It is a poorly kept secret that I am a history geek. I love old stuff, old buildings, old music, old ways of doing things. I don’t want to go back to moveable newspaper type, but I have a box full of lead letters in case anyone needs a few.
One of the traditions that has mostly passed away is the premium from a business. Yes, you still get a key chain when you purchase a new car, but the propane truck driver isn’t going to hand out little metal spatulas with the company logo, engraved with ‘To a good cook.’ Those things went away in part because folks don’t know their neighbors. That driver, back in the day, probably had firsthand knowledge of the quality of cooking that came from each home where he delivered. Those ladies would have gladly given him a slice or pie or cake to eat with his dinner. Same with the yardstick from the lumber yard or hardware store, the piggybank from the bank for kids and the bottle opener from the liquor store.
As previously mentioned, I am a history nut. In my office collection is a bit of tile from the cheese factory, historic maps and books, a notepad from 1937 with a mock-up of the Republican on the front, and a recently added blast from the past.
This is a set of plastic salt and pepper shakers bearing the legend ‘Printing good news about a great community,” The Watonga Republican, 1892-1967, 75 years. The set was given to me by a sweet lady who used to write for this paper a few decades ago. She was in town to begin clearing her mother’s home of goods and memories. I was at the home on my never-ending search for canning jars. She had a few and I was glad to purchase them. As with most of my previously loved jars, I will think of all the hands, the recipes and the love that went into their use before they came to live with me.
These bits of history that I drag home are more than shards of glass and clay. They are markers of the lives that they were part of. They are reminders of when life was harder, and simpler, and maybe better.
Not everything was better; not so long ago there would have been scandalized glances at an old white woman going to a home east of the railroad tracks. But other facets were better, the way life was slower and we cared about our families and our community, even the people we didn’t really know.
Maybe these little plastic salt and pepper shakers can’t change anything. But they can remind me, remind us, that we can draw on the old values and apply them to our world and make it a little more flavorful, just a little better.