For all the years I ran my small-town café, a butter knife was my go-to tool for almost anything I needed to try to fix on my own. Pretty much if a butter knife couldn't fix it, it required a hiring.
There was a handyman husband involved, it is true--but he was so often at his own work, at least an hour away, or occupied with other equally important matters in things I wanted done at home.
So a butter knife it was, for prying and loosening, lifting away, scraping, and getting into needed things for needed outcomes.
When I used my particular butter knife, of substantial size and weight, I sometimes thought of my mom and grandmas, who often said to me growing up, "Get me a butter knife". When their men were not around, a butter knife was their helper, too.
The other morning, my husband was "in the building", busy with a periodic cleaning of the gunk beneath the drain-cap in the bathroom. It was a frosty morning with gray skies, and the grumbling began when the cap somehow slipped from his grasp and settled with an irretrievable "thunk" into the drain.
He refused my suggestion of a butter knife, and even of a vintage set of pliers I sometimes add into my mix of problem-solvers.
"That will never do it," he said. "There's a rounded edge and it's in there tight; I'll have to go to the garage and find my good pliers."
Going to the garage involved more fuss and at least a minimum of dressing-warm--socks and shoes and a heavy jacket for a few moments of searching. But search and return he did, with his prized pair of pliers, which did NOT work.
More grumbling, but now willingness, to accept the butter knife I thrust into his hand.
A little tuck-under and a wiggle, and apparently up it came, as I heard it from the kitchen. (But do you think he would confirm this?!)
And this is when I thought: God does bless women when they are alone, with a butter knife.
I said to my man: "SEE? I know the value of a butter knife. If you should be gone and I'm alone taking care of things, it's a butter knife for me. I used one all those years at the shop for so many things; I don't need no stinkin' toolbox."
Now don't get me wrong. I know women are more than capable with a real tool box, and real weaponry for that matter. My own granddaughter is in her second year of studies to become an auto mechanic, and she fires a mean shot often, at the center of a bulls-eye.
But basic and old-school is good, too! Something that doesn't require muscle or weeding out from a multitude of options, something at hand and as ordinary as a butter knife will do.
I almost don't know how to use a butter knife for its intended purpose anymore, do you? They are either out-sized and clunky for my butter dish and even for our dinner plates, or wimpy and pointless for anything else, like cutting meat. You can't slice a thing with a butter knife, and I far prefer handy little spreaders that are more optimum for slathering things perfectly.
But I still have a full supply of butter knives in my kitchen drawers. I keep them for....I don't know why I keep them. Probably for the one person a year who might ask for one. Maybe because they're expected in a drawer, maybe because the minute I give them away I will find I really need them.
Maybe YOU still use butter knives in multiple ways? If so I'd like to know what for! I kind of see them on the brink of obsolete--like orange reamers or crank ice-crushers, things that are still needed but better forms have taken their place. I still need a cutting tool, but anything seems better than a butter knife.
So the most sensible place for a butter knife in my house seems to be my "everything" drawer--the catch-all receptacle for all things hardware. It falls right in line there, with measuring tapes and screwdrivers and rubber bands, and all manner of second rate stuff my husband casts my way.
Funny how he thinks all this "it will never do" stash hardly matters, because I always rely on him coming to my rescue anyway.
And as long as I can, I will. But yeah, I do know and "get" the REAL value of a butter knife!
