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Butch Furse
The other night while eating my sandwich from a paper plate with mismatched silverware at the dinner table, I smiled and then asked the Betterhalf about a situation I had found amusing numerous times that now there is just two of us in the household. My question: “Whatever happened to the pieces of fine china and expensive silverware we got as wedding gifts 61 years ago?”
I was very careful to carry a smile on my face to denote I wasn’t upset because she is an excellent cook and rarely over those 61 years have I eaten one of her meals that I didn’t like. However, over the past decade, the fine china and monogramed matched silverware have made few appearances as big family dinners had become pretty much a thing of the past and also dining with company has declined. Heavy, odd lots of unchipped glass or vinyl plates now grace the dinner table when just the two of us are dining. So, where is our china and silver?
Why, they’re “resting” in the large hutch in the dining room. That’s the hutch that already holds the fine china and silverware that years ago were left to us by our parents. There’s a message here.
Our grandparents and parents, whether it be china, silverware, jewelry, or whatever, they worked hard to have some of the finer things in life and what happens? It eventually goes to the next generation. After a couple generations of receivership the hutch becomes full. In our case, sentimentality steps in and our hutch gets fuller and no one has clamored for any heirlooms.
When it’s time for the Betterhalf and me to leave our home, the old hutch, along with a basement full of memorabilia, will then be the kids’ problem.
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A medical journal advances the theory “man is slightly taller in the morning than he is in the evening.” We’ve never tested this, but we have certainly noticed a tendency to become “short” toward the end of the month.
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The cost of living is always about the same – all the fellow has.
RL Furse is publisher emeritus of the News-Register
