USAWA

by Jarrod Fobes

We’ve been cleaning out the crawlspace in my basement in preparation for a yard sale.  The house was built in 1924, and belonged to my wife’s maternal grandparents until they passed.  Anyway, tucked behind a box of knitting supplies from the 1950’s, I came across what looks like a pair very well used wooden dumbbells!  You can see in the picture that they are marked as weighing 2lbs, so I suspect they belonged to Grandma.  I never met the grandparents, but I know that Grandpa was in the Alaska gold rush and was something of an adventurer, so I suspect 2lbs might have been a bit light for him.

The night before, my lovely wife Karena also came across these rubber grip trainers in the storage room. They’re made out of dense rubber, have a nice feel to them, and provide some pretty good isometric grip work.

I know these aren’t exactly artifacts of old-time famous strongmen, but I still thought it was interesting because Karena has recently started more serious strength training and is showing some real potential. Her mom keeps pretty fit as well, and it’s fascinating to me to see the roots of all that go back to Grandma!  In any case, I was wondering  if anyone knows the approximate age of these things?