The Legend of the Cookie Jar Nurse

by Eavin Moore, Source Publications

The last few issues had us visiting several commercial public establishments in our never ending search for the interesting and unusual. While that was wonderful fun, this issue gives us the opportunity to return to our roots, so to speak, as we visit a local residence and snoop around.

I had heard about the “Cookie Jar Nurse” for some time. Supposedly there is an elderly nurse still working somewhere at

I had heard this line several times over the years but it never sunk in until this holiday season, when for some reason it occurred to me to try envisioning 10,000 cookie jars. I like to turn things like this into sort of a mental exercise just to see where it goes. Let’s say for working purposes, each one takes up a cubic foot of space. If the average room in a house is 10 x 10 with 8 ft. ceilings, then 800 cookie jars would fill the room top to bottom. That tells me that either the 10-grand number is baloney, or we’re literally talking about a warehouse of cookie jars here.

I asked my wife for more details on this person, but she didn’t really know her in person. She did however know someone who allegedly knew someone else who knows her. I put out the word out on the Heartland Telegraph. If only the internet could move information as fast as it flies around that hospital. I heard from Mary the very next day.

She told me she heard I was looking for her and had seen our column in The Regular Joe. I can’t tell you how much easier it is to do this job, when you don’t have to explain yourself and your paper to every single person you encounter. We chatted briefly, and made plans to meet later in the week.

I couldn’t precisely place the street, but Mapquest had no such problem, and directed me to a large house on the west side of town. I pulled the CLAMS Van to the curb and looked the place over. Hmm, no visible cookie jars in the windows. No cookie jar mailbox. The house was certainly large but with no external proof that I was in the right place. I stepped up to the front door and rang the bell.

The lady who answered seemed normal enough. Let me say right now that a few of my subjects have a certain look about them. A kind of twinkle in the eye or a subtle turn of the lip that lets you know they might only be here visiting our planet. Mary didn’t look like a kook to me. She looked like somebody’s cool hip grandma. She welcomed me, and ushered me into her large friendly living room.

I was all ready for the cookie jar mountain. I have seen extreme collections of every shape and size, and I was fully prepared to navigate a narrow path through a maze of haphazardly stacked cookie jars. Instead I found a large century old home, tastefully decorated with antiques and two shelves of cookie jars running along the tops of all four walls. I could see through to the dining room where the theme was repeated.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, “You look disappointed.”

“No, not at all,” I replied. “I just heard you had 10,000 cookie jars and I guess that was maybe just an exaggeration”.

“Oh gosh, yes,” she said. “I don’t really know how many I have, but it’s probably not much over 2,000.”  And while that number is significantly less than advertised, I’d be shocked to learn that there’s a bigger collection within 500 miles of here.

I moved closer to the nearest wall so I could better scrutinize individual jars. They all seemed to have a Christmas theme. There were plenty of Santas represented, and lots of snowmen too, along with an assortment of penguins and Coca-Cola polar bears. I asked Mary if she specialize in strictly Christmas cookie jars. She chuckled and told me that these jars would go down to the basement after the holidays and the spring jars would come up.

She explained that once her collection reached a certain level she had to start displaying them in shifts. She eventually separated them by season for lack of anything better and new ones are assigned accordingly. By the time I had seen the full collection on two floors as well as the storage room in the afore mentioned basement, I was a little overwhelmed and a few questions came to mind. Like, why is Bart Simpson with the summer jars while Bullwinkle Moose is with the fall?

Instead I went with more obvious ones like, “How did you start collecting?” Mary showed me a very old looking cookie jar shaped like a cartoon dog and told me her grandmother gave it to her one birthday when she was a small child. She loved it, and was pleased when she received one the next year as well. By the time she was in her teens it became her “special thing” and no gift giving occasion passed without her receiving at least one new addition to her growing collection. After all these years she claims to still be able to tell where each one came from.

I asked her if she had a favorite. She didn’t say a word, just crooked her finger at me to follow. We went down a hallway and she opened a door to what was clearly her private bedroom. There was not another cookie jar in site except for a pitifully crooked lopsided specimen on her bedside table. Mary picked it up lovingly and cradled it like a baby. “This one was made by my daughter Elizabeth the summer before she was killed in a car accident. Look here,” she said, as she turned the bottom up to my eyes, “To Mommy from Lizzy” read the yellowing Christmas gift tag.

That kind of stuff always tears me up a bit, so it was a bit of a relief to go back to the front room.

“I know some people say I’m a little crazy” she told me in closing, “and I just wanted people to know it’s not quite as bad as they think.”  Still, I couldn’t get her to pose for a picture or let me use her full name or address. She’s happy to let the legend of the “Cookie Jar Nurse” continue but she says the last thing she wants is strangers barging in wanting to “Come Look At My Stuff!”