You Never Know What Bahoukas Might Have!

Home Milk Pasteurizer from the Schlueter Co. of Wisconsin available at Bahoukas Antique Mall in Havre de Grace, MDAlways tell us what you’re looking for…

You just never know what might be discovered when you’re searching our shelves. High up on one of those shelves, we discovered a Home Pasteurizer by The Schlueter Co. of Wisconsin. Used for pasteurizing raw milk, we’ve discovered that they still make these. 

… If you traveled through even fairly large cities around the year 1900, you would often come across something now illegal in most urban areas: milk cows. Dairy animals were not uncommon in cities, and it was often the task of young children to lead the animals to whatever grassy areas were available on the edge of town so they could graze.

In the last hundred years of urban migration, the number of home or small farm dairies has been greatly reduced. Who needed to keep a cow when it was so much simpler just to buy milk from the grocery store? As the population of rural areas emptied into urban centers, Americans became more and more disconnected from the source of all their dairy products… as well as more concerned about the quality of those products as dairies became enormous commercialized enterprises.  

from Self Reliant School

The above quote is from an article that gives the many sides of the raw vs pasteurized vs homogenized milk. If you’re one of those folks who take self-reliance and personal responsibility very seriously, we have a tool you might need. 

We also found this information from Mother Earth News website:

…It’s actually very easy to pasteurize your own milk on the stovetop. An added bonus is that your milk won’t need to stand up to long distance shipping and prolonged storage, so you can pasteurize it safely using lower heat and less time than many industrial milk producers use. All you need is a stainless steel pot and a simple kitchen thermometer.

So there you have it: the tool or the recipe! 

Of course, we keep telling you about all the surprises waiting for you to discover at Bahoukas Antique Mall and Beer MuZeum. You can be sure, we’ll be watchin’ for ya. Stop in soon!

Very Collectible Wedding Toppers

Beautiful and humorous!

fun and funny collectible wedding toppers at Bahoukas in Havre de Grace

Brides, wedding planners, and wedding shower hosts are always looking for unique decorations. At Bahoukas Antique Mall we have some beautiful, and a few humorous, collectible wedding toppers. They make great toppers for wedding cakes, of course. But they can also be used in wedding shower decor! 

Wondering what other ways you might use collectible wedding toppers. VISIT THIS PAGE on HGTV.com for some really fun ideas. ENJOY … then stop by and see if we have something that might work for your creative project. Yes, we WILL be watchin’ for ya!

The Telegraph – replaced the Semaphore

FIRST – the SEMAPHORE

Developed in the early 1790s, the semaphore consisted of a series of hilltop stations that each had large movable arms to signal letters and numbers and two telescopes with which to see the other stations. Like ancient smoke signals, the semaphore was susceptible to weather and other factors that hindered visibility. A different method of transmitting information was needed to make regular and reliable long-distance communication workable.
from History.com

Here is a U.S. Navy training video for using flags to signal:


 

Can you imagine communicating hilltop to hilltop?

It’s hard for us to picture such a life today, especially when having our phones unavailable for 15 minutes has us acting like we’re lost! Enter the telegraph machine – the beginning of the more reliable and more easily accessible communications. 

telegraph machine - see it at Bahoukas Antique Mall in Havre de Grace

 

In 1843, Morse and Vail received funding from the U.S. Congress to set up and test their telegraph system between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland. On May 24, 1844, Morse sent Vail the historic first message: “What hath God wrought!” The telegraph system subsequently spread across America and the world, aided by further innovations. 

The electric telegraph transformed how wars were fought and won and how journalists and newspapers conducted business. Rather than taking weeks to be delivered by horse-and-carriage mail carts, pieces of news could be exchanged between telegraph stations almost instantly. The telegraph also had a profound economic effect, allowing money to be “wired” across great distances.

Did you know? SOS, the internationally recognized distress signal, does not stand for any particular words. Instead, the letters were chosen because they are easy to transmit in Morse code: “S” is three dots, and “O” is three dashes.

from History.com

From this invention, communication changed rapidly moving on to the telephone, fax machine, and now the internet. 

