A Saga of the "Missing Deep Sea Divers Helmet Ice Bucket"

     Back when my wife (Mimi) were dating (40 yrs ago) Mimi bought me a gift for either a birthday or Christmas, I don't remember any longer.  The gift was a really cool deep sea divers helmet ice bucket, very unique.  At the time I was living at my parents house so I kept it with the bar tools probably in the basement.  As you know life gets hectic especially just prior to a wedding and sometimes things are forgotten.  Well, that's what happened with the ice bucket so it got left at my parents house when I moved out.

     Being a young married couple and starting a family something was always going on in our lives and as you can imagine the deep sea divers ice bucket was long forgotten. Many years later my parents had moved to a small attached home in St Peters, which was close to my sister an I and by then our kids were teenagers so our lives were still very busy.  After Dad passed away Mom lived by herself for awhile then her sister MaryJane and brother-in-law Vic moved in but eventually Mom had to move into retirement/assistant living home.

     We kept her house for a while but eventually sold it and distributed some of her stuff to relatives.  This is where the story comes back to the divers ice bucket.  At some point my niece (Bridget) and nephew (Scott) were over helping clean up at my Mom's house when they noticed the ice bucket both thought this would be a cool memento to keep of Grandpa Sonny & Grandma Sissy.  Since everyone in the family was taking some small item Rose (my sister) said it was fine for them to take it, but they both wanted it, so Bridget grabbed the bucket and Scott quickly grabbed the lid, now the negotiation would start.  Neither Bridget nor Scott was willing to turnover their part of the ice bucket to the other at this early stage of the negotiation.

     Coincidently, while surfing the Internet I stumbled upon a picture of a divers ice bucket and it triggered my memory of my divers ice bucket and wondering what happened to it, so much so that I found a few for sale on eBay but I didn't want to spend $60 to $80 for a used one, so I decided I would just keep an eye open to see if the price would come down.  At some point (possibly a year or so after my Internet discovery) my sister (Rose) was relaying the story about the ongoing but funny dispute between her daughter (Bridget) and son (Scott) over the deep sea divers helmet ice bucket (see photo insert), I laughed while I exclaimed that the ice bucket was mine given to me by Mimi about 40 years ago.  We all broke out in hysterical laughter and Rose said she would get it back it me which she did.  It was just as I remembered it with a small dent on the lid (not sure how it got there) and the lid also had all the ionized color removed because Mom thought it was dirty and the only way to clean metal pots, pans etc. was by using a Brillo pad.  That really explained a lot as I remember later when Teflon pans were introduced as the newest and best material for pans, Moms new Teflon pans were always scratched.

     So 40 years later I had my Deep Sea Divers Helmet Ice Bucket back, plus an interesting story to go with it.  I still do occasionally check the price of the divers helmet ice bucket on eBay not for me, I have mine and it has a great backstory but now I need to buy two, one for Bridget and one for Scott or maybe I'll just buy one and give the lid to Scott and the bucket to Bridget so I can watch the saga continue.  That sounds like it would be fun.