Monday, March 12, 2012

tip #19 pins, lots of pins, a pound of pins

When we first moved to this house, my next door neighbor Vera*, who had worked in the shipping warehouse for Sears, gave me this box of  a pound of pins she bought at the warehouse sale (or maybe they fell off a truck). The pins were packed in there side by side as neat as, well, a pin.

I wondered what I would ever do with this many pins. I soon had far fewer to deal with after I dropped it and all those pins now occupied a volume of 10 times the box and I had to give those that wouldn't fit back into the box to anyone who would take them.

Over the years I have bought glass head pins and flower head pins, and I do like them, but they eventually disappear or get bent and I go back to using these from Vera that have not run out since 1987.
So, my advise is, along with having fancy expensive pins, have a massively large quantity of reliable simple pins that do the job.

*Vera had a hard life. She grew up in an orphanage and married a man who would threaten to kill her and their children when he was drunk. She was very proud of her hiding place for the gun when he was in his dark moods--she pulled up a potted plant, put the gun in the bottom of the pot, and put the plant back in. He never found her hiding place. Shortly before we moved in, her house was firebombed with a Molotov cocktail that she suspected was thrown by a former son-in-law. When she told me that story she was laughing at how silly the owner of our house looked out there with his garden hose putting out the fire. 
This may explain why he was so motivated to sell. 

3 comments:

  1. Great story: about Vera and the pins.

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  2. That's some story! Holy cow! I need to know more! Is Vera still around? Did she leave her husband? Did she ever use the gun? Do tell!

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  3. Ah Vera, what a character. Remember when her daughter, the ice cream truck lady, visited Vera and left the music going on the truck for an hour and a half while she visited inside? All the kids for blocks were gathered around the truck wanting cones. The adults were going crazy listening to that tinny rendition of "It's a Small World." Good times.

    Sharon

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