Teapot

The past few weeks, I have been searching vainly for a teapot in which I can brew loose tea. You would think I was asking for apparatus in which to concoct some alien witch’s brew, from the response I have gotten from the local mercantile establishment. It seems brewing tea outside of the customary use of a pedestrian teabag is beyond the scope of present day emporiums.

To whit, I have been to various and sundry outlets of which there are not but a few here in eastern Virginia. I reside, at present, along Richmond Road, which has its share of shopping options, including various major retailer outlets among ite several shopping locations. I daresay, among these are included: Viceroy & Bloch, Lenox and Corning ware but nowhere can I find a simple teapot in which to brew loose tea at least at a price within reason.

At Viceroy & Bloch, an upscale emporium, I found a couple of space age-looking devices made of stainless steel, one for the inexcusably high price of $99.95 the other for an equally exorbitant $120. “Pretty steep for a simple teapot,” I offered to the clerk who shamefacedly agreed. Granted, Viceroy caters to the unabashedly well to do but these prices seemed inordinately steep.

I wandered into Wal-Mart, that emporium for the masses, and encountered wholesale unawareness. I am sure I was not making their day, but these gentlemen seemed unaware of the concept of making tea without the use of a teabag. In fact, I left with the impression that these folks could not conceive of a time when brewing tea did not involve the convenience of a paper wrapped pouch of the necessary ingredient.

Beyond the convenience, the simple act of brewing tea seems to have slipped into the past, the past of my grandmother’s age, my mother’s age or even mine for that matter. I am aware that this is the twenty-first century (if only barely) but surely time has not slipped by us so much that simple pleasures are deemed passé, even inconsequential so that the acquisition of a mere teapot seems somehow an alien pursuit.

I have been into a host of commercial establishments wherein I usually approach elderly women sales associates in the hopes they might appreciate the nature of my request and I am universally met with expressions of total miscomprehension, as if I am seeking the Holy Grail, and perhaps I am. Most of these, poor dears, are at a loss to understand what I am going on about, what with my speech impairment cluttering up the avenues of communication.

But beyond even that impediment, there still looms the total inability for these people to even understand my simple request: a basic teapot with the simplest wire mesh insert to accommodate the insertion of a moderate amount of loose tea and then to add boiling water in order to brew tea as it was intended.

I return to my original conception of the public’s inability to understand the concept of simply brewing tea without the convenience of a commercially constructed mesh bag with attached string. Such are the conceptions of modern man. How would our ancestors look upon this feckless generation that cannot perceive of a time where the simple act of preparing breakfast nourishment, would require the aide of enormous industrial processing.

© Stephen Alexander 2008