It was the late 1960's, and a lot of old societal assumptions were being rethought, but not as yet the ones that decreed that the girls at my Long Island high school all needed to learn how to make cakes, not repair lamps.

She and her colleagues began small, repairing broken lamps and improving security, but swiftly moved on to an ambitious project: a fund-raising campaign to restore the tattered, neglected 15-acre Sheep Meadow, near West 66th Street.

"I LOVE lamps," said Louis Mattia, who, with his wife, Regina, has been repairing and restoring lamps since 1960.

At the Handy Hardware Store, a family-owned business since 1921, "we still sharpen scissors and knives, fix storm windows and will even repair lamps," said Bill Tarantino, who owns the store.

Otherwise, repairing most lamps is relatively easy.

If you wanted to get a bed-warmer repaired, you took it to Bedient's and, right up to the end, the Morellis still repaired lamps, screens and windows.