You people are a riot.
And very smart. And mean.
I like that in a reader.
So, along with the actual answers are your twisted and imaginative ones – for want of space – just the highlights…
And, thanks a million.
From Montana
I was at the local church rummage sale, and there was nothing good at all.
Until Robert came up to me and said “Guess what this is.”
I couldn’t.
Can you?
Carved wood. 31 inches long, approximately 1 inch thick at the end.
One Dollar.
Guesses:
1. A pointing and beating tool for the poor kids that attended the local church school.
2. An animal prod of some sort?
3. A tooth pick for Paul Bunyon.
4. Disposable poker? Cat herding stick?
5. Used when the person next you has fallen asleep with the remote and you don’t want to get up.
6. A switch used for disciplining children and wives!
7. Stick is used by Republicans to beat on the poor and women.
8. Would this be part of a fishing rod?
9. I think the wooden stick is a ‘rain stick’ It moves when rain is likely and then straightens out when the weather is going to be good. (?)
10. Well it looks so like something that thread would travel through.
Perhaps from a Stone Age Sewing Machine. Yes. That must be it.
11. I could use that first one on my kids.
Answer:
A hand carved blackboard pointer (I like to think from a one room school house, but who knows?)
From Montana
A bunch of these squiggles were leaning up against the outside wall of a second hand store.
I had no idea what they were, but I had to have one.
Do you know?
Wrought iron.
58 inches long, approximately 3/4 inch thick.
8 Dollars.
Guesses:
1. As for the giant cork screw, maybe for lifting bales of hay?
2. Is it to screw into the ice for some use in ice fishing?
Or is it for some kind of fencing?
Or is it the device that the Republicans are planning to use to screw us all?
3. The second one, though I’m guessing, is almost certainly a fencepost for cattle.
The tight sequence of curves drilled into the ground and the others held lateral runs of barbed wire.
Not sure it’s local, or even of Montana, because you’d need fairly rock-free soil for that to work on a worthy scale.
With the pointy top, it’d be tough to pound in.
4. A curling iron for pioneer women. First, heat it in the fire; then, careful, careful not to singe the hair….
5. Corkscrew for tall people? Or really tall bottles?
6. Pat thought the wrought iron thing was something they used in putting in fence posts. I thought it had to do with barbed wire.
7. Metal squiggle is a steel fencepost for stringing barbed wire.
8. This one looks as if it threads something that moves (the thread has something on the end of it that moves?)
Goodness knows what, but I want it.
9. Prices include delivery?
Answer:
From Collector’s Weekly – WW I Battlefield “pigtail” Barbed Wire Anchor Post.
“Besides their rifles, packs, picks, shovels, coils of wire, etc. the soldiers are carrying an invention that saved many lives. Most activity – particularly placing barbed wire in No Man’s Land – was done at night to avoid becoming a target. However, noise could invite enemy parachute flares which would turn night into day for those found in No Man’s Land. The curly-bottomed fenceposts could be silently turned into the ground by inserting a bar through the ‘eye’ on top – thus avoiding the noise of trying to drive them in with mallets … and a sniper’s bullet.”
Wow.
