MOTHERS' DOWN-HOME COUNTRY LORE

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An instant greenhouse can be fashioned from an old car body, suggests Maple Valley, Washington's Blanche Haynes, provided the vehicle's windows are still intact. Just arrange your plant flats, crates, and other containers within the cleaned-out automobile hull in whatever way you think will make for the most convenient watering and tending. Make it easy on yourself. And, for daytime ventilation, just crank open a window or two. Maybe you'll even find a vehicle (planter) with a sun roof!

Got a screen door, an outhouse door, or perhaps just a small gate that you'd like to close automatically? Well, those long coil springs made for just that purpose are nice but—as James Tinger of Hermitage, Tennessee points out—you don't need 'em if there's an old inner tube handy . . . and there almost always is. Cut a 2"-wide strip the length you need (it'll depend on the distance your door or gate swings) from the tube. Then fold over 1" of each end of the length of rubber and fasten the stretcher to the door, gate, fence, etc. (using nails or screws attached to 1" X 1" X 2" wood blocks). You'll laugh—in admiration—at the simple practicality of this down-home idea.

If you do have an inner tube—especially from a truck tire—that's being cut up for whatever reason . . . save that valve stem. Why? To make a simple—but effective—compression tester for your machine, whether it's a car, truck, tractor, or rototiller. Just take an old spark plug from the vehicle to be tested and break away the glass part of the electrode, leaving the metal threaded portion intact. Then take that truck tube air valve you've been holding on to and braze it to the threaded (now glassless) section of the plug. Screw the new "tester" into the spark plug hole of the machine you're testing and apply air pressure—with a pump, f' r instance—through the air valve. According to Joe Chasse of Renton, Washington (who sent us this little trick), if you then hear air at the exhaust pipe you've got a bad exhaust valve . . . air detected at the carburetor means a bad intake valve . . . and air at the breather outlet indicates bad rings.

Don't despair over a burned pot or pan. We all blacken cooking utensils from time to time. The question is what to do about it. Easy. Clean the blackened utensil as best you can with conventional methods (scrubbing, scraping, soaking, cursing). Then pour salt in it and fill the pot or pan with at least two inches of the seasoning if the sides are also burnt.

Next heat the salt-laden dish, occasionally stirring its contents around. After the salt is thoroughly heated remove the pot and let it—and the seasoning—cool. Then, when you pour off the salt, the burnt sides and bottom of the pan—in the form of ash—should pour off as well!

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