carboy circa prohibition

When we lived in St. Louis, there was an elderly lady living across the street with her somewhat elderly (special needs) son. They were rather nice enough, keeping well to themselves most of the time. Well, the time came for them to move; the stairs were a pain as were the bills and the upkeep of the house; so they were to move to Washington state to live with her daughter. I saw that they were packing by themselves and offered to help. They pretty much just wanted things thrown out as they were not moving much, so they said I could keep whatever I wanted. They were very nice. She had been a school teacher and apparently a member of the book of the month club for many years. I helped them clear out their junk and managed to salvage about a hundred books including The United States a History copyright 1891 and this carboy dated 1926. Mrs. McInnes told me how when they moved in there had been quite a lot of fruit trees in the yard and thought they had something to do with wine making during prohibition. In the basement there was a "secret" room with concrete walls hidden behind some paneling/secret door. That is where I found the carboy. It had sat for decades and contained all manner of dead insects, dust, and I think even plant matter. I of course cleaned it out, sanitized it, and used it. In fact I just bottled my citrus wine out of it last night.

An interesting couple of finds. To me, anyway.