I am always rather shocked when someone doesn't know what a reamer is because I don't ever remember a time that I didn't know what one was.

Growing up, my brother and I spent many hours counting my Aunt Ruth Morris' reamers and teasing her about the fact that she had so many (at one point there were over 400). We also spent many weekends helping her clean and dust the collection spread throughout her two-story 5 bedroom farmhouse.

When she and my Uncle Glenn would travel, "antiquing" was their pleasure and invariably she would come home with a few more pretties to add to her collection.

After Glenn passed away in 1982, she slowed down quite a bit in her travels but still managed to keep up with the NRCA (of which I believe she was one of its original members) by attending conventions with friends and still managing to add a pieces to her collection.

She embroidered a quilt square placed on the Reamer Quilt for the 1986 NRCA Convention in St. Charles, Illinois. She also won first place and Best of Show for her N-128 Ruby Red Reamer (Convention Date Unknown).

When Ruth moved into town in 1990, she was only able to keep her absolute favorite pieces (mainly Clowns, Puddinheads, Sunkist and the Edna Barnes miniatures) as more than 90% of her collection had to go into storage due to space issues.

But as always, her collection was a conversation piece and she shared her love of reamers by giving family members and close friends one or two to "take along home with them" to enjoy.

You can't be so close to all these different reamers without being "bitten by the bug", thus my Mom and I became members of NRCA and even managed to attend the 20th Anniversary Convention in St. Louis, Missouri. We were fortunate enough to meet Mary Walker and chat with her about Ruth (who was too ill to attend). She generously signed Ruth's copy of “and Many More Reamers”. Of course, we have added to this collection thus continuing on the family tradition of reamer collecting!