1,827 Comments Posted by eldokid@aol.com

anything to pass the time

no one mentions the REDRUM?

I love books, seeing them like this kills me.

So many items and practices of past years were hazardous, we just didn't know it at the time. Look at children's toys from the early part of the last century, even into the 1970s. Made of cast iron or sheet tin with sharp edges that would slice your arm off! Yet kids played with them. I remember a James Bond toy car I had in the 70's that was made of tin and had sharp edges, small parts and pointy things all over it. I played with it a lot and didn't get hurt. Now I wish I still had that stupid thing because I've seen them on eBay selling for many hundreds of dollars!

Probably no one stole the radiators because they each weigh a ton. I took radiators out of a house once and just about broke my back doing it.

I used to hear stories of the workers that used to paint these Radium dials and watch hands. They would put the tip of the brush on their tongue to moisten it and keep the bristles together, then dip the brush in the Radium; paint a little, then repeat the process. So by the end of their shift their tongue would have so much Radium on it, it would glow in the dark. Not sure how much truth there is to this, but as an artist myself I can see it happening. This of course was long before we knew the dangers of this.

I still have my uncles watch he wore through WWII, complete with the Radium hands. They still glow in the dark and I wear the watch occasionally, I hardly think there's enough Radium on those two little hands to do me any harm, however the people that used to paint these hands, well that's another story!

You can really tell this place had a lot of class in its day.

I love old safes but can you imagine some explorer getting accidentally locked in there? I'm sure there's no one around who remembers the combination!

Poor forgotten radiators. . .they're usually the first to go whenever there's a remodel. To be replaced by baseboard heat (ugh!). Seems like they started to remove these and then said forget it.

That's exactly what it was for, shipping tape that had glue on it. I used one of these exact machines taping up boxes in the shipping and receiving dept of a store I worked in. This is going back to the late 1970s but I'm sure they were used well after that.

I'll admit it too, so do I! Brings back memories of pre-desktop computer days. I do like the play of light and shadow though, pretty cool.

Ahhhh, the end of an era indeed. Very sad. Personally, I prefer the land yachts.

Being the avid Wurlitzer (and Seeburg) jukebox collector and restorer the majority of my adult life, I was thrilled to see this new gallery. Can't wait to see the inside photos.

what a dismal place