“Do It Yourself” wasn’t a fad. It was a necessity in the Fall City of 100 years ago.

Cooking, repairing your house, and living in general required skills that today are becoming lost arts. Fall City Historical Society takes visitors on a trip back in time to experience those arts at its downtown booth for Fall City Days.

Live demonstrations of home arts are planned from noon to 3 p.m. Saturday, June 14.

Society volunteers won’t just show and tell, they will listen.

“We would love to hear about skills passed down in your family,” says Historical Society president Ruth Pickering.

A glimpse of times gone by

One “time machine” at the Fall City society is that thick tome of yesteryear, the Sears and Roebuck catalog.

More than 1,000 pages, long, with lavish illustrations, the 1902 Sears catalog, reprinted in 1969, is a veritable visual museum of that era. Inside are adverts for stereoscopes and harmonophones, fancy spurs and curry combs, barber’s chairs and parlor organs, ornate straight razors and strops, all manner of tools and machinery for farming and  other occupations, hundreds of household items and clothing for all ages and seasons, and remedies such as “Dr. Rose’s Arsenic Complexion Wafers.”

Swing by the booth and check it out. Be amazed by the products of yesteryear—and how cheap they were by today’s values.

• Learn more about the Fall City Historical Society’s mission and artifacts at its new website, www.fallcityhistorical.org.