My oldest daughter was helping me to go through some of Mother’s keepsakes recently. Mom left numerous little notes and instructions, but the real work came when items were set aside and readied to go to one specific person or another. These were some of the thoughts that I was left with.
This small crystal bowl is chipped all around the inside lip. It’s something that few would consider a suitable keepsake. Its value lies not in it being a crystal piece, but that it had been in Grandmother’s family since before the availability of a simple salt shaker.
I remember the first time that I ever saw it on the table, and thought it might be a funny sugar bowl — yet the funniest were the smaller bowls that were used for dipping the sliced veggies into. Each one held a reasonable amount of salt, as did the chipped crystal bowl. Once there was a little spoon that went with the bowl, and I do believe that it made was of sterling. The little spoon was made into a jewelry pin by one of the aunts or cousins.
And this embossed piece of cardboard is all tattered and broken around its edges. Where the painted letters stood out on the green field of base color, the silver paint is washing away. Again, this is an item to be overlooked by many, and likely would have been carelessly discarded but for the story of its beginning. Grandmother Cornelia had been the organist for a number of years at her local Presbyterian church before she met and married Grandfather John T. Johnson on Jan. 27, 1903. This simple printed and embossed piece was their wedding present from her pastor, and it is more than 110 years old today.