halfdime
Silver Member
Friends of ours own a decrepit old train station, built in the late 1800s, not very far away. Their plan is to restore it and use it as a community center and we've been helping. So far, our help comes in the form of looking in the dirty parts of the building (crawlspace, attic, etc.) for relics that may be of some interest for display when renovations are complete. Miss halfdime had a morning basketball game (eleven points before fouling out) and we hurried to the station afterward. She and I immediately headed "upstairs," meaning in the unfinished attic. In short order, Miss halfdime had found log books from 1898, tickets used in 1903 and a few other items of interest. There have been old bottles found under the main floor but this was the first time the attic had been fully explored and we were having a blast. We were also hungry; for some reason, this occurs often after a game, so we were happy when lunch was announced. A couple pepperoni slices and a bit of Italian hoagie later, with a few chocolate chip cookies, we were ready to get back at it. Miss halfdime eagerly got back in the attic; I was on the main floor, looking at something someone else had questions about. "I found a dime!" Or so I thought she said. "A dime?," I answered. "A sign!" Again I replied: "You found a dime?" Visions of Seateds and Barbers floated in my head. "No, a Baker's Breakfast Cocoa sign." Now I've watched enough "American Pickers" to appreciate that maybe she'd found something cool. It was buried under a lot of dirt and debris between two joists; anyone else may have failed to check so thoroughly. I headed immediately to the attic to look. "Is it porcelain?", I asked. She thought so, and made her way over to me with the sign. "Oh, Shawn, you might want to come and see this," I said in a bit of a singsong voice. Shawn owns the station. I handed it down and we both knew it would someday be displayed prominently in the cafe that will be part of the center. Evidently there are people in a local hardware store close by who have their fingers on the pulse of such things and we learned a couple important pieces of information: the sign dates to 1910 and is worth a couple hundred bucks! In this case, the coolness of it trumps the other value and we can always look at it and know that Miss halfdime had done it again.
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