“He shall cover thee with his feathers and under his wings shalt thou trust” (Psalm 91:4).

Lids, like people, come in all sizes and kinds, some hide under cover, some are best left uncovered. Anglo-Saxon, hlidan, which meant to cover, evolved into the word we still use every day. How many lids do you use in one day? How many are single use plastic? With all the heat, it’s time to put a lid on it, cover and let simmer – some hot heads too.

The pressure cooker with a weight on top, made it easy. Canning, a lost art, with the rubber seal that popped later that

night, made chow-chow, cinnamon pickles, pickled okra, or watermelon rind pickles just as fresh as the day they were homemade.

Mr. John Landis Mason, born in 1832, patented his jar on November 30, 1858 and they still say that on the jars. Some others are Ball, Perfect Mason, Atlas, Ideal, Kerr (pronounced like the one with wheels and Gov. Scott) and even one called “The Clyde.” James Rodney, the bottle aficionado, sez a rare jar can be worth thousands, depending on the color and the type of closure.

The iron minerals from the sand on the Indian Slide on Lake Michigan where the company made the glass teal blue jars until 1937. Of course, they all could be recycled for the moonshine. A confiscated copper still is in the Rowan Museum along with all the “white lightin’” jugs from the local dealers that used a cork. D.L. Arey had paper labels to put on his bottles before prohibition. Before that, the Myers family sold their best to the Confederacy, in wooden kegs with a spout, no doubt. Our famous Cheerwine Bottling Company started on the 300 block of East Council Street. A single cherry bottle cap recently sold on EBay for $733.88. What would Mr. Peeler say?

The Pepsis rolled off the conveyer belt at Five Point and the old Coke plant is on South Main on the right. The lid was not that important but now it’s almost impossible to open even a milk carton with all the plastic tabs and seals that require your teeth as tweezers before your first gulp.

The screw top metal lid must have taken some thought to get that lined up righty-tighty and lefty-loosey. That patent was in 1832 to William Painter, for learning how to screw.

Taking the cork out is not too hard for some corkscrew collectors. It’s plausible that playfully putting perishable packaging prevented pervasive pesky persnickety pesticides from permeating paralyzing potables in persimmon pudding, postponing a panacea.

Pottery jars with kraut or homebrew made with scuppernong grapes, water and sugar were set to “work” with simple cheesecloth and a rag tie around the lip. Blanket chests and Bible boxes had a wrought hinged lid for safe keeping. Leftover food and biscuits stayed on the table with a simple tablecloth cover for days or at least until the next meal. Barrel lids were chamfered wood to keep out varmints until you scraped the bottom (of the barrel). It seems an effort now just to pick up all the plastic lids and seals and cartons that don’t fit anything but we keep, just in case.

Tupperware had parties for ladies to learn how to burp the bowls that come in colors.

Lids can be hats and caps can be lids. You can blow your lid if you get steamed. Pot is sold by the lid, but who would know that except overgrown, overweight hippies. The all-time best use of a lid was to capture lightning bugs in a jar and poke holes in the lid with a big nail and a hammer, so they could breathe. Of course, they seldom made it overnight if you forgot to turn them loose. Climate stress may overtake our childhood pleasures before we can blink our eye lids.

So, use them and lose them in this vicious recycle world. Lids are here to stay, use, lose or keep them until tomorrow, through all those lidless nights. Henry David offered this suggestion to overcome mundanity while shuffling lids around in your Walden Pond. “I had three chairs in my house: one for solitude, two for friendship and three for society. The universe is wider than our  views of it.”

Tighten your lids, and lift the lid; we’re in it for the long haul.