Hey Guys,

A long time ago as a kid we used to go weekly to my grandparent’s farm on the outskirts of Amish country. There wasn’t much to do inside; the majority of the afternoon adventures came from outside work or wandering outdoors or in the barns, chicken coops, sheds or fields along with the other cousins. In fact, over the years, we wound up knowing every inch of the place. 

Anyway, of the myriad of locations, there was an inherent creepiness to the “egg cellar” which was a moist dungeon of a place underneath the farmhouse accessed only from the outside and down a steep set of stone steps. It was perpetually cool like a Spring house, always had a few inches of water in it from flooding, and had to be traversed by walking on boards that sat on cinder blocks. This was where my grandfather would check and crate eggs and temporarily store them for a day or two before being sold. It was lit by a single low watt bulb dangling unceremoniously from the cord. Real “Silence of the Lambs” stuff…. But what made it a true fright fest to us little kids was this gem of a cast iron bottle opener mounted on the side wall all by itself for no apparent reason:

Lord knows where this thing came from, or what the company who made it was trying to accomplish…. but it certainly made a scary place all the scarier.  No weeked trip to The Farm was complete without at least a brief excursion to see him….and the four-eyed image would stay in my mind at nights. 

When my grandparents passed away, and the farm was eventually sold and the farmhouse razed, I managed to extract this ugly little thing beforehand, and it lives in my house today.

Bigwig