The Case of the Clerical Cookie Jar

The Case of the Clerical Cookie Jar

“In the roadside towns, the wizards picked up stories and rumors … One man in the town of Edgebrake sat up all night, staring at a little smiling cookie jar made in the shape of a fat monk; it stood on a high cupboard shelf, smiling darkly amid the shadows. The man could not tell anyone what was wrong, or what he thought was wrong.” – The Face in the Frost, by John Bellairs.

Thus began another one of my strange compulsions, one might almost say obsessions. The year was 1978 or 1979 (I imagine), and The Face in the Frost was one of the first three fantasy books I ever bought with my own money (earned working at Nanny’s, I believe). The other two were The Source of Magic by Piers Anthony and The Illearth War by Stephen R. Donaldson; I bought them all off the rack at our local Gibson’s. Good fantasy-style covers, two of them rather wizardly-looking. Two of them turned out to be parts of a series. What did I know? I didn’t care about that at the time, though I am now more cautious about beginning things at the beginning. But I had recently read The Lord of the Rings, and I knew I must try to chase that high.

When I ran across that passage in The Face in the Frost, it struck a strange chord in me. It was in a section describing a series of odd hauntings or inexplicable obsessive thoughts that were plaguing the land of the story, harbingers of the machinations of the evil wizard Melichus. But I had seen just such a cookie jar lately, and in real life! Well, in catalog form, though I cannot remember at this distance if it was from Sears or JC Penney. I didn’t care that its appearance was ominous in the book; the mere unlikely conjunction of the twain made it seem somehow fated. I must try to instantiate this object from a fantasy realm into my own world. I must own that monk cookie jar!

But it was not to be. In the first place, it cost $10, which translates to $45 worth of spending power in our current debased currency. No matter how much I pleaded, Mom could not see it in her monthly budget. But the phrase ‘monk cookie jar’ began to frequent my vocabulary, especially used whenever reciting a list of my wishes. It became quite familiar to the family.

So much so that I wonder if it may, perhaps, have influenced my sister Susan’s eventual cookie jar collecting. She has, as of now, several hundred examples. But always in her hunting she kept an eye open for a ‘monk cookie jar’ for me, and in the early 2000’s (I believe), she presented me with an example like this:  

It still remains a treasured object on my sideboard, though these days it holds diet cough drops rather than cookies.

However, what with the familiarity and luxury of eBay (the world’s garage sale) I could still get that original ‘monk cookie jar’ quite easily now. Most examples cost little more than that inflationary price. But it shall probably wait until I have an excess of money or a paucity of books to chase before I order one up.