Last night I caught up with Leonard for the first time since he got back from Seattle where he went to a Christmas decoration show and sale. I picked up a dozen ornaments and he was kind enough to throw in some stamps. The box the ornaments came in is in great shape.
Total spent today: $30
I don’t go to the mall often, but I was there today and I noticed that there was a store called American Coin & Currency which sells all kinds of money from different periods so I popped in and they had a good selection of money that would be good for the room so I got:
Total spent today: $20.81
Tonight I went over to Leonard’s place and picked up some Christmas ornaments, tinsel, and lights.
Some of the ornaments have cardboard hooks because metal was so scarce during WWII. In fact, Leonard said that if you were a “real” patriotic American, you would have broken all of your German and Japanese ornaments and given the tiny bit of metal to one of the drives going on. The tinsel is lead-weighted and can be bent into different shapes. Finally, the two boxes the Christmas lights came in are in excellent condition except for the fact that someone wrote 75 cents on them in marker when Leonard bought them from Goodwill in the 1970s. The bulbs aren’t authentic, but the wiring is mid-to-late forties.
Total spent today: $29
By now, you might be wondering why I’ve been getting all this stuff for a room with nowhere to sit; it’s because I have not yet found a sofa or any chairs that I’m sure about. But I’ve been spending hours upon hours on google and in stores looking and my eyes are always peeled just as they were this morning when Jenny and I were on our way to get breakfast. I spotted an old couch in the yard along a busy street that looked like it could work.
After breakfast we went back to the house and I got to take a closer look at the couch. It was a bit too ornate and seemed a bit earlier in style than what I envision, but as it turned out one of the guys that lived at the house was a sort of Christmas decoration historian and he knew a LOT about lights. His name was Leonard and he was very friendly and gave me some good info on what to look for as far as bulbs, tinsel, ornaments, etc. He had some strings of lights, one was probably from the forties and the other two were newer but in the same style so I bought them.
Leonard gave me his contact info and said he might have some more stuff for me to buy early next month as he prepares for a Christmas decoration show in Seattle in mid November.
Naturally, I will have to mostly use bulbs that only look like they’re from the forties for the tree since they burn out and I’m not going to break my back looking to replace every bulb with one manufactured during the period. I think if I stick to the “fat” looking bulbs, it’ll be fine. The wiring is what matters most.
Total spent today: ~$2
Today, Jenny and I went to A-D & D Antiques in Council Bluffs, IA which is only open on Saturdays and is owned by this older gentleman who seemed very knowledgeable. He had a nice selection of phones and I spotted what is no doubt a Western Electric 202. From reading this awesome guide, it looks like mine was made in 1936. Also, on the inside it says “TEL. CO. PROPERTY” because people used to rent their phones from the telephone company.
Total spent today: $150
My parents came for a visit this past week and my mom brought over some of her dad’s things for the room:
The main purpose of the forties room has always been to create an atmosphere where I can listen to my collection of old time radio shows; thus THE main component of the room has always been the radio. And ever since I’ve started casually looking for ideas and artifacts for the room about 9 months ago, I’ve known exactly which radio would fit the vision: a 1939 Zenith console (aka floor) radio with a big, radial dial.
After traveling to almost two dozen places over the last week from Walnut, IA to Council Bluffs, IA to Missouri Valley, IA to places here in Omaha, today I found and bought a 1939 Zenith 6-S-326.
Let me tell you about this thing. First of all, the radio turns on and, after warming up, picks up static. And after turning it on the first time and seeing the beautiful glow of that big round dial, it was pretty amazing. The radio picks up three bands, controlled by a knob: Broadcast, Police, and Foreign. There is another knob for adjusting what looks like equalizer presets: Foreign, Hi Fidelity, and Voice. There is a power/volume knob and the volume goes up to about fourteen and a half. And of course there is a tuner knob. The power cord is in good shape, but I can’t tell whether it’s original or not and the vacuum tubes glow very faintly. Finally, the wooden exterior is in pretty excellent shape.
