I remember the time back in the 50s when it seemed that there was a bowl of nuts with a nutcracker in every household.

It might be sitting in the middle of the dining room table or perhaps in the living room on the coffee table or end table.

But there it was. Nuts of every conceivable kind as far as I could tell.

The nutcracker was never fancy, at least not in my recollection. Just a plain metal nutcracker with a couple of metal pieces that I guess would be used for digging out the interiors of recalcitrants nuts.

They were seemingly a fact of life.

And then practically overnight, they disappeared. Never to be seen again.