast iron frying pans went for scrap iron in the 1940's but a few find their way into the collectible market. The ones my husband and I bought at the local hardware store 55 years ago are the best pans in my kitchen - never mind the aluminum company claims that I'm getting terrible amounts of ferric iron unusable in my system.

Kerosene lanterns on the shelves looked a bit more modern than the one on my Dad's arm as I followed him to the barn on winter nights like this one. Feeding calves and milking the cows wasn't done without some artificial light in a windowless barn. The wick was trimmed and the glass globe cleaned to make the most of the feeble light. My brother and I made fantasy shadows on the walls as the lantern swayed on a nail from the rafter. Corners were dark and forbidding when we hunted for the kittens that fled from our intense hugging.

A glass kerosene lamp made the kitchen seem more friendly, its graceful globe with the beaded edge the centerpiece of the round oak table. It lit up the card game we played before bedtime. When the heat from the wood stove diminished it was time for bed. I haven't found any flatirons that doubled for footwarmers when wrapped in newspaper and placed between the flannel sheets at the foot of our beds. Oooh how nice that felt!

Not many kitchen tools survived because they were well worn out. We ate lots of potatoes but Mother never had time to cut into french fries, leftovers from dinner were chopped and fried in lard in the cast iron frying pan for breakfast. A round tin, from canned peaches, was turned open side down and used as a chopper. Made sense to me. Mother was never one to throw any storebought thing away.

Homemade decorations abound in the collectible shop. One that caught my eye was a two-foot circle made with barbed wire, the kind we strung between wooden posts to keep cattle out of the alfalfa. The arty object was a burned drawing on elkskin stretched in the center. Great yard ornament among the flowers! Small tables, cribs and wooden toys indicated otherwise idle hours created necessary items. Never had any of those when I was a kid.

Dolls graced the shelves. Most were too pretty for me to have touched them if I could have had one. I could drag the soft rag dolls from Mother's worn out socks with no worries. About age ten, I had a cardboard Jane Withers doll almost as big as me. I could change paper dresses and make my own out of big brown paper bags. Such a toy was not long overlooked by the mice that seemed to cohabit the house.

Of all the collectible clothes I saw there were no flour sack dresses. Cotton mills promoted prints to flour and sugar industries to enhance sales. As I grew into school years it took more than one fifty pound sack to make a dress. Mother never found two sacks with the same print so that was that. Well she could have bought two fifty pound sacks at the same time and gotten two alike. No she couldn't. There wasn't enough cream money to do that extravagant thing. Oh well, I got along fine.

Dishes on the shelves amaze me. I didn't know people threw them away. I eat on my peach colored Anchor Hocking bowls every day. Tableware manufacturers encouraged cereal companies to put a dish in the boxes to sell their product. I was excited to eat from the new pink glass dish that came in the oatmeal box. I think some dishes were given to promotes gasoline sales, too. Those promotions were going on in the 70's. And now you can get forever free refills of soft drinks when you buy a huge insulated container at some places. Neat gimmick.

As long as I kept my hands tightly clasped so as not touch my money I enjoyed looking at items I grew up with and others that when I was little I never knew existed.