Better Living Through Chemistry.

It's definitely fall and I'm so relieved.  This summer has been a veritable hell, what with the weather and the health decline, etc.  I've had just the most terrible day, and yet, right near the finish line, I have sold an item, and that cheers me up again.

It was my grandfather's mortar and pestle.  He was a chemist, and being born in the 1800's, chemistry was tantamount to alchemy.  He loved everything natural that could be produced artificially.  It was new, exciting, and he had tons of ideas.

He was kind of old already when my Dad and his Brother were born, so he was not a ball player, or  anything like that, but he had his charms.

He looked like Teddy Roosevelt.  He made us bubble bath and a giant bubble wand to play with in the yard.
He grew hydroponic tomatoes in the 1940's in his basement.  Dad said they were as big as your head, but tasted like water.

 Also, he gave me a solar motor in the 1960's.  It was set up in a cigar box, and spun a striped circle so you would get dizzy watching it.  He also gave me a black light, and a bunch of metallic stones that glowed under it.  That was fun, sort of.

He also figured out how to blow artificial scents from the fronts of stores so that people would be lured in to buy coffee, or pastries, anything like that.  He left a formulary, which tells me how to make cosmetics out of chemicals, so backward, but for him so modern.

So, I'm a little sad about letting it go.  Aside from that I have a few tiny little chemistry pots and lenses, and that's about it.  I have the memories, and that is what I will keep.