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.

It's just a flesh wound!

A little $10 investment (?$ value, anyone?) I made in about 1989 or so. I had visions of this guy sitting on the dark wood desk of a stockbroker in the '20s where he used it to light is fat cigars. Also, I thought it was really cool!

I went to the Lake of the Ozarks with my parents and some of their friends for a weekend. While with my mom and her friend "antiquing", I came across this fella. I remember taking it home and cleaning it up. It took about two days of cleaning and polishing to get it up to snuff. I suppose it could use another polishing, huh?
I'll get some lighter fluid for it, and get some action shots later!