No accounting for taste

In previous postings, I've mentioned that I've become the caretaker of various family treasures, sometimes under mild protest. At an early age, I had it drilled into me that "It's impolite to beg" and, as a result, I've always been reticent about accepting my aging relatives' possessions. At least, that's part of it. Another reason is that I feel that I'm somehow hastening their departure from this world by allowing them to give away their stuff. I know: illogical.

None of which explains the wotsit at right.

During the same visit when my granduncle Carl sent home another of his clocks, we were hanging out in the cellar. It was all pretty much as I remembered it from my childhood. Same slightly musty smell. Same cinderblock walls. Maybe a little smaller than I remembered.

"I've got to start getting rid of some of this old junk," he said. "I'm not going to be around much longer."

At nearly 90 years old, he might have had a point, but I don't even like to think about his passing. In some ways, I'm closer to Carl and my aunt Mary than I was to my grandparents, the last of whom passed in 2000. Still, I know that with no children of their own, they've been sticking name tags on their various treasures for years, so that they could ensure that they found their way to the people they felt would appreciate them most.

"It's just a bunch of junk," Carl repeated. "But if there's any of this you want, I wish you'd take it."

Okay. There was one thing. For as long as I could remember, there had always been this weird cast iron bottle opener mounted on the wall. Kind of a scary thing, to a small kid, with its four wild eyes and bucked teeth, but it had made an impression. I'd always associate the memory of it with that basement, and I told Carl as much. He didn't know what I meant, at first. It had been there since sometime before I was born, and it had long since faded into invisibility for him.

When I pointed it out, he promptly grabbed a screwdriver from the battered toolbox he'd used when he worked as a machinist. Still shaking his head in amazement that I'd pick 'that old thing' as a memento, he placed it in my hand and laughed.

"You'll have to mount that on the wall in your kitchen and think of your old uncle whenever you open a beer," he said. Which is entirely the point.

Except I'm pretty sure I'd never get away with putting it in our kitchen.

But wait. There's more!

I can't remember what I was looking for, but I found a web site the other day that sells reproductions of Carl's bottle opener. And then, because my interest gets piqued by the strangest things, I continued looking. I found an auction site that had a mint condition specimen with its original box. And then, a woman's description of the same bottle opener, which she'd found in the remains of a fire. She's apparently interested in odd things, as well, because she actually took the time to research it.