Here’s an intriguing explanation of using the Morse Code on a telegraph machine. The descriptive images are as interesting as the lesson! Enjoy!

Stop in and see this fascinating piece of our recent history. We’ll be watchin’ for ya!

Tools and Instruments

What’s YOUR Interest?

A simple machine is a mechanical device that changes the direction or magnitude of a force. In general, they are the simplest mechanisms that use mechanical advantage (also called leverage) to multiply force. The six classical simple machines which were defined by Renaissance scientists are:

Lever
Wheel and axle
Pulley
Inclined plane
Wedge
Screw

from Wikipedia

The simple machine was the beginning. We could take a simple machine and multiply our efforts. Then …

Substitution as makeshift is when human ingenuity comes into play and a tool is used for its unintended purpose such as a mechanic using a long screw driver to separate a cars control arm from a ball joint instead of using a tuning fork. In many cases, the designed secondary functions of tools are not widely known. As an example of the former, many wood-cutting hand saws integrate a carpenter’s square by incorporating a specially shaped handle that allows 90° and 45° angles to be marked by aligning the appropriate part of the handle with an edge and scribing along the back edge of the saw. The latter is illustrated by the saying “All tools can be used as hammers.” Nearly all tools can be used to function as a hammer, even though very few tools are intentionally designed for it and even fewer work as well as the original.

from Wikipedia

Here, at Bahoukas Antique Mall, we have a variety of tools for nearly every need. We have a wonderful assortment of vintage tools used for woodworking. But check these out for a different peek at what you might find on a shelf :

Collectible microscope at Bahoukas Antique Mall in Havre de Grace, MD  Comptometer - Bahoukas Antique Mall in Havre de Grace  Vintage blood pressure cuff at Bahoukas in Havre de Grace, MD 

On the left is a beautiful microscope that just might delight a young person learning a bit of science! In the center, well, this is quite the calculator. What we can do on our smartphones is so much more than the efforts made with the Comptometer! Here’s a great video explain the mechanics behind the Comptometer. You can see how the ‘simple machines’ noted above make up the way these machines worked.

 

Do you wonder how you use them? Here’s another video. You can advance to around 3 minutes to see how to use it. 

 And finally, we have an old version of a tool/instrument to read your blood pressure. It’s intriguing to see wrist cuffs now that do the same. 

Keep in mind, that tools started with the simplest machines noted above. Later, when you added steam, electricity, transistors, all leading to the computer age and the use of chips. Tools and instruments are fascinating. If you’re an older person, you’ll remember many of these transitions. If you’re a younger person, it might be fun to understand the development required to have the amazing tools you use today!

Hey, stop in and visit us at Bahoukas Antique Mall and Beer MuZeum. We love chatting. And yes, we’ll be watchin’ for ya!

Do you remember Buffalo Bob?

Howdy Doody and other puppets!

Puppets at Bahoukas in Havre de Grace include Howdy Doody, cloth hand puppet with plastic clown face, lady hand puppet, plastic frog hand puppet, and goat and fox push puppets

Howdy Doody was an American children’s television program (with circus and Western frontier themes) that was created and produced by E. Roger Muir and telecast on the NBC network in the United States from December 27, 1947, until September 24, 1960. It was a pioneer in children’s television programming and set the pattern for many similar shows. One of the first television series produced at NBC in Rockefeller Center, in Studio 3A, it was also a pioneer in early color production as NBC (at the time owned by TV maker RCA) used the show in part to sell color television sets in the 1950s.

from Wikipedia

Remember this – here’s a show from 1947 from YouTube!

 

Click on the Wikipedia link for the history of the Howdy Doody Show. It’s most interesting. Also, we share a few photos from the show (also from Wikipedia ). Do you remember these characters? Did you  have a favorite?

Buffalo Bob with Howdy Doody and Flub-a-Dub  Phileas T Bluster from the Howdy Doody Show  Clarabell the Clown from the Howdy Doody Show

The other items in the top photo, available at Bahoukas Antique Mall in Havre de Grace include, a 1950s Howdy Doody puppet, on the left  is a 1960s cloth hand puppet with a plastic clown face, goat and fox “push puppets”, a 1970s lady hand puppet and int the front right is a plastic frog hand puppet from the 1970s. 

