| I wish this tater scoop
could talk. It has a tale to tell.
A bit of background first. I have been a
woodcarver most of my life. My father taught me to sharpen a knife
when I was six, and carving became an
integral part of my life, first as a hobby, then beginning in 1971, a fulltime
business.
 Through
the years I carved many things - miniatures, in-the-round, relief
carvings - but in 1981 when my business moved
from retail to wholesale, I switched to carving nothing but thirteen different
styles of Appalachian spoons, scoops, dippers and ladles. I carved literally thousands of them
over the years...one
by one. Without a doubt, this “thousands of them” was the reason for
the burn-out that hit in 1994. One day I walked out of the shop and
could not go back in the next.
Business affairs were closed out in a professional manner. The orders
on the desk were shipped from the stock on hand. Letters were sent to
shops notifying them The Whistlin’ Whittler no longer existed. And
that was that.
It wasn’t until later that I realized I hadn’t kept a full set of the
13 utensils for myself. Three pieces of the set that represented
nearly 25 business years were missing. I kept thinking I would step
into the shop and whip out those three pieces. But I didn’t. Taking up
a knife, even for my own self, was impossible. Time passed and I never
did. Eventually, my carving tools went to my son. The regret remained.
Of the three pieces, the one I missed most was the “tater scoop,” an
extra large spoon with a curved handle, my favorite of all the utensils.
Fast forward to just before Christmas last year. I received an email
from a woman, an art teacher in northern Ohio, who had purchased one
of my tater scoops at a flea market in northern Michigan. She said my
"Whistlin' Whittler" tag was still on the piece, enabling her to
locate my website via Google. (That the tag was still on the piece
doesn't surprise me. Through the years I've run across many people who
have the utensils hanging on a wall, and the tags are still on them.
Inside those tags was information about where the wood for the piece
came from [i.e. “a 100 year old church bench” or "a house built in
1810"]. To the purchaser, this information seemed integral to the
piece, so the tags often remained on the carvings.)
The art teacher had written to say she intended to give the piece to
her sister-in-law for Christmas and requested more information about
this "tater scoop" and the location of the Hunt house from which it
was carved.
I seriously considered asking if she would sell the piece to me, then
didn’t. She had plans for the carving, and I wouldn’t intrude on them.
In my answering email I didn’t even mention that the piece was missing
from my collection. Instead, I wrote about the history of the house
from which the piece was carved, how the wood came into my
possession...not of what was in my heart, how much that piece meant to
me.
Another email came from her the following day. My husband, at the
other end of the house, heard me scream...YES! YES, YES, YES!!! In her
email, without prompting, she had volunteered to trade the tater scoop for an assortment
of handmade paper! YES, oh YES! (I have to wonder now, if there was a
subliminal message in my email to her. If so, I’m not ashamed. And if that message
was there, I am grateful
that it was caught.)
The picture above is that tater scoop, now safely in my possession
after 18 years. The only indication of its travels is the worn
tag and the small nick in the end. I'd give anything if it could talk and tell me where
it has been and how it ended up in a Michigan flea market with a $1
price tag. |
