There is a very fine line between antique stores and junk shops. The very best of them
straddle that line - not SO junky that you can't find anything worth buying but just junky
ENOUGH that the prices stay low and snobs from the suburbs stay away.
Hidden away in a corner in just such a - shall we say, "low-end antique store" you find
something interesting: a cast-iron frying pan. Not your usual, run of the mill, round frying
pan with a grease-lip on either side. It is shallow, square (about 10" X 10"), with rounded corners and a "looped" handle for
hanging it on a hook. The body of the pan is divided in half, with one of those halves
divided in half again, making three distinct sections.
"Hey," you say to the sales clerk, "what is this?"
He looks at the pan, then looks at you like you are some sort of an idiot. "It's a pan," he
says.
"I know THAT, but what kind of pan is it?" you ask.
He looks at the pan again, then looks at you like you are even more of an idiot. "It's a FRY
pan," he says.
"OK, I understand that," you say, "but what do you use it for?"
He stares at you for a moment, as if to determine whether this is a trick question.
"You... use it....," he says very slowly, "to.....cook....food."
The two of you stare at each other for 30 seconds or so in a test of wills, before your
resolve crumbles. You reach for your wallet. "How much?" you ask.
He seems relieved to be asked a question he knows he can answer. "Two bucks," he tells
you.
You pay him and leave the store with your new purchase.
You place a couple of phonecalls to various antique dealers, trying to get some idea of
what the heck this thing is, but nobody seems to be in. The antique business is a very hit-
or-miss one. You leave messages on various machines and with various assistants, then
move on with your investigation.
The internet is an amazing tool for research. There is no topic so obscure that there isn't
somebody, SOMEWHERE that has posted information on it. A search for information
about "Lithuanian cream cheese sculpture" produces more than 1.6 million "hits". (Truly, it
does! - Try it.) So you search for information on your new pan with a great sense of
optimism.
And come up with nothing. Apparently, antique cast-iron cookware is not of much interest
to anybody on the web.
Many people would be discouraged at this point, but not you. You still have a trick up
your sleeve. "When in doubt," you say to yourself, "consult the experts."
Every weekday at 11:45, the Sullivan County Nutrition Program serves lunch for local
senior citizens in the basement of the Charlestown municipal building. Collectively, the
ladies who eat there each day have well over a thousand years' worth of cooking
experience. If they can't identify your pan, nobody can.
"I'm not sure WHAT it is," says Antonette Backman. "I think it was probably used for
bacon and eggs; look - you could cook the bacon here in the large part and an egg in each
of the smaller ones - but I haven't seen one like this before." She says that when she was a
girl, everybody cooked with cast iron. "I still do," she says. "I have a spider that I
use all the time."
A spider? What does she mean by "spider"?
"It's a skillet," she says, looking at you like you are an idiot - a look that you are
growing accustomed to.
You clear your throat nervously and move on.
You consult another tablefull of experts, who all agree that your pan was probably used to
cook bacon and eggs. "We all used cast iron in those days," says Evelyn Seward. "I wish
that I had more iron pans, because the food was SO delicious in them!"
"Wasn't it?!" agrees Trudy Cox. "I still have a great big frying pan that my husband would
always use to fry his fish that he brought home - of course he HAD to fry it - and it
would come out so brown and beautiful!"
Helena Baron remembers the care that people would take with their cast iron. "After you
used the cast-iron fry pan," she says, "you'd have to be careful to season it with oil and put
it away in its own box or wrap it in cotton."
All of which is very interesting, but what about your pan?
"Oh that? It was probably for bacon and eggs. See? You could fry the bacon in the big
part and cook an egg in each of the little sections."
They all sound very sure of themselves, but it seems like too easy an answer. Besides, it
seems as if it would be very difficult to flip eggs that were cooking in such a small section
of the fry pan. You leave the Charlestown seniors to trade cooking stories and continue
with your investigation.
Over the next several days, you start asking everyone you know for their opinion on your
pan. It is starting to be an obsession. Someone floats one suggestion that sounds plausible
- perhaps it was not used for cooking, but for keeping food warm; each section would keep
its food separate as the pan sat on the back of a cookstove. Sadly though, there is no way
to confirm that.
"It's been my experience that in the late 1800's, New Englanders were in love with the idea
that they could make ANYTHING out of cast iron," says retired university professor,
Edgar Bley. "In addition, there was a lot of pressure for people in that period to invent
things. It's possible that this pan was just somebody's attempt to invent an item for
invention's sake."
That sounds like such a collossal waste of time, energy and resources that it might just be
true.
His wife Elsa disagrees. "No," she says. "Bacon and eggs."
Finally, you give up. It's just a pan, after all. Even if you can't identify it, you've still
gotten a bargain on an interesting and possibly unique piece of kitchenware. You'll just
have to be satisfied with that.
You go home and plunk the pan in your sink. "Go ahead and rust for all I care,"
you sneer at it. You walk into the livingroom, where the message light is blinking on your
answering machine. You press the button.
It is a message from one of the antique dealers you called earlier.
"*Beep* Hi. Sorry to take so long to get back to you. I've got some information on that
pan you were asking about. It's called a Bacon & Eggs skillet - you would cook bacon in
the large section and an egg in each of the little ones. Hope that's of some help to you.
Bye. *Beep*"
