The Migration of Geese

They arrived on orange webbed feet, often with blue ribbons tied around their long necks. Waddling and honking, pecking and settling into every kitchen in America. I’m talking about the geese.

But It Didn’t Start With Geese.

In 1981, I was a nanny, and my employer began accumulating the cutest dishes I had ever seen. It started with mugs by a company called Vandor. There were four, each featuring a different farm animal; cow, pig, sheep, and a pair of chickens (no geese, please note).

I know it’s hard to imagine, but at the time, these mugs were unlike anything I’d ever seen before. I was awash in admiration.

This was a fairly prosperous household, so the mugs were followed by salad plates, dinner plates, bowls, canisters, and salt and pepper shakers. There were some white ceramic animal heads on the walls, upon which to hang coordinating towels. Eventually, my employer had an entire kitchen full the stuff. It was amazing, this Vandor Country Collection, but it featured no geese.

A Barnyard Of My Own

My admiration was well expressed. So, when I married in 1982, my employer gifted me a huge box of my own Vandor Country farm animal ceramics. I received the original set of four regular-sized mugs, four miniature mugs with baby animals on them (highlighted by the chick), a pitcher that I’d use as a utensil holder, and salt and pepper shakers. She even got me the metal canisters. All country, all mine (but no geese).

My new husband and I moved to a nice two-bedroom town home, where I used cup hooks to display my barnyard wedding gifts. I found some country blue placemats at the thrift store and set them on the eating bar. Then I won a little blue occasional shelf with heart-shaped cutouts at some direct sales party or another. I hung that up over the pantry door and put some thrift store blue and white china on it.

I am telling you, I had that country décor thing going on. But there were still no geese in my kitchen lineup.

Flocks of Geese. FLOCKS, I Tell You.

All around me, the geese were taking over America’s kitchens. Those geese had waddled into the world of 80s décor, usually in a line, followed by a little girl wearing a hat.

This is a charming print, isn’t it? But when I described it, you groaned in recognition before you even saw it. So did I. But look at it! It’s nice! And if I hadn’t seen it hanging on the wall of nearly every home I visited during those years, I might have wanted it on my wall, too.

I had no geese at all.

I considered adding the geese as an accent. There were geese salt and pepper shakers, but I liked my Vandor shakers. Avon sold a set of measuring spoons shaped like little individual geese. They were adorable, but I didn’t want to measure out my salt in geese.

There were entire sets of dishes devoted to geese.

The trouble was, I already had floral ditzy dishes that coordinated well with my gooseless Vandor Country ceramics. Those dishes were a wedding present from my former mother-in-law. In all the years she gave me presents, those dishes were the only time she got it right. I wasn’t about to replace them.

Other Options for the Gooseless

There were geese wallpaper borders, but we lived in an apartment. I wasn’t going to risk the damage deposit by doing anything to the walls. There were geese towels. My kitchen towels came to me from my grandmother, who had this whole system where she bought dishtowels, cut them in half, crocheted a button-through hanger and sent them to me for Christmas. Thanks to her crafty generosity, I never bought kitchen towels.

My then-husband tried to come through. For one occasion or another, he gifted me a ceramic tureen, a white fowl along these lines:

But here’s the deal. I think it was a duck, not a goose. I mean, I don’t have a photo of it, but I think it was a very pretty duck. I tied a blue ribbon around its neck, and it sat on the sewing machine cabinet in the dining room, overlooking over the garage sale table and sticky chairs in a somewhat imperious manner.

My maybe-goose-maybe-duck tureen had pride of place. It deserved it. I mean, a tureen is a somewhat grand item, yes? But it was almost too special. By the time my then-husband broke it, I’d only used it once.

And Then, the Unthinkable Happened.

…I moved on to dusty pink.

Decorating trends come and go. Grey today, gone tomorrow. The stuff of mania is always packed up and donated eventually, and so it was with America’s 1980s geese. For years, they waddled up and down Goodwill’s knickknack aisle, settling bossily among the shelves of plates and bowls, honking and pecking and reminding me of the eighties. You couldn’t give that stuff away.

But everything old is new again, and other such clichés. The geese have migrated back into American homes. Now, when I see a white goose with a blue ribbon around its neck on Etsy or eBay, I groan at the outrageous prices. I groan, but I smile, too. I always knew they’d be back.

But here’s the thing. If you still love your geese from the 80s, or if you have somehow recently fallen under the spell of the geese, just go to the thrift store. They’re still there. I took this yesterday.