Treasure Chest Thursday: The Majestic Lifter and a Dirty Joke

Treasure Chest Thursday is a daily prompt at Geneabloggers focusing on a family heirloom or treasure.

This basket of antique kitchen tools has been a faithful member of my kitchen décor for many years.  Egg beaters, potato mashers, wooden spoons, and pastry cutters conjure up images of “woman’s work” and what my great-grandmother’s everyday life was like.  I bet in her day Mary Frances Jollett Davis had all the modern conveniences.

She probably had a stove like this one, a Majestic:

 Image from Google Images

 I’m only guessing about the stove, but I have Mary Frances’ Majestic lifter that was used to lift the stove plates that covered the holes in her range top.  With this simple tool, she could lift the plate to stoke the fire or stir the ashes with the flat end.  Not very glamorous or particularly valuable, but certainly it was important to keep it handy and not let it get lost.    

Besides the connection to my great-grandmother, the lifter has another meaning for me that always makes me laugh.  My grandmother Lucille Rucker Davis used to tell how my uncle Orvin Jr. (my mother’s brother) would exasperate her by repeating this riddle: 

“What are the three important parts of the stove?” 

Are you ready for the answer?  You have to say it out loud to appreciate it.  OK, here it comes:

Lifter, leg, and poker.

I know my grandmother liked that joke.  Really, she did.  She looked like a fine church-going, cake-baking grandmotherly grandmother, but she was not above passing along a little off-color joke now and then. 

Two treasures for the price of one.