Now the bad news: there really isn’t an antenna; the “antenna” that is attached looks like a wire that someone cut from a pair of cheap modern headphones. And the dial doesn’t quite work; it moves somewhat, but it’s attached to the tuner knob with a set of pulleys and the band around them is slipping. So it needs a bit of work, but in all, I think it’s absolutely beautiful and I got a pretty good deal.
So here’s the plan: I’ll fix up the electronics and the tuning mechanism and then I’ll buy an AM transmitter (possibly from http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/hk/default.asp?page=amfm) and hook it up to my computer so I can broadcast my shows from mp3’s to the radio. More posts on this as I make progress. Stay tuned!
Total spent today: $450.00
Today we went out to a couple antique places, one of which was recommended to me by a coworker called Venice Antiques. So we drove out to Waterloo, NE and there I found an awesome desk that looked like it would fit. I asked the gentleman that worked there what decade he thought it was from and he said “thirties or forties.”
I took some pictures and went home; I googled around a bit for a few hours, looking to confirm the date and make sure that this style of desk wasn’t atypical for a middle-class 1940’s American living room. I did find some desks from the thirties and forties with similar characteristics and the more I thought about it and the more I looked at the pics I took, the more I liked the desk. A couple hours later it made a perfect addition to the room. When I took the drawers out to move it, I noticed on back of each was the number 32; does this mean it was made in 1932?
Anyway, I’ve been researching the layouts of typical middle-class 1940’s American living rooms and though they vary almost as much as living room layouts today, in all the pictures I’ve come across of 1940’s living rooms where there was a desk, it was almost always shoved into a corner (case in point: remember where the last present was plucked from in A Christmas Story?). So my new desk was put in the corner and I casually tossed upon it the magazines and matchbooks that I got last weekend.
Total Spent Today: $118.69.
Jenny and I went out antiqueing today to see if we could come across any must-haves for the room. We weren’t looking for anything in particular though we made sure to check every store for old radios.
At one store, I found some National Geographic magazines from December, 1942 and December, 1944 for $1 each so I got those. Then I saw an issue of Collier’s from December, 1944; I’ve never heard of Collier’s, but it had a lot of good ads and WWII pictures so I picked it up for $5.
At another store, I found a really good collection of matchbooks organized by state (weird). Seeing as I don’t know how to tell the difference between a 1940’s matchbook and a 1980’s one, I asked for help. The lady who worked there said that the striking surface of matchbooks was moved from the front to the back in the mid-50’s because people realized that striking on the front with the matchbook open could throw a spark into the other matches. She also mentioned something about telephone prefixes not being used in the 40’s so if I saw a matchbook with an odd phone number on it, it was a good bet (I did see one that only had 4 digits).
I got matchbooks branded with Tums, General Motors, and TWA; though I can’t be sure the TWA one is from the forties, I had to get it, partly because my first plane flight (to Disney World) was on TWA. The matchbooks were about $2.81 after tax.
Total spent today: ~$10.22
My fiancée, Jenny, and I closed on our first house on April 14, 2010, but long before we even started looking, I told her I wanted a room where I could listen to my collection of old time radio shows and that it had to have an old radio that you would find in a typical living room during the 1940’s. Not only that, but it should contain only things that existed in the forties. She thought it was a good idea at the time…
While we were looking for our house, she got pretty annoyed at my rigid requirements including that there needed to be a room, preferrably with a fireplace, that could be closed off from the rest of the house. Afterall, I didn’t want to be able to see any computers or other signs of modern life from the forties room. It took awhile, but we finally found the house that we both liked.
We moved in and Jenny insisted that we put her parents’ old china cabinet into the forties room. I didn’t like the sound of that as I had planned on hand-picking every item that goes into the room, but after taking a look at it, it works out pretty well. I’m not sure what decade the china cabinet comes from, but it’s definitely pre-forties.
Here are the initial pictures:
