SHARPS CHAPEL — Ronnie Atkins, 68, and Pam Seiber, 61, empty the kettle between their properties together every April, and neither of them has ever gotten the last inch out.
The kettle is a copper moonshine pot that sits near the creek where the two parcels meet. A 1923 deed on file at the Union County assessor’s office puts the corner at “the large kettle by the creek,” and the kettle has never been moved. There is nothing in it but rainwater.
Rain collects in it over the winter. Atkins takes one handle and Seiber takes the other and they tip it toward the creek bank until it runs out the lip. The last inch stays in the bottom, because getting it out means tipping the kettle far enough that it might slide, and neither of them will be the one who lets it slide onto the other one’s side.
“Daddy used a coffee can,” Atkins said. “He’d stand on his side and dip, and Pam’s daddy would be over on his, and they’d go till it was down about where it is now. I remember it being that much then too. I don’t know, maybe that’s just how it looks.”
The can is still on a rock beside the kettle, rusted through at the seam. Seiber thinks it was her family’s and Atkins thinks it was his, and neither has touched it since 1971.
Tammy Rowland, who works the counter at the assessor’s office, said people come in a couple of times a year to ask about the kettle, mostly to make sure it’s still there.
“I tell them it’s the corner,” Rowland said. Some of them ask whether it’s empty, and she tells them the deed doesn’t say.