Vagneur: The importance of inanimate objects

It’s a simple piece, made by my paternal great-grandfather, what one might call a “moveable kitchen counter,” with shelves on top going up to the ceiling. Underneath are four drawers down the center, topped with a cutting board tucked just below the countertop. On the left are two opaque doors, folding open to shelves behind. 

On the right are another two doors with similar description, although when my grandfather lived in the house, instead of two doors, there were two deep bins — one for flour, the other for sugar. This always intrigued me for just between the two bins, at a slight angle, was a large bullet-type hole, put there by the accidental discharge of a .410 shotgun shell. The blast had compromised the integrity of the sugar bin, which had been satisfactorily patched up by my granddad.  

I call it a “moveable counter” in quotes, for although it stood in the same kitchen, first for my great-grandfather and then on down the line to me for over 100 years (including an intercessional owner), it and the shelves were removed during a remodel, and it now resides in a basement room of my current log house. It’s 7×2, and heavy.

It’s all wood, original, no fancy top, and with simple metal pulls, although the louvered doors my mother installed over the upper shelves disappeared years ago. It used to be smooth and shiny, well-sanded and stained, a place where my father kept the coffee pot, timed to be hot at 6 a.m. We made our lunch sandwiches there, chopped up the venison steak, carved the Christmas turkey and ham, and whatever else a counter might be used for.

After my family left back when, the new owners seemed to have let it go to hell, so to speak.

Having said all that as an introduction, perhaps it is time to get to the point, which is to mention the importance of inanimate objects. Not just the object itself, but the memories and familiarity that go with them. 

When I was 4, maybe younger, by mother would sometimes leave me with my aunt, granddad’s daughter Eileen (Butch was her sometimes nickname), who would babysit me for the morning or afternoon. It was a bit like some people did it in the old days. Newlyweds Aunt Eileen and her husband, Victor, lived in the house with my widowed granddad, where Eileen kept the big house up and did the cooking. And watched over me occasionally.

The cookstove utilized wood and coal — thankfully, the house was shaded on all sides by towering cottonwoods — and it seemed more often than not, my aunt would be baking bread during my sojourns there. 

She’d put me up on the counter, facing the woodstove across the kitchen and near the kitchen table, where the dough was kneaded for the bread. I’d sit and watch, and Eileen would tell me stories of her youth in the house (how she used to slide down the stair banister or hide toys in the attic), and on the ranch where she helped put up hay by running the stacker horses. Most challenging, perhaps, and which she didn’t talk about with others, was her ambitious effort to teach me to count. 

Those early times in her kitchen forged bonds between us that lasted a lifetime for her and still resonate strongly with me. I was alone, working at her house when she came home from the doctor’s office with the tragic diagnosis that was to end her life. What to do or say? We sat at the kitchen table and held hands, each crying in our own way, trying to digest the news.

Aunt Eileen died in 1982, at the relatively young age of 58, from the insidious ravages of cancer. She is still profoundly missed. That counter in my basement is somehow a part of the relationship we had, an inanimate object holding memories that I cherish to this day.

Tony Vagneur writes here on Saturdays and welcomes your comments at ajv@sopris.net.