Paint Remover

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Kellemora
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Re: Paint Remover

Post by Kellemora »

Married to a Jewish gal for twenty years, she knew exactly where to go to get her lox and bagels, hi hi.
Just check the phone book for the location of the major Synagogues and you'll find plenty of Jewish Deli's around them.

We had over 250 people working in our greenhouses. When I was young, more than 2/3 of them were of German descent, and about 1/4 of those spoke more German than English.
Both my Grandfather and Grandmother on my dad's side spoke German, French and English.
Plus a language all their own that consisted of a few German words, a couple of French words, and some English sounding words they made up. They all started out with a noun and tripped over the verb at the end, hi hi.

Even the corncob pipes which were plaster filled, still had a resin coating over the outside to make them look nice.
I don't remember the name of the place anymore, but you could watch corncob pipes being made through a window. This was a modern factory and almost everything was done totally by machines, no hand labor involved in most of the production. Seems like it was up around Chicago, probably in Hinsdale somewhere near the Old Grau Mill. I lived at Oak Brook for three months, and toured everywhere close by I could while there working.
I think we are fiends on Farcebook, the picture I currently have at the top of my profile page is from when our St. Louis team broke the Kraml Dairy team's long winning streak. I played in that game because one of the normal players was nursing an injury. He also figured we didn't have a chance of beating them, and when we did, he was angry he didn't play.
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yogi
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Re: Paint Remover

Post by yogi »

You played polo in St Louis? Maybe I should not be too surprised. Those polo clubs show up in the oddest places. There was one about 3-4 miles from my house up north. Who would have thought?

I'm pretty sure I can get anything I want to eat, ethnic or otherwise, in St Louis or Clayton. Chicago has the largest Polish population outside of Warsaw, and I was stunned to learn St Louis came in second. I did indeed look up Polish delis and there is no shortage in the big city. I never bothered to seek out bagels because, well, there doesn't seem to be any Jews within driving distance. But then, I was surprised once again when I had to visit a hospital annex right here in O'Fallon. It was BJC Healthcare, Bernes-Jewish. All I know is that Jews prefer their own when it comes to healthcare so that there must be some around here somewhere. I just wish one of them would open a deli I could get to easily. LOL
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Kellemora
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Re: Paint Remover

Post by Kellemora »

Kohn's Kosher Meats and Deli is right there at 340 and 67, on Old Olive.
Pumpernickels is right on 340 west of 67.
And Protzel's Market is all the way down in Clayton.
There are none right in St. Charles that I know of.

My maternal grandfather was the sole caretaker for a 63 acre ranch of all polo ponies.
So almost every Sunday we spent all day at grandma and grandpa's who lived on the property.
As my grandfather became ill, I took on a few of his responsibilities and a couple of years later moved into the house and took over as caretaker.
Part of the job was working the horses each day, almost always with a mallet and ball so they didn't forget how to follow the ball. So although I was not a member of the team (which was reserved for the rich family members) I probably got in more practice doing my daily job than they did.
Naturally I went with them to every game, many local games and a few out-state each year, but never played in a game until we were up at Oak Brook and due to an injury of one player, and another not available, I was given a chance to play.
I was given many other things to do that my grandfather was never expected to do, which required the boss hire one other helper to handle the morning feeding. He rarely showed up on time, and often not at all. Then I was in trouble if the horses were fed late and not ready when they came to ride. Plus I had to put off doing some of the other things the boss wanted me to do. I finally put my foot down and told him to hire someone reliable or I will also quit.
All he did was tell me not to worry about the add-on jobs he gave me to do, and fired the helper.
I had to let some things go to finish painting the house, barn, stables, and other buildings, before winter, and before I could get back to the other chores. Winter is when I got caught back up due to no serious mowing of the fields.
Even so, I did manage to have the place looking nice before he returned in the spring.
But then all the heavy work was once again upon me, and he promised to hire a reliable feed man so I could get back to doing the add-on things he wanted done. They now took a priority. The feed man worked for about one month then quit.
Two weeks later, with no help, and another five acres I cleared previously for more horses, added to my workload.
I told him, no help as promised, so I'm outta here.
The thing that really irked me the most, and although all of my work was caught up, when I stopped by to pick up my paycheck, he had seven people working there, mostly doing nothing of importance. And I learned he hired one person to take my place, at 1/3 more than what he paid me, and had two permanent helpers for him. The others were just temporary to see which two he would keep as the two permanent helpers.
Even with three people maintaining the place, when I drove by a year later, the place really was in a shambles.
One of the bosses sons were there and said he really misses me, the place has never been the same since I left.
I teased him and said, if you have your dad build me a small house on that hill over there, I'll come back, provided I have only one permanent full-time helper. He did say he wished he had that much persuasion with his dad, hi hi.
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yogi
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Re: Paint Remover

Post by yogi »

I've speculated that you are a pack rat at heart, but a well organized one. Your sense of order creates opportunities for efficient execution of any task you take on. I'd further speculate that you might not actually do more quantitatively, but you do it a hella lot better than the average bear. The quality of what you do is what makes people take notice. Why it took three people to do your job is probably due to the fact that they were not as organized and efficient as you are naturally. It is those traits that make it difficult for you to work with anybody who is less disciplined.

