The Smiling Bowl

Early, early, early, between first light and 7 a.m., or the humidity is oppressive, and you must wear long pants and a long-sleeved high-necked shirt and boots, plus gloves, to pick blackberries from the briar bushes. And you wait all year to pluck them gently (because only the ripe berries are really worth eating) from the thorny twigs, as many as are ripe. It's an annual ritual around July 15 and it's one reason life is worth living.

Even more so if Patrick, who mows the lawn, comes by with a bowl he got at a yard sale. It's a Buffalo China restaurant-ware bowl, the classic with the green stripe around it that looks like an endless smile (it looks like that to me, but I am not normal), and he said when he turned it over and saw the stamp he remembered I like Buffalo china, and here is the whole day of July 15 in a bowl.

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.