Recalling my younger years, there are a couple of cups I distinctly remember very well. My Aunt Aggie Williams had a metal cup that she kept near her water faucet outside her well house. The water was being pumped by an electric well, but as with most folks in the country, our water wells were all inside a small well house to protect them from the weather. I wrote a story a couple of years ago that the well house was and still is a place where I always stop, look and listen. They are usually cool dark places and I just expect to find a snake inside when I open the door.

Aunt Aggie had a stick driven into the ground that had a rounded top on it. I don’t recall if it was as large as an old axe handle or maybe an old broom stick. My memory leans me more toward the broom stick size. The metal cup may have possibly been aluminum, but I recall it being colored faded red, blue or green…I can’t remember. After using the cup, it was turned upside down on the stick and left in place for the next person that needed a drink.

I’m sure that over time the stick and cup itself could have used a good washing, but the cup was the common drinking cup used by all and any dirt, dust or grime was always a natural kind of dirty. There is a difference, you know, between natural dirt and unnatural dirt. Natural dirt is simply outside dust, grit or sand that may get kicked up or spread around by the wind. Unnatural dirt is nasty stuff usually mixed with somebody’s spit or maybe old food stuff that already stinks.

Now, we never really worried about drinking after somebody because it was just the common thing to do. I guess if somebody from out of state or another country would have shown up we would have had to wash the cup before the next person drank from it, but we just didn’t worry about foreign diseases and the like. We probably thought we could have caught some kind of strange snow germs or something.

Another cup I remember very well was the stainless steel dairy cup. It has a rounded bottom and a stainless steel handle. Somehow I wound up having this very old cup proudly displayed in my kitchen window sill. It came from my Grandpa Osgood’s dairy over in Cypress. The cup hung in the dairy barn and was used for a multitude of things. I think the real purpose of the cup was to dip a cup from the milk tank and then check the milk for butter fat content. However, I know it was used for getting a cup of fresh milk from the vat and chug-a-lugging it down when you were thirsty. I would also guess that my Uncle Marvin probably used it from time to time to pour a cup of cold water over his head if he got hot while working. The cup hasn’t seen any milk for over 40, maybe 50 years now. It currently holds plastic forks and spoons that we grab from time to time.

A problem I have in life is that my collection of cups has grown too large. Well, not just the cup collection, but all of my collections have outgrown the room I have available. I’ve got all kinds of collections. Some people would call it junk, but I am counting on it as part of my retirement. Think about it for a moment. I have some broken bricks that come from my old family homestead that I have saved. The original house was built around 1898. Now, if I told all of my ancestors that these bricks came from the original homestead that was settled by their great, great, great, great, aunts and uncles over 110 years ago, would they pay a dollar for a piece of history? How about the old boards I kept? Would somebody pay me a dollar a foot for a heart pine 2-by-4 over a hundred years old? What about my nut and bolt collection? I know some of them came from old model cars…can I get a nickel apiece? Then there is my old collection of rusted metal parts that I have. “This looks like a stick shift from an old car and this looks like a bit for a horse but it’s sooo corroded it might fall apart in my hand. I wonder if somebody will buy this...no, I can’t sell it. I need to keep it as part of my memories…”

Clifford

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