I admit it, I'm a failure.

Oh, I don't fail at everything I try, but as far as starting a new family tradition goes I haven't done so well. When we moved here 8 summers ago, late in that first summer my wife asked me what we were going to get the "family" for Christmas. We thought about it, and I suggested a "New England Sampler". That is, we kept seeing stuff that said "made in NH" or whatever on it, just little things here and there, and so we started to buy 9 of each of them when we could afford it. 9 bottles of maple syrup. 9 cans of brown bread. 9 boxes of moose droppings. 9 chunks of wood from the USS Constitution. 9 bags of candy Boston baked beans. You get the idea. Then we'd mail them off to the families of our 7 siblings and two sets of parents, each with their own box of NE goodies. No one in our family was foolish enough, (er, I mean lucky enough) to live here and most have never even traveled here, so we thought this would be a nice way to get them to understand the culture shock of moving here ourselves. .

It wasn't long and I heard back from some of them, especially those with kids. Hey, such and such was great, the kids fought over blah, and could you include some more of those beans next year? Well, that sold us. For all of the next 6 years we've sent our samplers out, always trying to put in new and different things. But we kind of expected them to send us samplers from their chunk of the USA. We sent the boxes to Ohio, Oregon, Colorado, and Texas. Plenty of distinctive regional stuff to send back our way. But other than one box of hot sauces from Texas, one off-season box of goodies from Oregon, and occasional boxes of Heggy's candies from Ohio (and one arrived just today!), nada. So, as far as starting a family tradition goes, I am a failure.

However, this year is different. My wife rebelled at the same old box of New England stuff. We've run out of cool things to send, that are at least moderately affordable, so it was time to come up with a new plan. I suggested beans! I mean, we've sent candy Boston baked beans many times, but how about gin-u-in' Boston baked beans (dried, of course) with the ingredients and instructions for them to make this dish? And hey, we'll get locally made molasses (of course) and brown sugar. In fact, we'll send them honest to goodness New England made pottery oven-safe bean pots to cook them in. You know, those dark brown on the bottom tan on top cookie-jar-ish things with handles and lids. (To an old Ohioan like myself, who once lived next door to West Virginia and a passel of hillbillies, I equate them to moonshine jugs - do you folks from around here relate to that at all)

Right away we ran into a stopper. I couldn't find anywhere to buy them for less than about $35 a pot. Multiply that by 9 and add shipping and yowzers! So I did what any geek would do, I went to ebay. A few days later I had 9 pots heading my way, at less than half the price of that $35 which even included shipping and insurance. I don't know if they are NE made, but they're bean pots!

Funny thing, though. These pots started arriving, and all of them except one have no chips, scratches, or dings. I mean for the most part they look sparkling new. These are almost all antique bean pots, made by the "Hull" pottery company in the 1940's. So why do they look almost brand new? Because they were hardly ever used! It takes a long time to cook beans. You have to hydrate them if they're dried. Then you slow cook them for hours in your oven (like an old-fashioned crock pot). Everyone is in a rush rush rush these days, who has time or even an inkling to do that?

In the antique barn up in Amhurst, that long red thing on 101A, there were stalls full of antiques for sale that I saw a few months back. In one stall there were books. And a few of those books were bibles. Bibles that were 50 or 100 years old and looked pristine. How can that be? Because they were never used. No handling from daily readings, or bible studies, or reassurance. Shame, shame.

And what about us? We can avoid being used by God, and keep ourselves above the rabble of the world. We can kid ourselves that a perfect bean pot is more valuable than a chipped one. I dunno, are you planning on reselling yourself? Because a bean pot is made to be USED. I would rather God use me and I get a chip or two in the process than just be left on the shelf to collect dust. Things that collect dust tend to get thrown away, or eventually sold on ebay for $3 (the price I paid for some of these). Besides, most of the things I own I use. If you're not allowing God to use you for good, maybe you aren't owned by the person you think you are...

Randy