Just an old box

I hesitated to throw out this box. These trays were all the rage in the seventies and eighties. Daughter was at a disposal of household contents event last year and was given this, unused, in its original box. I remember giving a few of them away as gifts in my time but lawdy knows what happened to my one, it could have worn out or got lost in one of the moves. I was delighted when she gifted me with this wee treasure.

It speaks to me of simpler times, fondues, stuffed tomatoes and green peppers, basic salads, corning ware. These hot trays would keep everything warm on the sideboard or counter. I was one who used corning ware for everything, stove top, oven, serving, baking, frying, broiling, roasting, coffee making, - even my tea-pot had the traditional cornflower emblem.

Back then, as young twenty-somethings, our crowd would entertain each other every Saturday night. It was cheap and fun and everyone brought something or other. We were all broke, living from paycheque to paycheque and our little ones ran around and guitars came out and we sang and told stories and passed the odd spliff and shared big jugs of cheap wine.

In my move to a zen existence, this box has to go, but I thought to capture it, its essence so to speak, before it winds up as a fire starter in my wood stove.

Nostalgia swirls like a fog sometimes around the most unexpected artifacts.