As we were pulling what seemed like acres of invasive scotch broom in the lower garden, my cousin found an old teaspoon attached to the fence, bent and gnarled, and green with the patina of age, as most of the silver-plating had long since sloughed off the spoon. Because the base metal was copper, I knew it was a very old spoon. More than a century old.
The design had a crest and a big silver trophy bowl at mid-handle—like the classical trophies filled with champagne and red roses that race horses won—perhaps a depiction of the Grecian urn filled with fruit, but it was so worn, it was hard to tell. If the crest had an initial, it too was worn away.
Once this cutlery was part of a matched set that graced a linen tablecloth in some genteel hotel. Probably pinched by someone, then later lost, or set free. It looks as if the spoon was used as a hand tool to tighten the baling wire along the fence line. Sounds like something I might have done long ago. Or maybe it tossed out in a paper napkin, into the fireplace, after evening tea with Irish sodabread, and dumped in the garden along with the ashes, and later hung on the fence like a trophy, or a wind chime. You must admit, finding a bent teaspoon hanging from an old fenceline is in want of some sort of explanation.
Was it a piece of cutlery from the original owner, a railroad man, who kept his silver in a hidey-hole beneath the kitchen floor that was later to become my bedroom? Much of our worn silverware came from that hidey-hole and we continued to use it through the generations even when most of the silver had long since worn off the bottom of the cutlery, imparting an acrid brassy taste in your mouth if you ate homemade blackberry jam right off the spoon with your tea.
I straightened out the old spoon as best I could to read the manufacturer’s mark. Initials and the words Pure Silverplate, as if you’d be fooled into thinking it was solid silver, and then you’d have to pinch it to augment your income. As we stood there catching our breath and contemplating its age, we heard a shuffling sound in the shrubbery below the embankment.
Thinking it was a deer or dog, I peered over the edge to find a porker, somebody’s pet pig. She was heavily furred with black with brown and russet splotches—perhaps denoting some Russian wild boar ancestry. When she heard me, she came over to investigate, snortling and chuffing with pleasure, pulling at the bunchgrass while eyeing us like a hungry horse looking for treats, and grunting all the while, but I could not translate, nor parse her guttural sentences. Perhaps it was a love poem or a serenade about apples delivered by a wandering minstrel pig. She was obviously a long way from home and was glad to see us. That much was obvious.
We were glad to see her, if only to cach our breath, as we were two old weed wenches pulling broom. Perhaps she was charmed by the sound of our voices—we always talk to animals—as we are all one thing. There is no separation between us and them. Even the blasted invasive scotch broom. And we caught our breath, our hearts were a little lighter because of that brief encounter with an errant pig, and we got back to work pulling broom. The pig ambled off, clattered down the road on her little pink hooves, looking for home, snuffling and grunting all the while. The old spoon in my back pocket for luck.
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