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1937 Ford Porchlight Click on photo to enlarge - ©2008 jim otterstrom

I cut the front off a 1 gallon can of Star Olive Oil to use as a rain shield over the porchlight.

It worked perfectly during our big snowstorm keeping moisture away from the fixture, and the little 6.5 watt night-light.

A Locally Historic Fence SignClick on photo to enlarge - ©2008 jim otterstrom

I clipped this sign, some 25 years ago, from a chain link fence around an abandoned industrial building near the old San Bernardino rail yards just before the place was demolished.

The address where this iron works business was located, 368 Third Street, is about 1/2 block east of the present San Bernardino County courthouse.

I don't know exactly how old this sign is (check out that phone number) but I did a search of Allen & Sons Iron works and found records of their existence in San Bernardino from the early 1880s through at least 1913.

Allen Iron Works built Hose Wagon Number 1 for the fledgling San Bernardino Fire Department back in 1890. The fire wagon has been restored and is now owned by the San Bernardino Historical And Pioneer Society (scroll down to the 6th image at this link to see hose Wagon #1). The beautifully restored wagon has participated in Pasadena's Rose Parade several times in recent years.

Allen Iron Works, an old blacksmithing outfit, is also listed as buying the first car ever sold by Carey's Fine Automobiles in 1913, a 1911 Buick.

Carey's Fine Automobiles is still in business today, in San Bernardino.

My guess is that this sign is from the very early years of the 20th Century.

A wonderful find.

Hula Girl Beer Tap Click on photo to enlarge - ©2008 jim otterstrom

My friend Craig, who also cast the Ford script under the porchlight, is setting me up with the equipment I'll need so we can have craft beers on tap at the very local Earth Home Garden pub.

I found the Hula Girl Tap Handle on eBay.

One of these days you are likely to hear a chorus of off-key voices singing the words of John Prine right here at EHG.

Let's Talk Dirty In Hawaiian - ©1988 John Prine

Well I packed my bags and bought myself a ticket

For the land of the tall palm tree

Aloha old Milwaukee...

...Hello Waikiki

I just stepped down from the airplane...

...When I heard her say,

"Waka waka nuka licka, Waka waka nuka licka

Would you like a lei?"

chorus

Hey! Let's talk dirty in Hawaiian

Whisper in my ear

Kicka pooka mocka wa-wahini

Are the words I long to hear

Lay your coco-nutta on my tiki

What the hecka mooka mooka dear?

Let's talk dirty in Hawaiian

Say the words I long to hear

It's a ukulele Honolulu sunset

Listen to the grass skirts sway

Drinking rum from a pineapple

Out on Honolulu bay

Steel guitars are playing

While she's talkin' with her hands

Gimme gimme oaka doka make a wish I wanna poka

Words I understand

chorus

Hey... Let's talk dirty in Hawaiian
Whisper in my ear
Kicka pooka mocka wa-wahini
Are the words I long to hear
Lay your coco-nutta on my tiki
What the hecka mooka mooka dear?
Let's talk dirty in Hawaiian
Say the words I long to hear

Well, I boughta lotta junka with my moolah

And I sent it to the folks back home

I never had a chance to dance the hula

Well, I guess I should have known

When you start talking to the sweet wahini

Walking in the pale moonlight

Oaka noka whatta setta nocka-rocka-sis-boom-bockas

Hope I said it right

chorus

Oh... Let's talk dirty in Hawaiian
Whisper in my ear
Kicka pooka mocka wa-wahini
Are the words I long to hear
Lay your coco-nutta on my tiki
What the hecka mooka mooka dear?
Let's talk dirty in Hawaiian
Say the words I long to hear

Let's talk dirty in Hawaiian

Say the words I long to hear

Aloha...

postscript

The ornate cast iron piece to the right of the hula girl tap is part of an old treadle sewing machine base I found in a burned down homestead in a remote part of Topanga Canyon back in October of 1972. I've had it hanging on a wall somewhere ever since.

Need A Post Office Box?

Click on photo to enlarge - ©2008 jim otterstrom

When the now defunct Bay Post Office in Boulder Bay at the west end of Big Bear Lake was decommissioned about 20 years ago I was given a couple of the old P.O. Box doors from the place. I was the window clerk there when the little substation in the Boulder Bay Market was shut down.

These beautiful old bronze castings make a nice addition to the Temple wall. I have the combinations and the boxes work perfectly after probably 70+ years of hard use.

If anyone knows the approximate time in postal history that this type of twin dial alphabetical combination box was made, I'd love to know.

My guess is that they are from the 1920s or '30s at the latest.

Old Window Framed And Installed

Click on photo to enlarge - ©2008 jim otterstrom

I resurrected an old broken window from my very early days of stained-glass work and used it for the counter-window of the pub portion of my little multi-purpose room.

You can see a better picture of it here.


An Inside View

Click on photo to enlarge - ©2008 jim otterstrom

A local contractor friend gave me some beautiful leftover 3/4 inch birch-faced plywood from a kitchen cabinet job, so I used it for the inside front wall.

