Vintage Thingies Thursdays – Tools of My Trade

I was so happy about the number of people who checked out my Spoon last week on Vintage Thingie Thursday!  Thank you all for looking and for all your wonderful comments.

This week I chose some of the tools of my trade; which is designing concrete formwork systems for commercial buildings.

The first picture is of a shadow box I made.  For those who do not know me, I am a shadow box fanatic – I think they are a great way to display memorabilia.  This one features a vintage matchbook I found in my grandfather’s things that says, “Be a Civil Engineer: Train at Home.”  I backed it with reproduction blue line paper (from my local scrapbook store) and added a draftsman’s triangle.  In the background, you will see a couple of my vintage books.  The Foreman’s Handbook was printed in 1943 and is a First Edition, Fourth Impression.  It features chapters such as “Special Problems in Supervising Women” which offers insightful gems like:

In the matter of unsafe clothing, the foreman will immediately run into the tangled problem of womanly vanity; he would do best to sidestep it if he can…It is perhaps too much to expect most women to wear the ugly “safety shoe,” but the supervisor can insist upon stout, low-heeled oxfords and place a ban on all open-work shoes…Most of the reluctance toward wearing proper clothing will vanish if management will provide attractive lockers and rest rooms where the women can change comfortably into their street clothes; if they can do that they will not care greatly how unfeminine they look while working in the shop.

I will spare you the advice on how to deal with women who are going through menopause or who are otherwise hormonal and hysterical.

The other 2 books you see are The Steel Square, Volume II, published in 1918 (copyright 1903) and Audels Answers on Blue Print Reading, published in 1960 (copyright 1941).  Both of those books make for pretty dry reading for nerds and non-nerds alike.

My other treasures are even more personal to me.  One is a slide rule, circa early 1970′s that belonged to my dad and the other is my dad’s Bruening drafting set, also circa early 1970′s that he gave to me when I went to engineering school (or “ran off from home and got married” as he puts it every single day when I see him).  In the background is the original Post Versalog II Slide Rule Instructions that came with the slide rule.  It was published in 1970 and is not very exciting at all; though I do love the cover art.  The other 2 books are Foremanship I and Foremanship IV, both were published in 1921.  There is actually quite a lot of insight into human nature in these books.  However, I feel obliged to include an excerpt from the “Ways of Handling Men” chapter:

One time I had to handle a gang of toughs on a shovel job, who took kindness for weakness, and I was obliged to thrash the leader before we could be friends.  I had a hard time doing it, too.  During the war, one of my friends had been put in charge of a gange of Chinese laborers from Shanghai – wharf rats, with no moral instincts, the poorest specimens of humanity.  He was congratulated for having the best-disciplined gang in that section, but he informed me that he had three fights before he managed to whip his gang into shape.  On the other hand, I once saw an old army sergeant, who had been used to drilling recruits from the coal mines, try to handle a bunch of rookies from a college.  He had to quit.

Now, I’m the first to admit that I might be slightly lacking in people skills.  But even I am more subtle than to thrash my co-workers!

Thank you for looking at my treasures this week!  For more cool vintage thingies, head on over to http://anapronaday.blogspot.com.

 

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You can’t wear those britches, lady!

I went into a store last week that I had never gone to before.  It’s called Maurice’s.  I proceeded to purchase a pair of shorts, a t-shirt, and 2 pairs of flip-flops.  I thought the clothes looked a little like midget clothes, so I got a size up from what I normally wear.  As I approached the counter, the girl working there said, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but you are much too curvy for these clothes.  We only carry junior sizes; you might try the husky lady store next door down.”  Actually, she didn’t.  But I wish she had, it would have saved me a trip to return the midget shirt.  I wonder though why everyone in the store was at least as old as me.  Oh yeah, probably buying clothes for their daughters.  Nonetheless, I’ll have you know that the shorts and the flip-flops fit.

