I learned to sew on my mother's first sewing machine, a refurbished Singer treadle. She told me that a salesman came around to their house with some sewing machines in the back of his pickup truck. Daddy traded him several gallons of syrup he had made for the machine. In the 1960s she bought a newer treadle machine from the high school when they upgraded to electric machines. Mother never had an electric machine. I still have the first machine, my sister has the second one, and both sew great!