The Feb 25, 2006, edition of the Wall Street Journal, had an article called “Who’s Going to Want Grandma’s Hoard of Antique Gnomes?” Well, apparently none of grandma’s grandchildren will, according to the article. So we asked Hammockfolk what was taking up room in their attic and if they had any plans for it?

Lena: When I was younger, I used to collect trolls. I have about 100. Any takers?

Bill: Since we already have pretty much all our folks’ stuff, it’s up to us to sell them on eBay. Collections – broadly defined as things we have a fair number of – include crosscut saws, plow horse harnesses, various kinds of glassware, canning jars, aprons, and rubber ducks. My goal is to have it all labeled before I die.

Megan: Lately it seems that I am collecting Macintosh computers and stray cats (the latter is not so much by choice).

Julia: I collect old glass items. When I was in high school, my best friend’s mother sparked my interest in Depression Glass and I purchased quite a few pieces. They are all pale green, in the Princess pattern, made by the Hocking Glass Company from 1931 to 1935. I also inherited two Carnival Glass vases and two Cobalt Blue glass vases that were my grandmother’s and great grandmother’s. One of the Cobalt Blue vases is my oldest piece. When my grandmother was a young girl, she remembered her mother having it. My grandmother was born in 1888.

None of it is very valuable, but I really love it all. It looks beautiful in my lighted bookcases and the inherited pieces are priceless to me. My daughter is sentimental and may well keep a few pieces, but I imagine some of it may end up on Ebay someday.

Shannon: I collect manger scenes, smaller ones mostly which I display only at Christmas. My favorites are a wool one from Brazil, a hand-carved wooden one from Zimbabwe, and one where different dog breeds represent those present at the manger (black lab is Joseph, yellow lab is Mary, German Shepherd is an angel, etc).

A weird coincidence is that my mother-in-law collects them too. We both started our collections long before we met. Since she has three boys who could care less about Christmas decorations, guess I’ll be inheriting her manger scenes.

Patrick R: I collect fountain pens. That’s it, just pens. Lorraine collects stamps. Our family members don’t collect anything as far was we know.

My grandmother did have a small collection of beanie babies before she died. One year she was convinced that someone had broken into her home and had taken them, sometime around Thanksgiving. She even had the police come by and filled out a report. She was living in Indianapolis, and we were in Tennessee so my folks were kind of worried but were also a bit incredulous. She was well know for her absent mindedness. We visited her for Christmas as we had done every year since relocating to Gallatin. Dad handed her a package that none of us recognized which she opened with excitement. She didn’t recognize it either. Lo and behold, when she removed the paper and opened the box, 4 little beanie babies were looking up at her. That burglar had broken back into her apartment and put the beanies in a gift box under her tree!

John: Not a collector. Used to collect baseball cards.

Allison: About 10 years ago, I started collecting antique French Limoges plates, the really old, truly authentic ones. Didn’t get very far as most are expensive. I have 4, so that probably doesn’t qualify as a “collection”. My great grandfather was friends with Artus Van Briggle, an artist who did a lot of pottery and ceramics. He had many of his original works, which then went to my grandfather, and are now with my father. I am looking forward to receiving these pieces, as they are really nice and most would carry a pretty hefty price tag.

My mother collects chicken and rooster themed items. I’m not looking forward to receiving any of that. I see a yard sale in the distant future.

Summer: My current favorite thing to collect is etiquette books. I have about 14 books in my collection right now, the oldest of which was published in 1884. It’s great to read back and see how much things have changed. And as you might guess, they books on proper etiquette have gotten thinner through the years.
Cole and I also collect coins. This is something my grandafther got me interested in when I was young. He’d have me keeping my eyes open for, say, a 1955 nickel minted in Denver, and as soon as one of us would find it, he’d give me another assignment.

Natalie: When my in-laws die, the amount of collectibles they have is too overwhelming to explain. I’m not sure they even know what they have hoarded at their home over the past 30 years. Then the glass shop has junk from when Jason’s great-great-grandfather owned it. It ranges from sports collectibles to fishing lures, dolls, antiques, duck decoys, photos, tools. You name it they have it. They are the world’s best hoarders. As a result, I’ve forbidden Jason to collect anything.

Emily: Anytime someone brings me flowers, I dry them and put them in vases. So I guess you could say that I collect dead flowers. I also collect postcards, strawberry-themed stuff for my kitchen and beach-themed stuff for my bathroom. My mom collects angel figurines, and my grandmother collects hummingbird stuff.

Laura: I collect the Metropolitan Museum’s sterling silver snowflake ornaments. I have 14 of them, going back to 1992. I recently discovered the series started the year I was born, so I’ve set up an eBay search to help me find older ones. Of course, the older ones are even more expensive!

I’m not sure if you would call this “collecting” since there’s no defined parameters for a set, but I have about 80 cookbooks and am always on the lookout for more. I actually use individual books throughout the collection fairly frequently.

That’s pretty much it. When you say “collection,” I hear, “something that needs dusting.”

Jamie: I collect fireman Christmas ornaments.
Not a surprise for those who know me.

