So Long Pun Jar
No, I’m not saying goodbye to a town in the country of India, I’m planning on telling you the history and location of something with a special memory to me. In the past I’ve seen many places and people that have jars set aside to collect money when a person swears or curses. The jar is called a curse jar. If a person swears or uses a curse word, he or she must place a designated amount of money into the curse jar. Along a similar vein is the Pun Jar.
Several years ago I belonged to the Mount Pleasant Writers Group. We would gather at the local library and share our recent projects, sometimes reading part of the book or poem we were writing. It was also a place to display a novel or book one of us had written. It was here I read just one story about a retired homicide detective nicknamed Tommy Two Shoes and was encouraged to write more stories about him. This encouragement caused Tommy Miner to fill four books.
After our meeting was over, several of us were hungry and we decided to hit a local restaurant. After several meals at different restaurants, we settled into the McCali Manor on the Diamond in Mt’ Pleasant, Pennsylvania. It was quiet and not very busy. It suited us to gather around a table and talk as we waited for our meals to be prepared. As with most writers, ideas pop into our heads and a curious turn of a phrase reminds us of another. Puns invariably pop into our heads and escape from our mouths. The owner used to groan at the barrage of corny jokes and sayings. She once said, “I need a Pun Jar and I’d be rich.”
After our next meeting, the Pun Jar was born. My creation sat in the middle of the table with the suggested donation of 25 cents: one pun, one quarter. It never got full, but it did collect some change…money in the jar, not a change in our sharing of puns. There was one unusual item inside, a bent fork. A cook tried a new way to cook some ribs and one of the writers bent his fork because the meat was tough. Wiped clean, it joined the money in the jar.
Alas the jar is no more. Recently it went up in smoke when Mcali Manor burned. Its memory has turned to ashes and that burns me up. But what in the blazes can I do. It’s gone. So long Pun Jar.