Mama's Stories

THE FAMILY OF BESSIE EDNA BROWN & THOMAS MONNIE WOODS

There was a catastrophe in my kitchen today.  That would seem a trivial matter to one who doesn’t know the history of the old brown rolling bottle that I broke.  It had been used for almost one hundred years for rolling cookies, dumplings, and pastry.  An old lady gave it to my Mother when she started housekeeping in 1891.  This old lady had raised a large family and used it through the years she had kept house.  Rolling pins were almost unknown in those days.  If the old bottle could talk, what interesting stories it could tell!  What were its first contents?  Maybe medicine for someone who was ill, or liquor used by some forbears for celebrating Christmas.  How many little boys and girls have watched with eager eyes, their mother or sister roll cookies to bake, dumplings for a chicken pie, or pastry for a pie?  With tears near the surface, I gathered up the fragments of the old brown bottle and carried them to the trash pile.  To others it is just a broken bottle, but to me it held memories; happy ones and sad ones that I will always cherish.