Manhattan - Like the half-polished antique washtub with its musty nickel on one half, and brilliant copper on the other, one Manhattan shop is a reminder of how the past evolves into the present.
For more than 30 years, Irene and the late Philip Lakins of Manhattan made a team; she selling antiques and he refinishing and polishing them.
Today their family tradition continues at the Lakin Antique and Metal Polishing Shop owned and operated by their two grandsons, John and Steve Springer, and Steve's wife, Kris.
The three craftspeople polish, spray and recreate antiques in the two sheds their grandparents built in the early 1940s behind a stone house on Fort Riley Boulevard in Manhattan, where Mrs. Lakin still lives.
Memories of their grandparents surround the shop where he taught his two grandsons the antique-polishing trade.
On Thursday Steve sat in the rewiring and reassembling part of the shed and reminisced about their apprenticeship, while John polished a brass piece on the whirring polishing lathe in the next room.
Their grandfather began to teach them in that very room how to polish and care for metal pieces soon after Vietnam War veteran Steve began school at Kansas State University on the GI Bill in 1969, and after John's high school graduation.
What began as a hobby grew into a full-scale business 15 years ago, said Steve. For 10 years the brothers worked side by side, until John left for California to set up his own shop. John returned to Manhattan last year to rejoin his brother, and begin a new phase of the business - recreation of antique museum pieces which are no longer available.
For the last 15 years they have polished brass, copper, silver and aluminum antique pieces, many of them from the late 1800's. They have stripped nickel from brass pieces, made miscellaneous items into lamps and recreated accent pieces. A large part of their business includes their spraying technique, which prevents tarnish for at least 10 years, said Steve.
Their business has expanded beyond the small sheds in their grandmother's backyard. They have contracted projects in Junction City at the former George Smith Library (currently Central of Kansas) and at Custer House at Fort Riley.
They polished oak table drawer pulls and name plates in the former library and hardware at the Custer House. They have also polished pieces in the limestone houses at Fort Riley and treated items found inside the building included in the Junction City Historical Society Homes Tour.
Much of the intrigue of their business stems from the unusual metal pieces from Fort Riley customers who have traveled the world during Army sevice, like Pakistani water jugs and Oriental barbecues. They also treat such items as old fire extinguishers and bird cages. Several of their customers bring both their family antiques and new brass items they want treated for tarnish, said Steve.
The Springers said they constantly struggle with the clock on these projects, because they and their customers come from an generation which expects instant service. But they cannot offer quality service quickly, said Steve, a lesson they have tried to learn over the years. "The whole process is more involved than people think. Each piece takes its own time. A couple of years ago we were putting a lot of things through, but we were getting quantity rather then quality. Now, we have decreased our load, because we want quality rather than quantity. In the long run this philosophy is better, a philosophy that came from our grandparents. We want people to understand that we wouldn't be here if it weren't for them."