Things I Forgot to Mention

While driving to work last Friday, I spied an antique treadle sewing machine at a yard sale. For the last two or three years I have gone out of my way to avoid yard sales in our area as they were generally stocked with over-priced garbage and manned by rednecks who took great exception to the fact that I didn’t find their rusty, well-used spit cans to be treasurers on par with relics from the tomb of King Tut, you know; like they did. So; to see something that actually made me want to pull over, park and to walk among the unwashed masses was quite a surprise. The fact that the sewing machine was an antique treadle, in fairly good shape with all the original drawer pulls, the original cable and cable brake, the original pedal, etc. was doubly surprising. The $25 price tag was less surprising and more orgasm-inducing as far as I was concerned.

And, ok, I didn’t actually orgasm right there,because that would be embarrassing.

I did squeal a bit but, I did a fairly decent job of passing it off as a rather high-pitched sneeze lest the woman selling the machine realize she was about to hand over a bona-fide antique for less than the price of a couple of cartons of cheap cigarettes (which, if her tuberculosis-like coughing was any indication, was precisely what she would be spending the money on).

The sewing machine is currently parked in the foyer waiting for me to find the perfect place to display it which is no easy feat since I can’t really move it from place to place to check for the best fit; the thing weighs like a ton.

And, just to prove that you can find anything on the internet; I Googled Singer sewing machines and found a website that lists the year of manufacture based on the serial number, thus proving my machine to have been manufactured in 1884. That’s like, 126 years ago which means I paid less than 20 cents per year of age of the sewing machine.

And to think that Mrs. VanBibber, my fifth grade math teacher, said math wasn’t my strong point; take that, Van Bibbs!

On a somewhat related topic, I went to book club last night and, in a rare turn of events, we actually discussed the book. Granted, we did it while drinking a pitcher of truly excellent Sangria but,still; that's math and reading within days of each other, progress, my friends, progress.