Today I went back to return the midget shirt that didn’t fit.  You know that sound that a rabid chipmunk makes when his tail is stuck under something like your tire (or a bowling ball, whatever)?  That’s the only way I have to describe the way the little girl in line ahead of me spoke.  She was yapping a mile a minute to the poor sales girl (whom I don’t think knew the customer in any capacity except this transaction), “So like for my college I have to take this class that you have to test into it’s called English and Communication 306 English and Communication in an Intercontinental Global Business Setting and you have to test into it but it’s required and I think it’s like totally stupid that you have to test into a required class if they make you test into it then it shouldn’t be required if it’s required they should just let everybody take it and at my college it’s like really close to an army base or air force or something anyway it’s a military base and so like all these guys in my class are in the military except for me and one other guy and we’re just like uhhhhh oh my gosh and I don’t know what to say to the army guys and stuff because it’s kind of scary one of them is like really old like my dad.  Oh I have a coupon I bought like five 20% off coupons on Ebay for like 5 dollars it was so cool I can use it more than once right because I only have one for here I have one for Old Navy and I just used it over there and they said I can use it again and again as much as I want to I got one for like Kohl’s too but I don’t want to go there because that’s more for like older people like my mom’s age or like over 35 and stuff my boyfriend just bought a house so I like need to save money because I know I’ll probably be moving in with him soon and I’ll have to like buy stuff and stuff.  Why won’t it read my credit card?”  Now, if the lack of punctuation didn’t provide you some kind of clue about how fast this girl was talking, maybe this will.  She purchased one shirt.  She said all that in the time it took the sales clerk to ring up one freaking shirt!

I wonder what would happen if her college required her to take Differential Equations.  She would probably like soooo totally faint and stuff.  I took Differential Equations.  I even passed it.  On my first try!  Anyone who hasn’t taken Diff E-Q, as we in the industry call it, does not know what they are missing.  Of course, it’s not like they are missing all that much, just one of the most powerful tools in mathematics.  Or so I’m told.  I didn’t say I comprehended it; I said I passed the course.  There can sometimes be a subtle difference in the two verbs.  Besides, in my humble opinion, the slide rule is probably the most powerful tool in mathematics; much more powerful than differential equations.  Slide rules are awesome!  In addition to using it to multiply numbers out to 42 significant digits, you can also whack people with it when they get out of line.  And conjugate verbs.  After all, NASA was using slide rules, not computers, when they sent a man to the moon for the first time.

By the time it was my turn at the register, my brain was so tired from listening to that girl that I could barely remember why I was there in the first place.  I finally got my wits about me and was explaining to the clerk that I had bought this shirt for my sister but it was the wrong color.  What?  You didn’t think I was going to admit that I didn’t know it was a junior size, did you?  For goodness sake, no!

The clerk was very professional and very good at her job and didn’t try to give me a bunch of heartache over the shirt.  While she was doing whatever they do to credit my debit card, another little girl walked in and asked for an application.  Oh wait, let me back up a little.  The sales clerk was also a manager.  Okay, where was I?  Oh yeah, this little girl walked in and asked for an application.  She was wearing knit tennis shorts that can only be described as having a 1/4″ inseam; they were so short that, had she actually had a butt, it would have been hanging out.  Whereas a normal person applying for a job would wear a shirt, she had on a tube top underneath a wife beater tank top.  She was also wearing rubber flip flops and had her hair in a ponytail.  Don’t get me wrong, this little thing was so tiny that she could easily pull off the look at, say, a volleyball tournament.  Now I’m not in retail, much less a manager of a retail clothing store, but I imagine if I were, I would not be thrilled about seeing someone dressed that way asking for an application.  But that manager, bless her heart, didn’t miss a beat in handing her the application and wishing her luck.

After that, I went to Chipotle to pick up some supper.  Thankfully, they have their tomatoes back.  But now they don’t have raw jalapenos.  Will the madness never end?!

On another note, I have a new sharp-eyed reader named My Dad.  Hi, Dad!  Sharp-eyed reader My Mom finally convinced him to come see me here.  Hi, Mom!  (My Dad can back a trailer too, just in case you’re wondering.)

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