Library Sale

This morning, T and I picked up some books at the Kensington, CA Library sale. . . . The books: A Book of Americans, Rosemary and Stephen Vincent Benet, illustrations by Charles Child,… Read More →

Richmond Ephemera

This weekend we went thrift shopping in our own backyard, or nearly, heading north a few miles to the Richmond / El Sobrante / Pinole “triangle”. Sometimes, one’s own backyard can seem a… Read More →

Two Odes to Disaster

Recently while thumbing through a stack of records in our apartment, I came across this tucked away and mistakenly forgotten 7″ 45 by Cora Lee McCoy and Sharon Lynn McCoy. I think we… Read More →

Improbable Super Bowl Soup

From the January 1978 issue of Sunset Magazine, Roger O’Connell’s Super Bowl Turkey Soup: During pregame, bring water to a boil; just before kickoff, add 4 large carrots; at the end of the… Read More →

Hillbilly Gospel

T and I are not religious by any stretch of the imagination, but that has never stopped us from enjoying a good gospel tune. In our thrift store vinyl hunts, we find an… Read More →

Kids! Make 20th Century Stuff for Halloween

Why not? Make a papier-mâché space man with tinfoil and tempera paint. Or a Halloween layer cake. Or a Room of Horrors. Plus, read a creepy story. How? See the downloadable pdfs below. First,… Read More →

Thrift Trinket Tableaux

Even if a thrift store sucks, more often than not you can find interesting trinket arrangements to gawk at. Below are a number of photos of such stuff, taken during today’s thrift trip… Read More →

Phoebe F. Allen’s autograph book from the mid-1920s

Here we have Phoebe F. Allen’s autograph book from the mid-1920s. T found this book in Houma, Louisiana during our summer trip. Funny how we had to travel to Louisiana from California to… Read More →

Travelin’ Along “With My Dog Named Sam”

T and I picked up Erv Howell’s Travelin’ Along “With My Dog Named Sam” in the Autumn of 2008 in a Goodwill somewhere on the road between Huntsville, Alabama and Nashville, Tennessee — probably in… Read More →

Songs We Remember

A number of weeks ago on a day trip to Sonora, California, we found Songs We Remember, an album of two 78 rpm discs sponsored by the Veterans of the Lincoln Brigade (United… Read More →