Antiques

At 86, Lambert Ninteman is a former Minnesota farm boy who admits that you can take the boy off the farm but that you can never take the farm out of the boy. He left the family farm at 12 and went on to other adventures. But he never forgot his roots in America's heartland or the equipment used to till the soil and harvest its bounty. Karen Harmon, 34, of Lakewood, is an elementary school librarian and an avowed city girl.

In hard times, an investor's fancy often turns to money-making opportunities other than financial instruments. But unlike a 65-year-old Chateau Margaux, a Bordeaux wine too expensive for most people to drink, you can actually have fun with a 1926 Rickenbacker roadster (built by World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker, who later headed Eastern Airlines).

Boarding Bill Hatrick's railroad car is like stepping into a time machine. The lavish Art Deco lounge exudes the luxury of the 1940s. A bartender behind a wood-paneled quarter-circle serves cream sodas to the passengers. And beside the steward's room is what may be the country's last operating barbershop on wheels. "America has a secret love affair with trains," says Hatrick, 39, a sometime locomotive engineer and part-time mechanic from Santa Ana.

Take a look at this year's Winnebago Ultimate Advantage with its hydraulic leveling jacks and video monitor for backing up, and you might think it's light-years from the motor homes and camping trailers that first rumbled down America's wooded byways and desert roads. But David Woodworth doesn't think there's much difference. And he should know. The 59-year-old Baptist pastor-turned-historian is arguably the country's foremost expert on the genesis and trajectory of recreational vehicles.

Americans have discovered their attics, and Carol Prisant is ready to help them sort the junk from the treasures. Is it a true Tiffany lamp or one of the ubiquitous imitators? A valuable piece of sterling silver or merely silver plated? An 18th century Chippendale armchair or a reproduction? There are ways to find out, even for the beginner, and Prisant, a former antiques dealer and expert appraiser, has put it all together in her book "Antiques Roadshow Primer" (Workman Publishing Co., 1999).

A blast of ocean-scented air cuts through the passenger window of the sports car heading along Pacific Coast Highway, ruffling the silvery strands of Horton Foote's hair. The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter, nattily dressed as ever, is on his way to dinner in Santa Monica after an afternoon of working on his new play, "The Tax Assessor." Is he comfortable, his driver and hostess asks, is there enough leg room?

A 60-year-old prosthetic hand. A tonsil guillotine with ebony handle. A "fine and decorative 1830s Staffordshire leech jar." Who says you can't find everything on the World Wide Web? Alex Peck of Charleston, Ill., has been collecting and selling medical and scientific antiques for two decades and in December decided to take his 19th century scalpels and specula to cyberspace.