Last week I posted the photos of an old schoolhouse near Walla Walla. When I walked around that building to take those photos, I also spotted this….the coal or wood chute door down into the basement:

In case you cannot read it, it says “Hercules Fuel Chute.”

Here’s a really big laugh: When I Googled those words, all the results I got pointed to a Hercules cargo aircraft!

Do you suppose a student chore was to load the fuel through this chute into the basement and then into the furnace???

This was a schoolhouse near the fairgrounds a bit west of Walla Walla. I took the “stairs” photo through the locked-door-window. How many of you, and certainly of your ancestors, went to a rural schoolhouse like this?

Can’t you just hear the hundreds of footsteps clomping up and down those wooden stairs?

“Today is the day that is filled with surprises…….” Remember that opening song from the Micky Mouse Club show on TV in the late 1950s? I loved that show! Especially the “Spin and Marty” segment. 

Today we introduce a new blogging-segment-day on the Washington State Genealogical Society blog…… Nostalgia Wednesday. Hope you enjoy these little trips down memory lane……

These are called “Shoe Lasts.” Wikipedia explains: A last is a mechanical form that has a shape similar to that of a human foot. It is used by shoemakers and cordwainers in the manufacture and repair of shoes. Lasts typically come in pairs and have been made from various materials, including hardwoods, cast iron, and high-density plastics.

At least they come in right-left pairs.  In the first shoe-making days, it was a one-foot shape and they molded to your foot with use. Doesn’t that sound like fun??