I found another grodie last weekend in Jefferson City, Mo. I was there for my high school reunion and took some time to go grodie hunting.
Let me explain about grodies. They are anything that once had a purpose but is now useless and without value – but is irresistibly cool. Like that porcelain doorknob I found a few years ago and stuck on a shelf in my studio. It looks cool. Or that newel post topper that I picked up for $ .50 at a garage sale in 1986. It’s been hanging on my living room wall ever since.
Old glass telephone pole insulators are wonderful grodies. So are rusted antique hinges from barn doors. Long forgotten kitchen cabinet doors make great wall hangings, especially if the paint is chipped and pealing. I’ve found several of these over time.
One of my favorite grodies is a round floor grate that once provided a heat source for upstairs bedrooms in an old farmhouse. The furnace or stove was downstairs in those houses. For upstairs heat, you simply opened the floor vent. I haven’t found a use for it yet, but it’s out in the garage … somewhere.
I have even made grodies. One was the part of a door that originally held the latch. By cutting it out and putting a roof on it, the thing looks like an antique birdhouse.
My newest grodie is a wide-mouth amber glass jar that I got for $1.50 at the Habitat for Humanity store in my hometown. It looks really cool in the living room where we just pulled up the old carpet to expose the richly aging hardwood floor. There might be a problem with this one, however. It could be an antique. That would make it valuable. Grodies have to be worthless.