Nevermind the Caterpillar

I had no idea for the last thirteen years I've been wearing a sex cult ring!

Growing up, my Mom had a little jewelry box she always kept on her dresser. Once in awhile she'd let my sift through it. It was shaped like a cabin you might find in a Bob Ross painting. With umber, mustard yellow and pea green embellishments. I loved it! The roof lifted up to reveal treasures all tangled by a mass of pearls strewn about and woven throughout everything on a broken wiry thread. The tiny wooden house had a porch too. I remember my delight when I discovered the two hidden drawers on both sides of the front stairs. Cluttered and stuffed with pretty shiny and tarnished things and a burnt five dollar bill.

 (The jewelry box was something like this, but way more awesome. Via Google image search.)

I took the spoon ring out and started wearing it daily when I was about fifteen. It was years before my Mom ever noticed it on my hand. By that point, I'd had it for so long she just let me keep it. I love this ring! It has history!

A history I wasn't completely aware of until today. I took off my favorite adornment just to look at it, ya know, because I love it. To my surprise, I noticed some words embossed into the metal that were very hard to make out due to me wearing it every day and the three other people I know of who wore it before me as well. With a lot of squinting, aha! Oneida Community.

So I got to researching. I knew this at one point had been an engagement ring. (A tradition that started in the 1600's by servants that couldn’t afford fancy jewelry and stole from their house owners.) I always found that charming. What's next is something entirely different. It's hippie 70's revival is starting to make sense now.

Oneida Ldt. is one of the world’s largest markets of stainless steel silverware/ flatware today, but a couple hundred years ago, not the case. It all started out as a utopian commune. There were about three hundred members and they grew and canned vegetables, produced silk thread, and manufactured animal traps and you guessed it, silverware. They also had a lot of sex with each other. They believed that every man was married to every woman and to prevent any exclusive relationships from forming they were kept in constant circulation. They had a lot of other beliefs that I also found disturbing. Old men were sleeping with young girls and postmenopausal woman with teenage boys. Their sexuality and spirituality were closely linked, and this was some sort of guiding religious act. Ascending fellowship is how they put it. Their breeding methods were also fucked up.

This creepy blissful cult all came to a sharp end when their leadership changed hands, or penises, however you want to put it. Statutory rape charges were filed, fleeing to Canada happened. Some of the member actually went on to traditionally marry each other, raise and bond with their own kids, which wasn't allowed to them before. Other members reorganized as a joint stock company that made the spoon that was cut in half to form the ring that I wear on the middle finger of my left hand.

I know this ring comes from way back when, because Oneida Community dissolved entirely by 1878, and dropped the Community part on labels after that.