Renninger's in Adamstown, PA was small enough that Erin and I were able to hit Shupp's Grove on the same day. I found great stuff at both markets, but the atmosphere at Shupp's Grove is much nicer: shady trees and better bathrooms. I purchased a few more things than I photographed for this post, but the total for everything in this post is $160.
Do you see that red metal box in the middle of the photo? It is FILLED with vintage decals. The box was probably used as the store display - it has dividers for different sizes and prices of decals. I'll have to write a separate post to share the decals with you. These are a couple of my favorites:
A vintage globe to add to my collection, a stack of Country Club Sweet Cider labels (these were for gallon jugs of cider), two sets of card games/flashcards, a small medicine cabinet and an old Order Book:
The man who sold me this Order Book had tons of neat journals, ledgers, photos and other ephemera, but his prices were a little steep. I would have bought a lot more from him, but he wasn't willing to budge on his prices. I settled for this book, which is definitely worth the $25 I paid for it (despite the fact that it is falling apart).
This isn't an ordinary Order Book. It is the diary of a Lancaster County Mennonite farmer that spans from 1896 to 1926. It contains his labor accounts, where he lists his farm workers, their hours and how much they were paid (one dollar a day). He has a page that lists the subscriptions to farm journals, how much he paid and when they run out. But the best pages start in 1907, when he began writing a short sentence for each day of the month. Most of the farm-related entries are about tobacco, so I think that was his family's major crop. But there are also references to growing cherry and peach trees, corn, strawberries, blackberries, watermelon, sweet potatoes, pigs and cattle.
The farmer was a member of the Herr family, who are some of the earliest settlers of Lancaster County (and, more importantly, make a mean potato chip). I've been reading the journal to see if I can figure out if the farm is part of the Herr Family Homestead. There are some mentions of the Hershey family, too.
On each page (which is a month's worth of entries), there are a few references to attending funerals. This page from December 1914 has twelve burials. You can see that someone marked off each burial. I thought that it may have been the flu epidemic, but that didn't happen until 1918. Maybe they all had some bad eggs.
Fast forward 50 years to these ten vintage activity books:
This one is filled with blank pages, but the cover is my favorite:
I bought another Redman picnic basket, created by the Redmon Company in Peru, Indiana. You can see my others Redman baskets here, here and here. The basket had a pie shelf inside, along with these bingo cards. The seller told me to keep the Bingo game because someone else was supposed to pick them up and never did. Sure thing, lady!
Here are a few of the 115 assorted metal stencils that I bought at Renninger's. Most are numbers, but there are a few letters, too. They have a tab on the bottom, so they can stand up on a shelf. Tre industrial chic, no?
This is my big purchase for the day - a wooden rack. It may have been used as a baker's rack. Or it could have held shoes or textiles in a factory. My mother-in-law, Mary, has one in her kitchen, and I always loved the way it looked. I totally copied off her. It is in my family room because I don't have room in my kitchen.
It is a little impractical because the shelves are made of widely-spaced dowels. Mary suggested getting glass cut to fit the shelves. For now, it is holding a couple of quilts and a chenille bedspread.
The old cast iron casters are in great shape, but the wood could use some conditioning:
I thought about using the rack to store wine. But then I remembered that wine doesn't last long enough in my house to necessitate any type of storage.
How would you use the rack in your home?
