Spoons are good for many things. But what hap-hap-hap-happened to them? It makes you want to stutter like Porky Pig in Looney Tune comics. I haven't been abroad for years so I don't know about foreign spoons. But in my recent travels from New York, Pennsylvania and all the way down to Florida I observed that restaurant spoons are missing from tables, underneath tables and all around the dining rooms.
Dear Ones,
In all our wildest imaginations, I can only conjecture what has happened to the missing spoons. Perhaps it's like Pete Seeger's song, "Where have all the flowers gone . . . and soldiers graves, in long time passing, gone to flowers everyone, O, when will they ever learn . . . ?"
Perhaps a government recall has collected them from restauranteurs to be melted into metal, as in colonial days when pewter spoons were abundant. Could the feds have converted them into silver and gold weaponry, as visioned by taxpayers, some of which have not enough funds to even put food on the table, let alone spoons.
Moving right along with reasons for the conundrum, I am puzzled enough to come up a number of fanciful reasons. Perhaps little children are stealing them for sand boxes. They make useful tools for digging on beaches, too. This reminds me of a Civil War re-enactor who told me about his recent purchase. During the War Between the North and the South, a general had enough of savage combat. He thrust his sword into the sand. There it remained until a beachcomber spotted a bright object on a remote island. He dug around it and pulled up a treasure prize worth a pirates ransom.
Getting back to the puzzle of spoons, you wonder if restauranteurs are hording them. But this would only take up valuable space. You could always ask for a spoon. But that would be like requesting a menu. We are conditioned to seeing spoons on tables when we go out to eat.
On the other hand, maybe customers are taking the spoons to make jewelry out of them, such as bracelets and pendants. Or maybe they are using them for kitchen cupboard handles. I used to bend antique spoons for this novel purpose.
When ordering soup, everyone is presented with a spoon. Maybe we all should order soup or ice cream dessert before lunches or dinners. At any rate, spoons are good for scooping up sauces, gravy and savory goodies left on the plate.
You can't even get a spoon to stir your coffee or tea these days. Yet in high end restaurants you are presented with three different knives, two forks and not a spoon in sight. Fast food places serve spoons even though they are plastic, and likened to plastic bags, are thrown out to clog up oceans and streams that harm the environment.
Even though you are lucky enough to get a spoon with a bowl of soup, it's usually a table spoon. So what's going on with the nation's tableware? Maybe the restaurant owners themselves just want to conserve water without having to wash so much utensils.
But what has happened to all the spoons they once used but are now storing? Maybe the proprietors are shipping them to the Far East for money to help run their US establishments. What if Chinese and Japanese are molding them into little ornamental spoons for collectors to hang on small shelves displaying novelties having international names of countries on them–to be sold back to the Americas.
In terms of metaphoric fairy tales, perhaps heaven is low on spoons, as people often say, "He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth."
Mame
helenesmith1.blog spot.com (MacDonald Sward)
