Erin’s Note: The contest has ended. If you would like to learn the identity of the gadget please click here.
For many years my grandmother worked for a living history museum called the Norlands. Norlands is the ancestral home of the Washburn family. You’ve probably never heard of them but during the 19th century the ten children of Israel and Martha Washburn became governors, congressmen, senators, Secretary of State, foreign ministers, a Civil War general, and a Navy captain. One of them was even the founder of the Washburn-Crosby Gold Medal Flour Company, now more commonly known as Gold Medal Flour. That’s a pretty impressive pedigree for a family that hailed from rural Maine, wouldn’t you say?
While working for the Norlands my grandmother would often visit schools with her good friend and museum founder, Billie Gammon, to present outreach programs for children. My grandmother and Billie would teach classes about life in rural Maine and often bring artifacts for the students to handle and learn about. The mysterious gadget pictured above is an example of one of those items. My grandmother brought it to Easter dinner yesterday and completely stumped us all. None of us could correctly identify what this contraption was used for. Can you?
Please leave your best guess in the comments. One lucky random commenter (How nice am I? You don’t even have to guess correctly!) will receive a brand new copy of the adorable reproduction edition of the 1959 version of Betty Crocker’s Guide to Easy Entertaining. The recipes and images in this book are a scream. Very Mad Men meets Payton’s Place. I’ll leave the contest open until Wednesday at 5:00 PM. Let’s see if you’re more astute than my family.
