A Silver Spoon

I want to ask you a question, Do you ever see something or go somewhere that evokes very powerful childhood memories? For me that happened this week and that memory was of a silver spoon. When I was young I remember my grandmother having a silver tea spoon in a little blue box. The spoon had an engraved top that was of the Queen Mary cruise ship. It was a souvenier spoon of when she had visited the Queen Mary at Southampton when the famous liner had been retired from service. This was back in 1967 and not long before the Queen Mary sailed to Long Beach, California to become a permanent fixture in the port as a hotel and convention center. I remember that spoon because eventually it got used to stir tea with and whenever I could that would be the one I used for my tea. Truth be known it probably reminded me of my grandmother who had passed away when I was 9 years old. Well finally after 10 years of living with an hours drive of the QM I made the trip to go and visit it and guess what I found? I know you guessed it a spoon. In one of the shops they had a display of things from the passed and there in that display was that exact spoon, talk about taking you back in time.

The Queen Mary is an interesting place to visit especially to learn the history of how people travelled before jet liners. This photograph was taken of the controls in the Bridge of the ship. It all seems kind of basic now compared with ships of today, but this once great ocean liner was launched 75 years ago in 1934 so I guess basic would be the norm back then.