(This effort originally ran in The Times and The News-Star Sunday June 23, 2019)

Earl Silas Tupper of Berlin, New Hampshire invented Tupperware (I’d always wondered) as a young man while working with DuPont during World War II, began selling it in 1946, and sold the whole company for $16 million around 1960.

There’s good money in the airtight plastic container game.

Mr. Tupper died in 1983 in Costa Rica, was placed in the biggest piece of Tupperware ever made, burp sealed, and buried. But what a legacy he left behind.

Fascinating enough that Earl had the foresight to invent something that almost everyone needs almost every day. It is also the most swiped item in the world.

Kisses aren’t stolen as much as Tupperware is.

I come to you as one of the duller knives in the drawer, but I know about Tupperware. I’m a preacher’s son, so I know Tupperware like a vet knows puppy dogs.

I’ve been to church socials more times than a Keebler elf’s been to the cookie jar. And you can’t have a church social without Tupperware.

Coconut cakes in Tupperware cake carriers. Casseroles in Tupperware casserole carriers. Fruit salads in Tupperware containers.

And most people—the smarter ones who’ve learned the hard way—have their names written on their Tupperware in Magic Marker or Sharpie, lest sticky fingers swipe one “by accident.”

You want a miracle? How about everyone leaving a dinner on the grounds with the Tupperware they brought. This would be a water-into-wine type deal.

But your main Tupperware Bandit is the garden variety kind, the person who accepts a gift of food, surrounded by Tupperware, then “forgets” to give the Tupperware part back.

Example: you’re sick or it’s Christmastime and some gentle soul brings you some banana bread. You intend to give the Tupperware back of course — it’s understood that they’re giving you the food and loaning you the container — but you never do.

You do this without feeling guilty, even though you wouldn’t swipe someone’s china or flatware.

Give your kid a Tupperware container full of lettuce you’ve grown in your backyard garden. Your own precious child. What follows each time they come over during the next few weeks is this:

“Did you bring back my Tuppe…?”

“I forgot.”

And that goes on a dozen times until, one day, they remember. Miraculously. Maybe.

Works the same way with co-workers. And with the people you’re in Sunday School with.

Barkyard garden growers are the demographic hardest hit by Tupperware Bandits. They can’t eat everything back there and they are a good-hearted lot, so they giveth and we taketh away until they finally throw up their hands and no longer giveth, mainly because they’re out of Tupperware.

There is “adopted” Tupperware being held hostage in cupboards all over town.

Tupperware Bandits are a sorry lot. And guilty until proven innocent. The leftover wing of the criminal element.

It’s my suspicion we’ve all worn the Scarlet T at one time or another.

It’s why they’ve taken to making second-string Tupperware. It’s thinner and less expensive than Tupperware on the varsity team. It knows it’s going to get stolen, so your modern smart cooks now buy that and cut their losses.

Speaking of modern, have you looked at the complete Tupperware line lately? This ain’t your momma’s Tupperware. We’re talking serving spoons. Themed products — (think Toy Story). Graters. Serving trays. Goblets. Tongs. Strainers.

And the classic Jel-Ring Mold, which will cost you 15 bucks, or you can get it “on sale” with your five-finger discount almost any weekend after your Sunday school party.

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A month ago this long-awaited book from Pulitzer-Prize winning writer, author, and historian Rick Atkinson came in to my mailbox. I’ve waited for it so long it feels I ordered it in 1960. Pictured, it is called The British Are Coming and boy howdy, are they ever.

The time is the mid-1770s and, if you recall, it was a tricky time. The Colonists and Patriots, which are us, were wearing silk stockings and buckled shoes. And unfortunately, those were all the guys.

And somehow, that contingent thought it could win a revolution.

More on that in a sec, but first, let me say that Atkinson is a stud. Please, if you have not enjoyed his Liberation Trilogy, his three books about WWII, do that. He is a wonderful historian but maybe a better writer. It reads like fiction, full of color and intensity.

So, for a long time we have waited for his American Revolution trilogy. And The British Are Coming is the first of three.

Glory.

I was and am on page 60. I have loaned it to a friend because I love him, because it is his 60-ish wedding anniversary today, and because he was looking forward to it even more than I was. Also he is retired recently and has more time to read so he’ll have her knocked out within the week. Meanwhile I am grinding The Pioneers by David McCullough, another stud historian who is not the writer Atkinson is but who is still a major league dude.

But back to The British Are Coming. I am on page 60, as mentioned afore, and will not give anything away. I will say that King George, an otherwise pleasant guy by all accounts, has become pretty upset over some tea incident in Boston and over the colonists’ refusal to believe that no taxation without representation is a good deal. Right now everyone is a little uptight. I don’t know how it’s going to end and if I did I wouldn’t tell you. But it appears there will be fisticuffs.

I hope if there’s a fight that we win.. If we don’t, what will we do — and it’s right around the corner — July 4?

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