Barbara: I tried collecting stuff (bird figurines, bird Christmas ornaments or pennies) in the past, but I lost interest. I still have my vinyl LPs. I also have a few pieces of golden oak furniture from the turn of the last century. Over the past few years, Ive become a minimalist. When you get older, stuff just doesnt seem to matter, especially when you have to clean out a dead parents house. My mom never threw anything away, and she had about a six months supply of toilet paper, cereal, canned goods, etc., always on hand. Shes been dead 2 1/2 years, and we just used the last light bulb from her stash.

From Rex:

On Tuesday, I spent an hour chatting with host Anita Campbell on her radio show, Small Business Trends. The show is now posted online.

Here’s what we talked about:

Looks like we are finally getting our first panic-in-the-grocery-stores storm this evening. The weather wonks are comparing conditions to a storm almost exactly three years ago, which started with rain after morning rushhour, then quickly became a disaster when the temps plummeted in a couple of hours and left everything coated thickly with ice. Then it started snowing. When people finally got home, they had to stay for several days, and find ways to amuse themselves.

So we decided to see how Hammockfolk like to spend a snowy weekend, and here’s what they said:

Megan Goodchild: When I was growing up (in Chicago – where we rarely stayed home because of “snow days”), us kids would make snow tunnels at recess and then race through them. But now that I’m a grown up (and a big baby about driving in bad weather,) I like to stay home and let my cats outside to play in the snow. If the snowflakes are big enough they try to eat them before they hit their fur.

Emily McMackin: I’m a little bit of a wimp when it comes to cold weather, so I prefer to curl up in my electric blanket, drink hot chocolate and watch my favorite chick flick!

Barbara Mathieson: Leave work when that first snowflake makes an appearance. Make a pot of hot tea and read. Walk in the snow with Neyland. Build a snowman and make snow angels. When I was a child, my mother would make snow ice cream for us. I think she added milk, sugar and vanilla to lots of snow. How it stayed frozen I don’t know, but it was very good. I still remember the taste.

Barbara Greenfield: Sledding! I will definitely send you pics tomorrow if I can go! The weather is also a perfect excuse to stay in for a movie marathon.

Laura Creekmore: Far and away my favorite thing to do on a snowy day is go sledding. I grew up in a little town in Tennessee where everything shut down for an inch of snow, and some of my favorite childhood memories are when my dad came home from work early and we all sledded down the hill on our street, down the driveway and into the woods in our yard until it was so dark we finally had to go in. Of course you didn’t feel the cold.

My second-favorite thing to do (believe it or not) is go to the grocery store. I always loved to be at my dad’s store the day before a big snow was predicted. Busy days are the most fun times to work at a grocery store…how fast can you get folks out the door? Everyone is excited about the snow (at least in the South, where it comes so rarely) and so it’s fun to be around a lot of folks who are all focused on “surviving” through their day or two of being snowed in.

Bill Hudgins: I’ve always loved going out side to listen to it snow, especially at night. The soft hiss of flakes is a sound like no other. We have a big pasture back of our house with a creek running past it into Old Hickory Lake, so it’s fun to tramp down to watch the ducks and geese ignore the weather entirely. Making comfort food – pancakes, waffles, soup, chili – and watching TV or movies complete the day. We used to build snowmen, but now I’d rather read old Calvin and Hobbes strips about snowmen – they had the right idea.

Susie Garland: My daughter, Emma, and I have a tradition of going on night walks after a good snow.

I don’t share the devotion some of my colleagues have to the TV series ‘Lost’ (for some reason, I have a problem with TV series that develop complex and interweaving subplotlines that require constant attention, which may explain why ‘The A Team’ and ‘The Three Stooges’ were my all-time favorite shows).

But it is almost impossible here to ignore ‘Lost’ completely, and even I know a bit about it, having never watched an episode. Like Hurley – how come he still looks like he just finished a month of pie eating contests?

Well, now I know:

Customers of Longview, Texas-based Aerosmith Aviation are often surprised to find out the company they hired to outfit their private planes has fewer than 50 employees. Making your small business look and function more like a big corporation is the cover story of the Feb./March issue of MyBusiness magazine, the member magazine we publish for the National Federation of Independent Business. The five small-business owners featured in this story tell us how thinking big helped them grow rich.

Another way to grow rich is to give less of your money to Uncle Sam. With April 15 just around the corner, small-business taxes are the focus of this issue’s MyBusiness Manual. Find out what your CPA wishes you knew, learn how to make the tough call between classifying workers as employees or independent contractors and find out whether you can actually write-off the MBA you’ve always wanted to get.

As Valentine’s Day approaches, love is in the air–is it in your office? Find out what employers need to know about the legal hazards of workplace dating.

Almost fifty years ago when Harvey Robbins and his wife were dating, they used to frequent The Palace, a soda shop in Tuscumbia, Ala. But like so many other small towns across the country, Tuscumbia was dying. In this issue, learn how one small-business owner single-handedly saved his hometown, including the spot where he and his wife courted.