Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

The view from Wendy's World: Anybody need a 'whats-it'?

I got a whats-it.

We attended an auction a couple

of weeks ago and there were

tons of items from days gone by.

Many of them I recognized and

could name but Ill admit that

there were a few that were simply

whachamacallits, doo-hickies

and thing-a-ma-jigs.

The old stuff intrigues me.

Im always amazed by the way

people lived. Its said that

Necessity is the motherhood of

invention, but Im inclined to

think its not necessity but a

desire for convenience. My

grandmothers made time to iron

with a flat iron, heated on a wood

stove in August after cooking

supper (not to be confused with

dinner) for a houseful of hungry

kids. I can barely drag myself

into position to plug in the iron

while in the comfort

of my air-conditioned

house

with dinner cooking

in the

microwave.

One of my

g r a n d m o t h e r s

carded cotton to

make quilt batting.

She would call in

my mom to thread

her needle while

she quilted, sometimes

using just a

coal oil lamp for

light. I have electric

lights and

glasses (bifocals

are horrible, but

thats another column for another

day), and quilting is a fun

thing, not a necessity. But even

for fun Im not going to card the

cotton for batting.

Back to my whats-it.

It was in a box that was tied

up with string, but there were no

markings on the box other than

the fact that the box was made in

New Jersey or somewhere like

that. It remained on my dining

room table for days. When we

pulled it out, it was apparent that

it wasnt any of the things Id

been told it was  a quilting

frame, a weaving loom or a canvas

stretcher. It is a

large frame and it

stands up as a painting

easel. The sticks

that make up the

frame are imprinted

with numbers, like a

ruler. There are tiny

nails, sharp-side-out,

every inch The only

words on the frame

are right bottom,

left leg, etc., which

is how we figured

out how to put it

together in the first

place. Other than

that, theres what

appears to be a brand

name  Slide-OMatic.

Did you know someone has

created a computer program

called the Slide-O-Matic? Thats

what I got when I googled it.

The whats-it is at the Nevada

County Depot Museum, where I

was tremendously disappointed

to find that no one else could

identify it as anything other than

a whats-it. It has to have a purpose.

And Im sure someone

thought it was vital to a quality

life. I have to figure out what it

is. Im sure I need it.

(Wendy Ledbetter is editor of

the Nevada County Picayune)