Pawing through Archives for Lost Discovies I want again

+Sometimes, I get a little impatient with the information we have lost before 1990 or so because it isn't on a computer. I'm always reading about some new study that proves something I first read about in the 1960s or 1970s, and everyone has forgotten because it's not on a computer somewhere.

But this is a short blog with one intent.

My elder son once gave me a sun tea jar with a difference:  it had a solar cell in the lid which stirred a spoon, speeding the sun tea infusion process. It was particularly nice if I were mixing in some blackberry tea and mint, because the stirring evened out the flavors in the jar.

I've spent  only about 15 minutes looking, and  I searched under solar cell sun tea jars. It does make me giggle that most of the sites don't sell sun tea jars. Now we are making Solar Powered Tea. ooo! ahhhh! So new. So energy saving! I suspect sun tea may pre0date  the influx of Americans into Tejas, although the ice wasn't available then. Store the jug in a well or river, however, and it might get tolerably cooler.  (That's the way they stored buttermilk, too. Yes, they drank that stuff.)

We did a lot before computers you may never hear about.

I benefit from older parents and grandparents. People in my family tended to marry and have children mostly in their thirties, so I learned a lot about childhood fun in the 1880s and 1890s.

Back in the 1940s, little girls under six or seven often ran around in shorts like their brothers with no shirts.  Not all, but quite a few.  Really. My grandmother born in 1882 was more comfortable with me in a dress, but she put me in an old, thin one on a summer afternoon and stood on the porch and laughed while I ran and danced in the rain.  One of my favorite memories.

I don't know when I quit making sun-tea, or iced tea, for that matter, but I did.  I'm reverting this summer.  I like sweet iced tea only when you add lemon and mint. A friend used to make giant glasses with a wedge of lime,  a wedge of lemon and a wedge of orange on the lip of the glass. That was a treat. Otherwise, I prefer just strong, bracing tea that goes with everything.

Some entrepreneur ought to make those jars with the turning spoon again.  Solar cells for solar tea.
I bet they would sell. A cell sell.

Works for me.