Monday, September 24, 2012

Memory Monday...dolls from an old garbage site...

Dear reader; you may be rather freaked out by these images.
But to me they are delightful!
They belong to the distant past and were found on my Uncle Ed Brutke's property back in the 1970's.
I can't remember the exact year, but I was a teenager at the time.
I believe it was either 1975 or 1976.
Uncle Ed had torn down the old homestead, the cabin where my grandparents had lived until they built their farmhouse in the 1930's.
He planned to build a large steel tool shed on the spot and in the meantime, his two hunting dogs, Trixie and Spec, began digging in the soft earth of the excavation site.
We think they were burrowing for mice, but as they dug, bits and pieces began to fly out, and my parents and uncle took shovels and began to dig, as they remembered that was the site of the old garbage dump for their parents. In those days, the scraps of food were thrown on a pile for the birds and animals to pick at, and everything else was buried!

These little bits of bisque dolls, made in Japan, were the ones my Mom used to play with!
Isn't that absolutely fascinating?
I wanted to keep on digging, but we were leaving the next day.
We dug out what we could, but my uncle didn't dig any further on his own, as he thought this was all just JUNK.
The above photo shows the back of the dolls.

Isn't this face darling?
My Mom would make dresses for the dolls using scraps of fabric from her mother's sewing basket.
My Mom also loved to bury the dolls in the garden, and dig them up after a few days to see how the clothes had rotted. Of course, she never left them in the ground long enough.

Does anyone know how to remove the rust on these faces?

Here is a little Dutch doll. My Mom always wanted to visit Holland but never did.
I had the delight of going there in 2007, and meeting Robert's relatives.
I think it's amusing that I married a Dutchman, when my Mom was always so intrigued with Holland as a child.

These are a few of the other things we dug up. The lower bottle was used for ink.
The upper left bottle held perfume, and the middle one with the peacock may have also held perfume. The blue bottle is fascinating. Maybe it was used for medicine.

A close up of the perfume bottle.
I wonder what else is still in that garbage site?
A building covers the spot now.
I love items from long ago...

1 comment:

Simply Shelley said...

I would have been very excited as well...nice little treasures...thanks for sharing.