MOTHERS' DOWN-HOME COUNTRY LORE

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Although Iona Westwood of Laytonville, California would be hesitant to try this method with enamelware, she's used it—with good results and no warping—on cast iron, aluminum, and stainless steel.

And don't throw away that salt after you've used it! Iona says you can just heat it up again (ash and all) and pour it into a sack or sturdy pillowcase for a down-home "hot water bottle". Tie off the top of the bag and wrap your new creation in a towel. It'll stay hot for hours . . . and is a good "salt of the earth" treatment for earaches, backaches, and just plain warming your footsies!

Summer is good ole-fashioned barbecue time and you've probably got the grill out already. Problem is, though, often there are coals or briquettes left over after you've done your cooking . . . and that fuel usually ends up going to waste. It doesn't have to be that way, though, not if you do as Ivan Gossage of Portola, California does.

Take a pail of water and—using a pair of tongs—drop the hot briquettes into the water. (They'll steam and spew, so stand back aways.) At first the little chunks of fuel will float . . . then eventually sink to the bottom. Good. Fish the wet coals out with the tongs and let 'em dry. Then bag up the recycled charcoal and it'll be all ready for your next outdoor feast!

Tree stumps can be a real nuisance, but Larry Halton has come up with an ingenious way of removing them from his DeSoto, Missouri land. First cut the top and bottom out of an empty metal 55-gallon drum. Then make a 6-inch hole in the side of the barrel, near the base, to provide a draft.

Dig a "moat" around—and a few inches out from—the stump you're trying to get rid of . . . place the drum (a 55-gallon drum is approximately 23" in diameter) down over the stump . . . and start a fire in the barrel. Your portable stove will burn what's left of the tree down below ground level in about 24 hours, more or less, depending on the size of the stump.

Donna Bartz of Hingham, Massachusetts informs us that her great-uncle always kept a couple of goldfish—gold in color, anyway—in the indoor watering tank that he'd fashioned for his horses from a half of an oak barrel. The presence of the tinny creatures kept the algae from growing in the tank and—whether it was fish sense or horse sense—each time after the horses drank, the fish were still swimming around. A good country example of a true symbiotic, one hand washes (and watches) the other relationship.

A big, shiny sheet of glass on your desk top looks good, feels good . . . even allows your special papers to show through for a quick-and-easy reference. Unfortunately, quarter-inch glass—which is what you need—is expensive. Doug Firebaugh of Freeport, Illinois, however, has a way around the excessive cost. He gets old bureau mirrors at garage and household sales. Then, with 50 cents' worth of nitric acid and a good pair of rubber gloves, Doug cleans the silver from the back of the mirror and—voila!—has a good-sized desktop cover of clear glass at a fraction of "new" cost.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print