VESTAL — Ruth Ann Whitaker, 81, has a jar of bread-and-butter pickles on the second shelf of her pantry that she bought at the Food City on Chapman Highway in the spring of 1994, and it has not been opened.
The house has been moved twice. The first time, in 1999, it went on a flatbed from Strawberry Plains. The second, in 2008, it was shifted forty feet back from the road when the county widened it. Both times the movers asked whether she wanted the pantry emptied, and she said no.
“The driver told me it’d ride fine and it did,” Whitaker said. “I lost a gravy boat, but that was on the kitchen side. The jar was standing up when I got in there.”
Before any family gathering she buys a new jar of the same brand and sets it on the counter. “Somebody always goes in the pantry to help,” she said. “My niece Charlene is the worst about it. She’ll have everything in bowls before you get your coat off. So I go to Food City the day before and put a jar out where they’ll see it.”
Her daughter, Elaine Pratt, remembers being sent to the store for an extra jar once while supper cooled on the stove. Her mother told her she knew what was in the pantry.
The leftover jars go on a shelf in the garage that her son-in-law put up. The 1994 jar is still behind the Crisco, with a pale rectangle on the lid where the price sticker came off.