Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Salome's Spoons

Salome Logan was given a set of silver on the day of her marriage to Richard Everhart, August 19, 1915. For the first year of her marriage she washed, polished and dried the silver after each use.

After the first of six children, the silver was put up for only special occasions.

In 1926 a flu epidemic swept the valley and the two youngest Everhart children were taken. Salome sold the cake server and knife and all of the desert forks to pay for the funeral.

In 1930 a draught nearly destroyed the farm and no living could be made. She sacrificed the place settings to feed her children.

Over the next five years, piece by piece the setting dwindled down to one small ladle. Refusing to part with this last piece of a happiness she was sure she would never find again, she tucked it inside the satin folds of her wedding dress, which she then placed into a wooden fruit box and tucked deep within the dormered eves of the farm house.

In 1936 when her youngest living son was 14, he carved for her a long handled spoon from the branch of her favorite oak tree. With this simple spoon she cooked the family's meal every day.


In 1943 all of the children had left the farm. The years had been good for Salome and Richard and they sold off all but 20 acres of their farm. Salome got a job in town at the only diner. For 25 years she spooned chili and chop suey and stirred chowder and soup with a big stainless steel industrial spoon. During these years Richard passed and several grandchildren were born.

Finally her children talked her into retiring and Salome Everhart left the diner at the age of 73. The owner, handed her the big steel spoon at the retirement party.

Cancer took her in the fall of 1970. Her son, the one that had carved the wooden spoon, moved into the farm and worked it until his death in 2009.

On the day of the auction, all of the old pine furniture, rusty tools and iron beds were paraded across the front lawn and each sold piece by piece. A bid was placed on an old wooden apricot box in which contained a dusty, moth eaten wedding gown. For $5.00 it was passed to a woman who gently touched the fragile satin.

Tonight she carefully unfolded the gown, and within the folds she found three spoons, a tarnished silver ladle engraved with an E, a warped wooden spoon and a worn steel spoon.

She polished the silver, oiled the wood and scrubbed the rust from the steel. As she completed her chore, the story she saw reflected was more vivid then had it been printed between leather-bound covers. And wonderfully, the woman had hurt enough, loved enough and lived enough to read it joyfully.


I spent the night polishing silver bought at auction to put in my booth at the antique shop. My imagination may have ran away with me! These five spoons were gifts on each subsequent 14th birthday of five beautiful sisters, who never marry and live all their days in a rambling Victorian mansion set high on a cliff overlooking Cobscook Bay and...ok Lisa go to bed.

And these knives, well let me tell you the story about these knives...

Smiles from the farm,
Lisa

7 comments:

  1. OMGosh you literally had me in tears reading that! You are so bad...but that was REALLY good.

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  2. what a beautiful story. Okay, I'm waiting for the book to be published. :) However, you simply MUST find a way to include Peanuts in it.

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  3. How beautiful. I was moved to tears.... may I link to it on my blog?

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  4. Awwww that was beautiful. I bet you look at the old pictures of people in antique stores and your imagination goes wild. How about a few of those stories?

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  5. Found your blog by randomly hitting the Next Blog icon...you totally reeled me in with this story. LOL Good job!

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  6. You should write Lisa, that is a wonder story, I loved every word of it. What a gift to be treasured, the spoons are so beautiful and even more so with the story that goes with them. Straight from the heart, Char

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