Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Good Times

I have this little baby from my childhood. (I just noticed how you can see my wicker, curling off the leg of my rocker--tee hee) It is called a SKOTCH Cooler. Many's the family picnics it came on. Mommy would load up all the necessities, and we'd be off to the park. Or, it would come to the family reunions, twice a year. (both sides of the fam, you know.)

We have one of the newer kinds of coolers. Actually, we have two. Lightweight, they are. Wheels and handles to make the transporting easier. Can stand a two-liter or gallon of milk upright. "room for 24 cans of pop." Holds 20 or 64 gallons or something.

Not so the SKOTCH cooler. I looked inside the lid. "4 gallons." FOUR????

We only use this when Charming and I go away for the weekend. It holds ice and 12 cans of pop. (a weekend away is worthless if I don't have my Dr. Pepper.) But this was our family's only cooler while I was growing up. I got to thinking, how did we ever get by with this?

Then I remembered the stacking Thing. I think everytime we went on a picnic, Mother would comment on How much she loved her stacking thing. She got it at the [trading] stamp store. It looked like about six large round cake pans stacked on top of each other. A wire handle wrapped around all the pieces, to hold them together for carrying.

In the bottom pan, she put ice. Above that was potato salad. Above that was silverware. Then baked beans (hot). Then paper plates and napkins. Maybe that took two pans. But on top were the Cupcakes. For drinks, she had this 5-gallon tupperware thing, with a plastic handle, that she put two gallons of lemonade in. I'm afraid I don't remember where she put the cups. Or the tablecloth. Or the "wet washrags" for cleanup. (there *was* a world that didn't know baby wipes.) The SKOTCH cooler had ice and the chicken in it.

Mother was So Excited to give me the stacky thing, when her children were grown, and my family was growing. I kept it for about fifteen years, and never, ever used it, so I gave it to the Goodwill.

After all, I have a 45,000 gallon cooler. I'm afraid I don't need a stacky thing. But I do love the SKOTCH cooler, even tho' I can only use it when Charming and I are alone.

Hey, that doesn't sound like such a bad deal!

6 comments :

Terri said...

I love it! And I am enjoying your blog so much! You have a wonderful sense of humor and a love for life which I admire!

G.L.H. said...

Mrs. Terri,
Thank you so much for your compliments!!

Anonymous said...

oh, oh, oh!! My mom had that stacking thingy, too!! I can picture it vividly!!! She must have discarded it sometime, because it was not there when we held my folks' estate sale. Oh, the memories of the picnics with the stacking thingy! I don't even remember what my mom called it. We didn't have a nifty little Scotch cooler like yours, though. We had a monstrously heavy Coca Cola cooler. What a beast that was!

G.L.H. said...

Oh, Mrs. Linebarger!
My father-in-law still has the heavy Coke cooler--it *is* a monster!!

R said...

I know the VERY stacky thing you mention... I saw skads of them at the Antique Festival. They were enamel and my, oh my, quite pricey little things. (Well, they weren't little, but you know what I mean.)

Susan P. said...

This brings back so many fond memories for me. My grandparents had a thermos that looked exactly like that. We would always go on picnics and they would put their hot coffee in it. I wanted my own special little thermos so they gave me one for lemonade:)