Deconstructing Our Workbench and a Bit o' Cream of Wheat

One of the things we inherited with The Box House was a monstrously huge, very heavy workbench.
It was in the room we call Uncle Jimmy's tool room, now my office, which is located at the far, far end of the basement. We hauled this puppy the full length of the basement, up the stairs, and into the garage. I'm stronger than I look, but even so, it was not an easy task.

We decided we already had enough workbenches, in the garage and in the house, and didn't really need or want this one. It looked like it was cobbled together from miscellaneous scraps of this and that. It's not the kind of thing that we thought would go on Craig's List, either. So we decided to take it apart and salvage what wood we could. But something made me wipe down one of the boards, thick with coal dust and decades worth of grit, and look! It's from an old Cream-of-Wheat shipping crate!

Now, I love a good bowl of cream o' wheat. It's one of the two foods my mother could get me to eat when I was sick (the other being creamed eggs on toast, which she'll still make for me when I have the flu). When I was in college, and poorer than I am now, a box of quick-cooking Cream of Wheat could last me for weeks. I'd have it every day for breakfast, with a pinch of salt and a dollop of butter. So you can imagine how excited I was to find this. The script on this board is rather old-fashioned, and I tried a Google search to see if I can date it based on the logo, but no luck. I assume it belonged to the previous previous owner.

There were other boards for Quaker Oats.

The boards all cleaned up fairly well, and I'll be putting hooks on them to hang up in the garage and/or my office. The rest of the wood made it to a scrap pile in the corner. Not sure what we'll do with it, yet, but we'll figure out something.