Earlier this summer “Joey Green’s Incredible Country Store: Potions, Notions and Elixirs of the Past and How to Make Them Today” by, of course, Joey Green appeared on my desk.

I took it home, thinking I’d take a long look at it some Sunday afternoon while I was enjoying a cup of tea. But for the last several months I have been dipping into the book at odd moments – while the biscuits are baking or while I’m waiting for the cat to come in for the night – it’s that kind of book. You don’t have to read it from cover to cover, you can nibble at it any place, any time, on any page.

The book is illustrated with old-time advertisements for the products the author writes about – like Bendix washing machines, Lady Pepperall sheets and Sloan’s Liniment (same stuff my mother smoothed on my aching muscles after I’d played my first – and last – high school basketball game against those tall, talented Monson girls many years ago).

For the most part, the book is about making stuff. It contains many recipes, including ice cream, bubble bath, castile shampoo, rock candy, lollipops, homemade Oreo-type cookies and chocolate kisses. It also includes directions for making paper, spray starch, wool cleaner, fabric softener, oven cleaner, soap, potpourri, candles and other under-the-cupboard stuff we use every day and take for granted.

Each chapter in the book contains minihistories of specific products, such as Burt’s Bees; and Strange Facts, like this one: “With the profits earned from Burt’s Bees, Roxanne Quimby acquired sixteen thousand acres of land in Maine that she hopes to give away to help the state establish a national park. The Maine Woods, a region in northern and eastern Maine, contains lakes, trout streams, mountains, bears, moose, lynx and more than one thousand miles of hiking trails. The proposed 32 million-acre park would be larger than Yellowstone and Yosemite combined.”

The idea for Green’s book has its roots in a trip he and his wife made to Weston, Vt., in 1986. They visited The Vermont Country Store, which “was stuffed with bottles, jars, tins, pots and pans.” After that, Green “yearned to know the secret formulas for all those liniments, elixirs, homemade candles, perfumes, potpourri, household cleansers and candies.”

Seventeen years later, Green gave in to his yearnings and found answers to his questions: Who created the Raggedy Ann doll? How do you play marbles? Who invented the Tootsie Roll? How did F.W. Woolworth’s get its start? Who invented the can opener? His research resulted in the book, published this year by Rodale.

I hoed out a place on a crowded kitchen shelf for Joey Green’s book. I put it beside my beloved and much-used and favorite 1966 edition of the “Maine Rebekah Cookbook.”

Check local libraries and bookstores for “Joey Green’s Incredible Country Store,” or visit www.wackyuses.com.

Maine Rebekah cookbooks are still being published and are available by calling Sharma Wood at 525-3205.

Snippets

. New Directions in Maine Contemporary Quilts, featuring work by Elizabeth Busch, Mary Allen Chaisson and Patricia Wheeler will be on exhibit at the Opera House in Boothbay Harbor until Oct. 11. Call 633-1174 or visit www.msquilts.com for more information.

. Forty-one quilt wall hangings have been hung throughout the Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta. The wall hangings were made, under the guidance of Spiral Arts Inc. of Portland by more than 200 hundred clients of the mental health facility.

. The Center for Maine Contemporary Art, 162 Russell Ave., Rockport, will hold two brown-bag lectures during the Work of Hand Craft Show and Sale. Ceramic artist George Pearlman will speak at noon Tuesday, Oct. 12. Fiber artist Mary Allen Chaisson will talk about her work at 2 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 14. The cost to attend each lecture is $3. To learn more about the lectures or the craft show and sale, call 236-2875, or visit www.artsmaine.org.

Ardeana Hamlin welcomes suggestions. Call 990-8153, or e-mail ahamlin@bangordailynews.net.