Here you can see a little of the progress on the interior space but there is still much work to be done.

WISHING YOU PEACE ON THIS...

~WINTER SOLSTICE~Click on photo to enlarge - ©2008 jim otterstrom

On this shortest day of the year, as we begin moving once again toward the warmth, light, and optimism of longer days, Peggy and I wish, for each of you, that the days and seasons of this new life-cycle will be tempered with compassion and progress toward peace among all the diverse people of the world.

And, as a species, that we will also deepen our understanding and appreciation of this beautiful planet, and the interdependence we share with so many other wondrous forms of life.

~PEACE ON EARTH~

The window pictured above is the third stained-glass window I made, way back in 1974.

It is a small window, 11 1/2 x 15 inches, which has never before been installed in a frame, but was carted around in boxes for the past 34 years.

It's been dropped, bent, cracked, broken, and repaired several times, and, has now found a permanent home in my new tool-shed/workshop.

I was fresh out of my stained-glass window class when I built this from my very first original design.

I was still learning to solder and the window is a bit amateurish compared to my later work with glass, but I always liked the design, the colors, and the selections of glass I used in the piece.

I'm glad the window now has a home where I can enjoy it's bluesy, wintry, introspective illumination every day.

1974-1979 Another Time, Another Craft...

Click on photo to enlarge

As you might have gathered from this blog, I've always had the desire to express myself artistically or creatively in some way, and after I started working for the Post Office that need grew stronger, so in 1974 I took a class on making stained glass windows, another craft I had long admired.
I pursued this rewarding hobby for several years and here are some of the results.

The window above measures 24 x 36 inches and was made for the front door of my parents home in Granada Hills. For this one I bought a pattern I liked and selected some earthy tones of glass that would bring warm colorful light into their house yet still allow them complete privacy from the busy street they lived on.

This was the last window I built, starting it in mid 1978, but not completing it until late 1979 because of being laid up from a motorcycle accident in which I almost lost the lower part of my right leg. Mom sold the Granada Hills house recently and I was very pleased to learn that she shipped this window along to her new home in Utah.

I still love the design of this one even though it was a fairly common pattern back then.

















Click on photo to enlarge

In 1976 I was hired by a builder in Topanga Canyon to make a few windows for two rustic custom homes he was constructing out of huge timbers he salvaged from the old Ocean Park Pier in Santa Monica, and from ancient heavy planks that were once the floor of an old Southern California Chrysler assembly plant.

They weren't exactly your typical humble hippie abodes of the day, but most of the materials were recycled, and he built them all himself. Well, not entirely by himself, he did hire helpers, so I made the stained glass windows and also helped dig & install a leachfield for one of the septic systems.

This window was by far my biggest stained glass challenge. It's four feet in diameter and the owner/builder requested a Pennsylvania Dutch Hex Sign design which he wanted to be at least semi-transparent.

The design part was simple enough, I just checked out a Pennsylvania Dutch Hex Sign book from the library, found one he liked that I thought I could make into a window, and then selected the appropriate colors of glass in a variety of textures that I felt would accentuate the strong elements of the design even in a translucent/semi-transparent medium.

The challenge came in bracing and stabilizing a large-paned four foot diameter round window without detracting from the design. With a bit of difficulty I fabricated a segmented galvanized steel brace which was then soldered to the lead came on the outside of the completed window, and last I heard it was still there.

Some Pennsylvania Dutch folks believe the commonly six-pointed hex signs bring good luck or ward off evil spirits, and that the colors each have a meaning.

Blue for protection - note the six-sided cobalt blue center.

Red for emotion, passion, lust, & creativity - I chose a clearly vivid red don't you think? ;~)

Green for fertility & growth - a green ring anchors the segments of the large six-pointed central star.

Violet for things sacred - it's hard to tell from the photo but half segments of the large star are violet.

Orange for success in career - the other halves of the large star segments are orange.

White for purity - The clear panels were white in the original design and they do let a pure clean light into the room, which appears to be white on occasion, like in the photo.

But I wouldn't know about all that because I'm not Pennsylvania Dutch, I'm Swedish, Irish, and Cherokee...

The window was fitted into a massive frame and installed in a rock wall beside the hand-hewn front door of the house the builder constructed for himself.

I took the picture from inside the finished house a year or so after I built the window.

Click on photo to enlarge

The same builder was constructing a similar house on an adjoining lot with more of the same salvaged timbers. This was a spec house built and sold to pay off his construction loans on the two houses. The antique etched glass above was installed in the master bathroom of the spec house and I made the smaller stained glass panels to either side. These are two of my favorite windows because they were among the first ones in which the design was all my own.

I haven't done any stained glass work in 27 years, but I still have the equipment, so who knows, maybe one of these days I'll get back to it...

We have a couple of windows in our house that would look nice in stained glass

I rediscovered these old photos while going through my slides, copying them into digital format with a slide copier. I removed some dust specks and scratches in Photoshop.