Seasoning cast iron.

One of my hobbies is to buy old Griswold pans off eBay, clean them up with oven cleaner and season them. I then give them away to friends. Most folks have never cooked on a decent cast iron pan.

who was a common maker during the 60's? I had an uncle who ran a general store until the mid 90's (real common here in Ky then) and he sold all sorts of cast iron cookware. And how many Old Hickory butcher knives is beyond number. They were in business for 85 years. Things I took for granted would make folks nowadays gasp! They had a butcher block....which was made from a beech log..it was 4 feet across. It was factory made. To clean it, they had this brush thingy sorta like a wire brush, except the 'teeth' were flat spring steel. You just more or less scraped the top of the block and called it 'clean'. Never killed none of us, must have worked! People used to come in and buy a whole slab of bacon, 100 pounds of flour and meal...in printed cotton sacks of course, and the women would get matching patterns so they could make aprons and bonnets and dresses from the material. Sugar was sold in 50 and 100 pound bags and yes, a whole lot of it made liquor. Bib overalls and striped railroad caps were big sellers....the old women washed and starched those hats and stretched them over a lard can to shape them. Yeah, they sold lard in buckets from 5 pounds to 50 pounds. I can't remember how many different brands of chewing tobacco he sold, let alone smoking tobacco. On the walls were cardboard displays of corncob pipes and Big Ben pocket watches and cheap pocket knives. There was a small wooden case that held new German Boker knives..man they had great steel in them. On nails, hung new Daisy BB guns and axes and hatchets and hammers of every kind. Nails came in boxes by time I was boy on the 60's....but they were tons of them in every size. Barb wire and fence posts, shotgun and 22 shells...hi-pared ca'tridges on special order..nobody shot deer in those days...they were extinct. Cane poles and hooks... and sinkers in little green slide top tins. You could buy the basic ingredients for black powder right off the shelf.....sulfur, charcoal and salt peter. Before 1968 and the infamous Gun Control Act, they sold guns and dynamite:).

But back to cast iron skillets and such.....I can't remember who the maker was..got any idea of 1960's era makers?

Although the Griswold company went out of business in '57 (not '58, my mistake), The Griswold trademark and patterns were purchased by the Wagner company. Wagner produced both Griswold and Wagner brand cookwear until (I think) the early '70's. So you could be thinking of either of these brands. Griswold cookwear produced by Wagner does not have the "Erie" marking on it. (The Griswold company was in Erie, PA.)

As far as old country stores, it sure is sad that they are almost all gone, I sure miss them.

I have an old meat block that I use for an end table. It is dished out in the center, from use. The tallow has soaked into the wood, and it now has a waxy coat on it. Being single, I am able to have all kind of old country store stuff in the house. All of my walls are covered with old signs. Kinda brings back good old memories of country stores..