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Snake Bite Kit

"For Snake Bite"
Ceramic jug with stopper,
music box and ballerina
Purchased at Chic's Antiques,
Floyd, Virginia
Spotted by SueEllen Lawton
on June 5, 2002
It's the presence of a ballerina on a moonshine jug that appealed to
me. I imagine that there was some other character that appeared on the
rotating spindle originally: perhaps a moonshiner, or a drunken hillbilly.
Either of those characters would have qualified this to be a tacky treasure.
However, the ballerina figured significantly raised the "What the
heck" factor, and tacky treasure history was made.
When it was purchased, the music box didn't work. This created some
mystery around the object. What tune could it possibly play, that would
thematically pull together the elements of the snake bite kit and a
ballerina? Since I took it with me to a fiddlers convention in Mt. Airy,
North Carolina, it occurred to me that someone might compose an appropriate
fiddle tune, perhaps called "Snake Bit the Ballerina" or "The
Ballerina and the Dreadful Snake" or "Ballerina's Drunk and
the Fun's All Over."
Eventually, I found someone at the festival who is mechanically inclined
and who fixed the music box so I could hear the tune. "Little Brown
Jug" was more of a disappointment than a revelation. But isn't
a lot of life like that?