Ever since I have known him (46 years now), my husband has kept his magazines in a brass bucket. This bucket was something he acquired from his great-aunt. Why she had it, I do not know. She lived on a farm for many years, a farm that has been in the family for over 100 years. The bucket probably originated as a utilitarian farm tool. Maybe it held milk. Maybe slops. Maybe something associated with farms that I know nothing about.
But for the last 46-plus years, it has held magazines.
I never paid any attention to the brass bucket before we were married. My first clear memory of the brass bucket was on or about December 1, 1977, the day when we moved into married student housing about a week after our wedding.
Our small apartment was on the 6th floor of an 8-floor building in Escondido Village at Stanford University. All of our worldly possessions had to go up to the apartment in the elevator.
We had loaded everything into my husband’s 1974 Pinto station wagon. After parking illegally outside the mail entrance to the high rise, we schlepped our possessions, armful by armful, to the elevator in the ground-floor lobby, up in the elevator to the 6th floor, and down the long hall to our apartment. The unloading process took many trips by both of us, and I was soon exhausted. But we had to work quickly because the car was parked illegally, and we didn’t want a ticket.
By happenstance, I carried the armful that included the brass bucket. As I juggled bedding and books and bucket, the elevator doors began to close on me. Thinking quickly, I thrust the bucket out to stop the doors. Which it did.
“Don’t do that!” my new husband yelled. “You’ll hurt my brass bucket.”
“So?” I replied testily.
“It’s a family heirloom. My aunt gave it to me.”
I guess he would have preferred to have a one-armed wife than to see his bucket bent.
No harm came to the bucket. He has polished it several times through the years, though not recently. It still elicits occasional comments from guests about why we have it and what its purpose is.
And every time a new issue of one of his magazine arrives in the mail, he takes the previous issue of that magazine out of the brass bucket and puts in the new issue. He is very disciplined in this regard. He wouldn’t want to tax the bucket with holding an outdated issue.
As I asked questions recently of my husband to pin down details, he again deplored my cavalier attitude in protecting my body instead of his bucket. “It’s a family heirloom!”
What family heirlooms have you almost damaged?
Theresa, the brass bucket was used to cook applesauce or apple butter over an open fire outside. I have an identical one. One of my early memories:
My mother wanted a brass bucket when I was about five to put firewood in. She got wind of one from a Mr. Applegate who lived far out in the country from our town. We arrived to find him stirring applebutter with a large wooden paddle over an open fire. She asked to buy it. He refused–until he finished the applesauce.
Thanks for this information, Sally. I’ve been told they were also used for milk. Theresa