Todd, stop waving your hand at me like that! It’s rude! Fine so we’re filming. So what? Riley, don’t frown at me like that. I’m just doing this to get extra credit in history class. Ugh! Fine. Hi. Hello. Welcome to another episode of what is clearly a stolen concept. I’m your host, Fable Skelly, the teenager who knows weirdly too much about old stuff for reasons I can’t say on the air. With me are the shows creator, producer, director, and editor, Todd Mandel, Mr. Richie, our guest for this episode, and Riley Carter, who is my ride.
Mr. Richie, what did you bring for us today? I know you said on the phone that it’s been in your family since they came over as colonists in the 1700s and you still use it regularly today for green beans at Thanksgiving. Let’s see . . . Oh my.
For those of you listening to this on the podcast, Mr. Richie has just presented a deep pewter bowl with a small handle and he is correct. It is from the eighteenth century. However, my first note is this. Stop putting food in a pewter dish. It’s really not healthy.
Didn’t your ancestors put food in it? Nope probably not. By this time, a lot of people had rediscovered how harmful lead poisoning is. Yes. I said lead poisoning. That’s what pewter is.
But you also probably don’t want to be eating out of this because it’s a bleeding dish. Nope. For human blood. Doctors used to think that in order to make a sick person well, you had balance the liquids in the body and get rid of infected blood. If they weren’t using leeches, doctors would cut open your arm, lay it on a dish like this, and just let you bleed out of a while. Why do you look so green?
Todd? Riley? Why are you looking at me like that too? It’s not like this shit was my idea. I’m just telling you what it was used for. This was a normal part of life. A horrible, horrible, normal part of life. Why do you think the age expectancy was so low? It’s not just because people didn’t eat their veggies!
But, good news for you, Mr. Richie. This is probably worth something. Oh. You need to clean out some of this green bean residue first. Doesn’t your family wash dishes after Thanksgiving?
