Better Together

I'm drawn to thick strong old-fashioned restaurant china coffee cups because, I realized, my dad played cards with his friends in our church basement while I sat in his lap, and they drank from such cups, always with saucers. When a friend thought to give me for Christmas a saucer that matched one of my treasured Buffalo China cups shown on this blog, I was thrilled. Aren't they a handsome pair? Bake little butter cookies and it's no longer just a cup of coffee, it's a whole civilization restored. I am so grateful. Who knows what stories this cup and saucer tell each other after half a century of wandering from Buffalo, New York, finally to meet in a cabin in Missouri where someone appreciates them.

The cup is undated, or its date stamp has worn away. The saucer is dated 12-64. So they are not mates but perhaps siblings. The red airbrush trim is classic.

Buffalo China's factory, opened in 1901 and closed in 2013, is still standing, and china is still there stacked up ready to go (see photo) and on the production line, unfinished, so it closed in a hurry. There are more photos of the factory here.

The Mysterious Dig, Part 1

Out for a quick walk in the woods, sleeves rolled up and bare-handed to try to get some sunshine although it's 41 degrees, I find, a little bit out of the way at the woods' edge where I haven't stepped before, a broken slab of concrete. Nobody would carry such a thing into the woods; there are no buildings in these woods. I brush the leaves from it and discover a second slab. Then a third. Then a fourth. Then a fifth. Digging and raking with my bare hands and a stick, I uncover more and more. A structure collapsed here. Then I found a rusty brace of some kind (outlined in blue), partway beneath a slab. Later I find a second one. It's a site. What is this place? What was this structure?

I found there also a steel tube, what I think was part of a gas line (outlined in green), sharply and deliberately bent at one end, exactly like the 50-year-old one at my house that was disconnected and deliberately bent so it could never be used again, when a new one was installed. I find a yellowish brick stamped "St. Louis" (outlined in yellow). Then I find what I think is a remnant of a vertical wall (outlined in pink); this material is different and more brittle, mixed with native stone. I keep raking right there, and just like a real archaeologist I find a shard of pottery; in this case, thick white institutional china, with dark-green stripes. Someone ate here. Was it a barbecue pit? It's too far from the dwellings, and too close to an old-growth tree, and if it had been a barbecue pit it wouldn't have gotten so large -- the site got larger as I uncovered more. I thought of going back for tools, but I'd dug enough for one day. Tomorrow I'll bring tools and a measuring tape and try to uncover the extent and solve the mystery.

There was also some synthetic material, very deteriorated and hardened (melted/burned?), and I'm showing a photo in case someone knows what it is--perhaps a form of insulation?

There was a boys' camp on this property, and I've heard tell of a chapel that existed pre-1957, when the dorms (now ruined, and a quarter mile away) were built. Could this be it? It does not appear in aerial views taken in 1954.

On Having Things Nice

Live alone and you've got to have some items or rituals that quietly and secretly give you reliable pleasure. I like tea first thing in the morning, and I like coffee cups/teacups of thick old restaurant china to be the first things I handle and see. They are comforting and fortifying. (To me, "mugs" even sound barbaric.) While living in Syracuse, NY, I visited the factory store of Syracuse China Company and bought for .50 each eight random restaurant coffee cups from a "seconds" bin, and 20 years later, while the factory is no more, I still cherish the surviving five and the three replacements from eBay, such as the one above, known to be a pattern from 1967. It's in a random saucer because while a restaurant coffee cup is comfort, a cup with a saucer is life.

It's not about "having nice things." Things don't have to be fragile or expensive to be nice. Don't deny yourself just because you aren't wealthy or because no one sees or cares but you. If you've always wanted a jackknife with a fishing scene carved on its handle, or a thermos with the Scotch-plaid pattern on it, a rosemary bush, a gingham tablecloth, if it will gladden you every time you see it, get it. Love it. Any love is good love.