Bird, that *is* a compliment. I read some of your rambles to my wife so we can both enjoy them. Lots of stuff about plain living from an observant gal with a good heart. Good stuff.
I forgot to mention WW II. A whole lot of GIs had been stationed here during the war, and decided to pull up stakes and come here, joining people who had worked in the Alameda shipyards or Hunters Point building Liberty ships and repairing the Pacific fleet, and people working at Boeing.
Now if you were to move across the country, would you leave your tools behind? Not me. Even before the Gold Rush, people moved and brought their tools. Some records exist of what was brought with them, the things they needed to farm and work.
I still wonder what that wood working "machine" was that ended up in Corte Madera. I wonder what tools came with it for adjustments and maintenance. One of my coworkers at Phoenix Planing Mill had a single end tenoner that was old enough to have been here before the Gold Rush. Wish I'd bought it from him...
