Thermos Bottle #2484

It began its association with the Palmiotti family sometime in the 1960’s and was stored on a top kitchen cabinet shelf in the apartment in Brooklyn. I’m not sure when it got there and there’s no one around anymore to ask.

In the summer of 1971, it moved to the top shelf of a nameless kitchen cabinet in West Park, NY. It was there for many years before spending a relatively short time in Monroe NY and then, like many pilgrims, headed west to find new shelf space in Kalispell, Montana. It took about 60 years to get there.

Long before everyone wanted a Yeti, or one of the many, many Chinese brands advertising on Amazon for some kind of hot and cold thermos, there was Thermos, a brand of Vacuum Bottle, Norwich, CT. The reason I am writing this, and hopefully you are still reading it, is that my 1960’s Thermos with the red cap still keeps coffee hot. I know because it worked seamlessly this past Saturday. Pouring coffee into one of the smaller cups hidden under the red one, it dawned on me that this product has been serving up a hot beverage to our family for about 60 years. Considering today’s throw away, timed obsolescent products, that is quite an achievement.

My first real memories of the Thermos go back to bagels on the pull-out at the top of Storm King Mountain. The house in West Park was just the summer/weekend house then and my parents would pack us in the car early on Saturday and we would drive the two plus hours up to West Park. They would always stop somewhere, and a favorite spot was off 9W to look at the view, eat bagels and drink hot coffee. Bottle # 2484 made that possible.

Bottle #2484 has been making hot beverages possible on camping trips, hikes, etc. since the middle of the last century. How many products do you have in your house that can say the same? After a little digging, I was surprised, with all the competition, that Thermos was still around and has been since 1904. No, there was not a Mr. Thermos. But there was a Reinhold Burger who patented the ‘Thermos’ flask idea in 1903 and started us all on the road to hot and cold beverages.

So, I will not anytime soon be going out and buying a YETI or any other new fangled contraption. My hot beverage will continue to be served from the same flask we used when I was too young to drink coffee.