And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Thursday, September 24, 2026
A curved radiator located in a 1900 Queen Anne Victorian in Mexico, Missouri
And quarter-sawn white oak floors. The dilapidated Victorian-era I rented in grad school in Boston had bird's-eye maple flooring in the bow-front room, and stairs and bannisters of old growth Southern yellow pine.
My parents final home was heated with an ancient gravity fed set of cast iron radiators much like that one, but none curved. When they died my brothers and I sold the house to a developer for demolition. We had an auction house come in see what personal property etc. could be sold and to my surprise they took all the radiators.
The could not sell even one.
I had them taken to scrap metal dealer but kept one and put it under a window in the kitchen of a rental property that was heated with a modern mini wall mount boiler. Every set of tenants I've had in that unit love the thing. They hang bath towels and mats on it before and after a shower, tea towels, wet gloves, scarves, hats, boots and shoes.
My family once owned a home in a rundown former professional neighborhood in Dorchester (Boston). It was three stories, with maid’s quarters on the third floor, hardwood floors everywhere below, a formal dining room with a marble fireplace and copper frieze along the top of the wall and a pass through from the kitchen, radiators (hot water) like those shown, and a dumb waiter.
It had originally been built with coal heating and gas lighting and only later converted to oil and electricity. There were still gas pipes in the walls when I lived there in the ‘60’s, and the electrical wiring was bare copper looped from one glass insulator to the next.
In the ‘60’s, there were still people using coal to heat their homes in the neighborhood: bituminous for the poor, anthracite for the rich. “Look for the blue dots!” There was a coal yard a mile away.
The Celtics were great, and no one went to their games. The Bruins stank, and sold out every game, 13,909, Johnny Most, Curt Gowdy,…
The house I grew up in had those. Don't really miss them other than my bed was close enough to throw the end of the comforter over the radiator to help stay warm in the winter. I'll take radiant/heated floors instead.
And quarter-sawn white oak floors.
ReplyDeleteThe dilapidated Victorian-era I rented in grad school
in Boston had bird's-eye maple flooring in the bow-front room,
and stairs and bannisters of old growth Southern yellow pine.
My parents final home was heated with an ancient gravity fed set of cast iron radiators much like that one, but none curved. When they died my brothers and I sold the house to a developer for demolition. We had an auction house come in see what personal property etc. could be sold and to my surprise they took all the radiators.
ReplyDeleteThe could not sell even one.
I had them taken to scrap metal dealer but kept one and put it under a window in the kitchen of a rental property that was heated with a modern mini wall mount boiler. Every set of tenants I've had in that unit love the thing. They hang bath towels and mats on it before and after a shower, tea towels, wet gloves, scarves, hats, boots and shoes.
My family once owned a home in a rundown former professional neighborhood in Dorchester (Boston). It was three stories, with maid’s quarters on the third floor, hardwood floors everywhere below, a formal dining room with a marble fireplace and copper frieze along the top of the wall and a pass through from the kitchen, radiators (hot water) like those shown, and a dumb waiter.
ReplyDeleteIt had originally been built with coal heating and gas lighting and only later converted to oil and electricity. There were still gas pipes in the walls when I lived there in the ‘60’s, and the electrical wiring was bare copper looped from one glass insulator to the next.
In the ‘60’s, there were still people using coal to heat their homes in the neighborhood: bituminous for the poor, anthracite for the rich. “Look for the blue dots!” There was a coal yard a mile away.
The Celtics were great, and no one went to their games. The Bruins stank, and sold out every game, 13,909, Johnny Most, Curt Gowdy,…
The house I grew up in had those. Don't really miss them other than my bed was close enough to throw the end of the comforter over the radiator to help stay warm in the winter. I'll take radiant/heated floors instead.
ReplyDeleteThe wonderful memories of so many - who didn't have to work on those darn things!
ReplyDelete