The Cookie Jar

by Eva Pasco, author of "Underlying Notes"

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Lifting the lid on a cookie jar is one way to jar childhood memories from the Sixties. Our cookie jar idled on a scarf in the middle of the round, maple kitchen table flanked by four captain’s chairs. The ceramic black and cream colored vintage car resembled one of the antique autos my father restored in his spare time. I remember picking out this three dollar item for my mother’s Christmas present downstairs in the Coates Field Department Store where automotive and household gadgetry abounded. I think I did a decent job wrapping it because its irregular shape was concealed inside a box garage. Then as now, the pleasure of giving gifts overrode receiving them for the joy elicited.   

At first the cookie jar fulfilled its purpose as a deep well for Oreos or chocolate chip cookies.  Putting the lid back in place by aligning the roof just right proved an awkward proposition.  Snatching cookies from that car got trickier when just about depleted because you had to rummage inside the nose to slide the cookies.  As the cookie crumbles, my sister and I concluded the goodies got stale quickly because the lid wasn’t air tight.  We resumed foraging inside the kitchen cupboard, helping ourselves to cookies straight out of the package or box.  

Meanwhile, the cookie jar held its ground on the kitchen table. In essence it became a small junk suppository and keeper of S&H green stamps prior to licking and sticking. The ceramic car remained the focal point of our kitchen, accruing nostalgia throughout the passing years. When my sister married and would journey many miles away from home, she claimed the cookie jar for her prized possession. Prior to backing out of the driveway in a car packed to the gills heading to  Virginia, my mother sneaked some dough inside—not the baking variety. Though that three dollar vintage cookie jar could conceivably fare quite well on Antiques Roadshow, you can’t put a price on family heirlooms, let alone part with them.

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