Dear Bunch, Late last night I remembered what a spoon holder was. I remembered the Christmas dinner at my house a couple of years ago when we all sat around my kitchen table-me, my niece Deb and her three kids. I had set the table real formal with a linen table cloth and napkins, my best china and best silverware and I included a few fancy glass serving dishes that I had inherited from my/our grandmothers and great-grandmothers. I told the kids about those serving dishes, where they came from and what I remembered about them when I was a kid. And then I asked them if they knew what a spoon holder was. Well of course, they all knew. A spoon holder is one of those flat shallow things that Mom keeps near the stove-the thing that she rests her stirring spoon on while she cooks. Well, you know Auntie Vee, she was just setting them up! No, that isn't what a spoon holder was in Grandma's day. I can still picture Grandma's dinner table. A big round table where I sat in the 1930s with my sister and our parents, our aunts and uncles and Grandma and Grandpa where we enjoyed Grandma's ordinary cooking on an ordinary day. And in the middle of the table was the spoon holder. It was a inexpensive fancy "cut glass" container about the size of a regular drinking glass and its only purpose was to put extra teaspoons in it in case someone needed a fresh teaspoon for dessert or whatever. That's all that a spoon holder was. But on my Grandma's table there were also other fancy sorts of glass dishes and many of them were used on a daily basis. OK, maybe she used some of them only on special occasions. But I can still remember when she set the table with a "salt dip" in front of each person's place. Salt dips were little fancy glass containers about the size of a box of matches and she filled each one with salt. The reason I remember them so well is that I recall the first time I dipped into one with my fingers and then sprinkled the salt over my dessert. I thought it was SUGAR!!! Oh Yuckk! What the salt dips were made for, I guess, was for dipping celery sticks into or maybe, even, to have your own "salt shaker" at hand. Nonetheless, salt dips were pretty little things on the table. Not everything on Grandma's table was all that fancy. There was Grandpa's little vinegar jug about three inches tall made of crockery. Mother told me that he poured vinegar on everything! He was born in 1878 and I inherited his little vinegar jug. Such a precious heirloom! I remember Grandpa even though he died when I was only 7 years old. He called me his Strawberry Wee Wee. That didn't embarrass me-he was Pennsylvania Dutch and my name is Vee. So if you have any spoon holders or vinegar jugs from your grandparents or even some things that Grandma might have picked up at a yard sale that she enjoyed using and put on her table when you sat down at it, tell your kids about your memories. Whether it was made of cut glass or aluminum or plastic, tell them the history of your "heirlooms." vee in youngstown