BRIEF HISTORY OF PUSH PUPPETS…

….where did they come from ? When were they first made? All Puppets in photos are from my own collection. Push puppets were first made in Switzerland by a wooden toy maker, Walter Kourt Walss in 1932. These articulated,wobbling toys were known as WAKOUWAS; taken from the first few letters of each of Walter’s names! The dancing, wiggling toys are now known by many different names around the world   from Pomsie’s Push Puppets
Take a peek at the Pomsie site … you’ll even see a Howdy Doody push puppet!
 

 

Payphone? Dashboard Clock?

More tools and instruments of yesteryear!

magnetic dashboard clock 1950s-1960s

In our last post, we shared a1994 car phone. Today we wanted to show you a 1950s-1060s magnetic dashboard clock. WOW … and now we’re all digital! Did you have a dashboard clock?

Do you remember Pay Phones!

 

We also wanted to share an older pay phone. Golly, I remember that if you passed a pay phone, you immediately walked up and hoped someone had left their change. Now many youngsters wouldn’t even know how to use them. 

Stop in and pay us a visit. We welcome you to stroll our very own “Nostalgia Lane.” You might just find the perfect collectible for your home decor or collection. And yes, of course, we’ll be watchin’ for ya!

Hello? Hello?

Early Car Phones

Motorola Dynasty Car-to-Car phone at Bahoukas

We have one of these ‘amazing’ early cell phones in our shop. The instructions are very long AND the battery charging… well, let’s just say that complaints today have nothing over these 1990s phones. We’ve included an instructional video just so you can appreciate what you have today!

 

from wikipedia: Don Adams with Shoe Phone from Get Smart tv show.

While checking this out, for some strange reason the show “Get Smart” came to mind and his ‘shoe phone.’ Do you remember that? No, we don’t have one of those. 
The photo is from Wikipedia. Don’t you just love what the internet can remember!

Stop in today and see what other crazy, intriguing, interesting, collectibles we have. Remember, we have the ‘Collection of Collections.” And yes, we’ll be watchin’ for ya!

Like the small things?

Collecting Miniatures has several advantages.

miniature collections 1

When you collect miniatures, they’ll take less space. For the minimalist, it might be the perfect way to enjoy vintage and antique collectibles in a smaller or simpler space. 

Miniature Collectibles 2

How long have we been collecting miniatures? Consider this quote:

Archeologists have discovered wooden miniatures of farm animals, carts and other everyday objects that date back to at least 5,000 BC in Egypt. It’s difficult to catalog the exact history of miniature collecting since there are so many different types of miniatures and ways the miniatures were used.

While people have collected miniatures for thousands of years, most early miniatures served a utilitarian purpose. Armies used miniature models for battlefield and wartime strategies. Architects and designers used miniature models to help visualize and refine designs for structures and furniture. Regardless of the purpose or type, it’s safe to say that people have been interested in miniature collecting for as long as miniatures have been around.

from Hobby Helper 

Miniatures and Czech glass

Above is a beautiful collection of miniatures including Czech glass – tiny, exquisite, and beautiful.

miniatures - Princess House lead crystal sets

The above collection are lead crystal sets by Princess House. They include fish, horse, cow, rabbit and rat plus four circus figurines: clown, lion, elephant and seal.

So if you would like to start collecting, but also want to keep it manageable, start with ‘miniatures.’ Of course, we’re not saying that miniature collections can’t take over your space. But, that’s for another post! 

Stop in and see the miniatures we have throughout the shop. We have also have a number of printers trays that are great for small collections. Of course, we’ll be watchin’ for ya!

Wishing you a Safe Holiday

Happy Labor Day!

Happy Labor Day 2018

From the Dept. of Labor (U.S) we have the following information about this day’s meaning:

Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.  Dept of Labor website

We Salute and Honor The American Worker today!

The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pays tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation’s strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker.   Dept of Labor website

We wish you and your families a Safe and Wonderful Labor Day Celebration! 

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