Looks like Kohn's is about 26 miles from here. I'm gonna check them out and will get back to you :mrgreen:
Last edited by yogi on 14 Sep 2018, 18:51, edited 1 time in total.
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Kellemora
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Re: Paint Remover

Post by Kellemora »

When I was working I was so organized it made some folks jealous.
I had a toolbox for each type of project, which did mean redundant tools in many cases, but it made the work go ten times faster. As an example; I had one toolbox solely for working on door and window repairs, including drilling newly installed doors to add door handles and locks. Plus the proprietary tools for adjusting many brands of windows.
A faucet repair toolbox; supply plumbing installation toolbox, which included tools for working with steel, copper, and PVC; and waste plumbing installation toolbox, which was two toolboxes, one for PVC and one for cast iron.

My old house was well organized for everything from canned goods to inventory items for my businesses.
However, after the move south, nothing is organized anymore, not like it should be. Albeit a few things are, like in my office, but there too, not as it should be, no room to do much in here.

Everything when working on a farm or ranch has to be scheduled accurately. The animals take precedence over everything else. They must be fed at a certain time, worked out at a certain time, washed and groomed.
Next in priority is make a run of all the fences after feeding and before the horses are turned loose in the pastures again.
Rather than wait for the fence rows to become overgrown and short out the fences, despite the fact we had Clips-Weeds boxes, I used an old Farmall Cub tractor with a side sickle bar to make my tour of the fence rows. There were some areas which abutted woods where we didn't mow, so using the tractor to run those fences saved me half a day of work when mowing. During the growing season, we had roughly 50 of the 63 acres as pasture, and the trimming around the barns, stables, tack room building, feed room building, and grain silos.
Add to the all the repairs and side jobs like rebuilding something, or priming and painting everything, and it was full-time job for two people. Redoing the buildings is why he hired a feed man in the first place. Prior to my working there, nothing other than the house was painted, all the barns and such were gray wood and rust roofs, hi hi. But that is why he hired me in the first place, since I was there helping grandpa at first, and he hired me to fix and paint the place. Naturally one thing led to another until I was handling it all, except the morning feeding. Even then, I got stuck with the morning feeding more often than not because the guy never showed up half the time.

I really liked working on the ranch, and if he would have held up his end of the bargain, I would probably still be there today. The sons own it now, besides their own places, and they have full-time crews for special jobs. All three ranches are mowed by the same crew. Repairs by another crew. And trainers for the horses. They also now lease out stall space to other horse owners at one of their locations. Nothing like the way their dad did things for sure.
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yogi
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Re: Paint Remover

Post by yogi »

I'm pretty well organized myself, but not to the same degree as you are. In my case it's a coverup for a flaw. I have a crummy memory for details. Most tasks I perform now are out of habit, but from time to time I have to relearn how to do something I did a long time ago. The fact that I have a system of organization allows me to go through it and determine how I put it all together in the first place. This is particularly helpful with programming and computer projects. The paperwork is a trail that leads me back to the origins, and thus the method of reproducing what i did. People think that is me being organized. I see it as a trail of breadcrumbs left on the forest floor so that I can find my way out . :grin:
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Kellemora
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Re: Paint Remover

Post by Kellemora »

I know what you mean. I have lists stuck up around my desk of the order of things I do each day, and the order I do things at particular websites where there is a lot to do.

At my house in Creve Coeur I built a 13 foot long pantry. It had 3 sets of sliding doors over 4 foot sections.
People used to tease me about all my canned goods and boxes being alphabetized. They weren't really, but I did have different shelves for different types of canned goods. Vegetables, fruits, single-use items, soups, and canned items you used as ingredients each on their own shelf. In the pantry next to it was boxed items, cereal, and overflow for canned goods. Each item slot held six cans, and I usually had two item slots of each thing, so when full it held a dozen cans of each item. I normally bought by the case of 24 cans, thus we always had overflow.
You have to remember, I was feeding a minimum 6 people a day, many days 8 or 9, and on every other weekend sometimes we had over a dozen, and another dozen besides ourselves every other month. We cooked and served a lot, hi hi.
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yogi
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Re: Paint Remover

Post by yogi »

Ahhhh, good ol' pantries. I grew up in a flat with one and had one in the first apartment we rented when I married. We stayed there a couple years and I hadn't had the luxury of a pantry again until this new house in Missouri. Kitchen cabinets and shelving are fine, but the extra few steps to the pantry are well worth the time spent getting there. LOL The cabinets and drawer space in the current kitchen was made for midgets, and midgets who live in poverty at that. I only keep things in the cabinets that will not fit into the pantry.

