The Powder Measure

I started from the Old Family Oak Tree located in the bottom left hand corner of the garden, on the Isle Of Wight. One day the great owner of this farm which his family had lived in for many generations, came out of the chicken shed with two vicious looking objects. The first he carried, in his left, was a long object with two long steel tubes. And in his right was a malicious looking thing with a wooden handle with a red blade joined at the top. This blade looked so sharp that when one looked at it, it would glint in the sun, and so I was born.


Starting from the Old Great Oak, the human, my Great Father, one day just started viciously cutting down its branches. He selected one just the right size and started to turn me around, and then shaping me until I was the perfect size in the hand. It was particularly cold and windy that day. Like most things I can’t predict the future so I just waited to see my use. I then was just put aside for a while in a workshop. I became lonely and sad wondering if that was that; just an experiment on a lathe. My Great Father worked many hours beside a roaring fire continually making a large banging sound. After many days which seemed like a fortnight, it stopped.


Then one bright and sunny spring morning a gleaming and shiny cup-like object was produced. At first it looked like it was a practice piece but no, this was hand-crafted solely to fit onto my handle. Crafted from premium brass, hand-crafted and engraved. I then was complete with my polished brass measure and my hand-carved handle. I was ready with the old, double-barreled object as a companion; we were a set, together.


My Great Father took us one day in a large black, leather case - I fitted nicely into a little slot for me and my companion had one for himself. After travelling many miles by horse-drawn cart for several days and nights, our Great Farther opened up the case, shedding light in every corner of the darkness. We were on some sort of water-borne vessel with 98 large single-barreled items sticking out of the side, cannons similar to my companion.


Immediately, I heard cries and shouts of “Enemies! Starboard bow!” More loud bangs filled the air. My Great Father grabbed my companion and I and started filling me with powder and then filling my companion with it. We did this routine hundreds of times. It soon became second nature to us. I felt an increasing bond between my Great Father and I. I hoped this would last forever. However, after many months which seemed like decades of doing my Great Father proud, we were packed away back into the same old suitcase fitting nicely in, ready to travel back home.

Back home I was put on top of the mantlepiece with my companion. Long after that day our Great Father would pick us up again and look proud. But my companion always got the attention. But we soon saw less and less of our Father and then we didn’t see him at all. People came and went, admiring my companion, but never our original Father. Years went by, centuries zoomed past, but no-one would even so much as flick a hair at me and ask, “I wonder what story he has to tell?” But no, I just sat there looking hopeful. One day a smartly dressed gentleman picked me up and inserted me into his left, silk-lined pocket and my double-barreled companion into a transportation device of some sort.

After trailing many lights and nights, we were handed over, just let go and given to a man who examined us for a while, then put us in a large clear box in a huge room surrounded by thousands of other human cultural objects. We are in good company: conversations between us will last forever, we never will get bored of each others' stories. Until not too long ago, for the first time someone looked at me... not the guns, me! The thing behind that made the guns work; the hidden secret of all of them! Now this boy wore dark, navy clothes and thick rimmed spectacles and drew me. He also had hair that looked recently cut in an unfashionable style. That boy, though he was different to all the other strange humans, reminded me of my Great Father. All the other humans haven’t even raised an eyebrow at me, but he was the first human who I had seen who thought to himself: “I wonder what story he has to tell?”

by Edward Field