Cutlery

Our family silverware pattern was named something like, "Flea Market." I'm sure my parents started their marriage with a matching set of cutlery, or at least a full set of knives. By the time us 4 kids came around, we were lucky to have the basics to get food in our mouths.
But nothing matched. I mean, we had a bunch of pieces from one set, but not the whole thing. I'm guessing that some pieces were left at other houses after parties, or got lost while camping, or maybe ended up in the garden to dig holes. I also imagine that's why we had some non matching pieces in our collection as well. You know, somehow after camping, we would end up with our jello bowl, and Mrs. Carmody's  spoon.

Of course there were those utensils  in the back of the drawer that only made it out for special occasions, like the soup tureen spoon, or the butter knife. In fact, the appearance of the butter knife was so rare that it became the center of attention at one of our Sunday dinners. Unfortunately for Grandma, our parish priest, Father Shanahan, was over for dinner that day. Grandma spent a lot of time making a wonderful meal that went unnoticed when Uncle Jim spied the butter knife on the table. Now, Grandma had pulled out all the nice fancy china and accessories, making it look like this was our usual dinnerware, but Uncle Jim put and end to that illusion.

"What is that? A butter knife? You mean we have a knife just for butter? Why don't we ever use it? Do we have other special silverware?"  As Grandma slipped lower and lower in her chair, Uncle Jim continued to ask people to pass the bread AND the butter knife...

But I digress. So none of our silverware matched. And among these utensils appeared The Star Fork. It was like no other piece of silverware that we owned. Most of our silverware was chunky and given away free with a suitable grocery purchase from the neighborhood supermarket.  This fork was thin and elegant, with a smattering of stars along the handle. No one knew where it came from. My guess was rich people who didn't have kids, although we didn't know anyone like that.

Somehow The Star Fork took on magical properties and the person who used it for that meal had good luck. I don't know how powerful the luck was, or how long it lasted, but we kids would fight over that damn fork like it was the holy grail.

The only benefit about being asked to set the table for dinner was that you could put The Star Fork at your place, thus ensuring good luck for yourself.  Unfortunately, anyone who passed the table would move the Fork to their place before we sat down to eat. It was an hour long silverware version of musical chairs that did not end until Grandma told us to stop it and just use whatever we had in our hands. Then, the person with The Star Fork would smugly eat their dinner and wait for the good luck to begin.

I cannot remember ever having good luck related to The Star Fork in particular, but the legend remains strong. Who knows? My life has been pretty lucky so far...