In a few days I will be back in my shop for my 22nd and final year of spoon retailing. As in years past I will be open Thursday-Saturday from 10-6 and Sunday from 10-4. Both my home and garden are just a few minutes from the spoon shop so call my cell at 507-467-3376 if you want to visit at a different time or day of the week. Unless I've wandered too far away (like during morel mushroom season) I'm happy to do so.
Since this is my last year, I thought it would be interesting to feature a particular spoon or utensil when I do a new post. Today's is titled "Ban Land Mines" and was made in 1998.
This spoon is made of buckthorn wood. The prosthetic right leg is a brass boat nail. Here is how it came to be and came to be named
.
It was a quiet day in Lanesboro. Warm, sunny, a perfect day!
I was polishing this spoon with some abrasive 3M pads spinning in a drill press as I had done many times before. Thousands of times really. It was pretty much finished, ready for signing and oiling. Suddenly, inexplicably the right leg flew off across the shop bouncing off the wall and landing who knows where. I never saw it again. I looked at the jagged stump where once had been a perfectly formed and functional limb. Gone. Forever. It was the metaphorical experience of stepping on a landmine. Most times when limbs are lost to landmines they are those of civilians going about their normal duties. Farmers farming, children playing when suddenly, gone, forever.
I did for this spoon what most people do for each other around the world where land mines rule: gave it a prosthetic limb with readily available materials.
I am mostly glad I have kept this spoon. It does remind me of how fortunate it is to live where land mines do not rule. (Where land mines do rule.)