The intrinsic organization I live by follows me into the pantry too, but there it's more functional than it is for purposes of deriving a solution. We have open wire racks on all the walls. While they may not be perfect they serve the purpose. I arrange things by frequency of use. Alphabetical storage just doesn't make sense. Why would anyone want the Albacore Tuna next to the applesauce? :crazy:

Perhaps the best part about having a pantry is that there is a place to store things purchased in bulk. A lot of food items I get online must be purchased in quantity to get the discount and free shipping. Now, if I could only get a walk-in fridge, I'd be all set.
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Kellemora
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Re: Paint Remover

Post by Kellemora »

We don't like Albacore Tuna, but it would have been on a different shelf than the canned Fruits were on.
In my case, Tuna would have been on the single-use items shelf, along with Spaghetti-O's, hi hi.

My house in Creve Coeur originally had one of those super deep single door pantries over the basement stairs. Hated that thing with a passion, which is why I built the 14 inch deep, 8 foot high, 13 feet long pantry. That way everything is in the front, hi hi. Here we built a 9 foot long, 7 foot high, 18 inch deep pantry. It's all we had room for. Also, there are only two of us to feed now. Even so, each item we eat has it's own spot on the shelves, but not necessarily in the same place two times in a row. This makes checking before shopping really hard compared to alphabetized placement in food groups.

I was part owner in two restaurants, which is probably where I picked up keeping everything in an at a glance order.
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yogi
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Re: Paint Remover

Post by yogi »

The pantries I've used and seen essentially were small closets with shelves wrapped around the walls. I have some heavy duty kitchen appliances on the shelves in our pantry and 14" just wouldn't accommodate them properly. My mom's old pantry had floor cabinets on one wall and the top could be used for prepping food or storage. I prefer doing all the cooking on the kitchen counters but I seem to recall mom kneading bread dough in the pantry.

Some refrigerators have cameras in them and computer screens on the door. The idea there is to be able to "see" what's in your fridge while you are at the store shopping. You need an app for that and a smart phone. It all seems like a cool idea that could be applied to a pantry as well. I rely on my memory and usually come home with everything I need. "usually" is the key word there. :lol:
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pilvikki
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Re: Paint Remover

Post by pilvikki »

aw, man, i miss my kitchen in my wee house!

long counter, a bar type peninsula (rather than an island), loads of cupboards, all to me, myself and i (after hubby departed). considering how little i like cooking, it was fabulous to have everything organized and exactly where i'd placed for the occasions i did decide to get creative.

here... we have one of those IKEA "pantries" that is the most idiotic thing i've ever seen in my life! the kind that you pull out to reveal the other shelves you then pull out. the top shelf is attached so you need to duck under to retrieve stuff from the others. even so, it would sort of work, if well organized, but sadly in this house the only thing that is, would be my sock drawer.

yeah, i miss my house. :sad:
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yogi
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Re: Paint Remover

Post by yogi »

Those Swedes sure have some interesting ideas about furniture. As yo point out, they are not always practical. I don't know about a kitchen set up, but my office in my previous house was all IKEA. I could not bring it with and miss it dearly. It was made to be enjoyed as well as being functional.
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pilvikki
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Re: Paint Remover

Post by pilvikki »

when we moved into this ancient (100 yrs) house in canada, the kitchen had to be redone. we ripped everything out from the studs in. walls got insulated, drywalled, ceiling wallpapered with embossed design to look like those old tin roofs. punkin got help with that, i'm too short. the wall became cork and lovely on the tootsies!

we went and picked out an ikea kitchen that was truly awesome, especially since punkin put it all together by herself. :clap: she did the fawcet and sink as well, which was a Pain, because she put in the sink first. lol!

it took a few weeks as she was working as well and would not let me assemble anything. said she was worried about my back, but methinx she was worried about me screwing it up. :grin: :grin: :grin:

with a granit counter and an open breakfast bar into the diningroom it looked lovely.
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yogi
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Re: Paint Remover

Post by yogi »

I learned a lot from my dad who was a decent carpenter. Using that as a reference, it makes no sense to me that IKEA furniture can be held together with those screwy cam fittings thingies. My first time assembling IKEA furniture was filled with fear and trepidation because I could not believe it would all hold together under it's own weight. It LOOKED marvelous, but was it strong enough? Well, yes. It's pretty tough stuff considering how it's assembled. It's pretty hard to screw up something like that, plus their picture assembly documentation is superior. I'm thinking the Pumpkin truly was concerned about your back. :grin:
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pilvikki
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Re: Paint Remover

Post by pilvikki »

you'd be amazed at what i can botch without really trying. :grin:

like saying we had cork walls easy on the feets, rather than the customary floors :lol: :lol:
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