Here, now, is a toaster. A Proctor-Silex, model T0046. It shares several attributes with its brethren. Four slots. Toast and pastry settings. On one side, the toaster presents a face of faux-granite, black speckled with flecks of blue and white. The three other sides and top are chrome-plated, as glossy and reflective as a funhouse mirror.
The toaster was a wedding present. Toasters, quick research tells us, have been outmuscled in the wedding gift game, fallen to the toaster oven, the couple’s cooking classes, the cold, hard cash.
Model T0046 was presented first to Tim and Jen Tribbett on their wedding day, June 13, 1992. They presented it four years later on Aug. 10 at the wedding of their friends Ben and Katie Kelly. Who, in turn, presented it on May 31, 1997, at the joyous union of Mike Hoops and KatyMurphy. Who presented it to Hilary Garnsey and Ben Peery when they joined in holy matrimony Oct. 24, 1998.
The following year was a busy one in the toaster’s life, passing to three newly wed couples before Michael Sawyer and his beloved, Kate Flanigan, took possession on June 10, 2000. In the following years, nine more newlyweds would inherit the toaster, which proved to be stalwart and reliable, a credit to its line.
The record has been well-kept. The names are carried by the toaster itself, engraved upon its body in an elegant font befitting its stature.
This is the toaster. Here, then, is the toaster story:
“My wife and I were married in 1992, and we were the first to receive it,” says Tim Tribbett. “We were a group of friends, a group of guys, mostly, though there were a few girls. We grew up together. We went to East and Manual. That was back in the busing days, and almost all of us lived in Park Hill and Capitol Hill. We crisscrossed paths over the years. People got shifted back and forth, but we ended up being a pretty close group, and we still are.
“We had all just graduated from college that spring. A bunch of our friends here in Denver were driving out to Indiana where we got married. At a party, they put a bowl or a cup out to collect money for us, but the party went on, and it got a little late, so someone took the money, and they all went to Taco Bell and spent it.”
This, perhaps, explains the engraving: “Drinking for a Better Tomorrow.”
They were young.
“Someone, I don’t know who, came up with the toaster,” Tribbett says. “Mike Hoops might know.”
Hoops says: “Well, we were all just graduating from college, so therefore we had no money. We wanted to get them a wedding present, so we actually pooled our money for this toaster as a gag gift. We wrapped it in comic strips. It was real classy. But I think it was Mike Sawyer who spawned the whole thing.”
Sawyer says: “I was there at the purchase, that’s for sure. It was me and John Kahn. It was way out at the Aurora Mall or something. I think we literally bought it because it was on sale. The engraving, that was a last- second hilarity Johnny and I came up with, to create the Stanley Cup version of a toaster.”
Tribbett says: “They engraved our information on it and also the name of another friend who never had the toaster but who was married a week before we were.” That would be John and Jodi Massanet, June 6, 1992.
The Tribbetts used the toaster at least once. “We felt we had to,” Tim says.
It is, after all, a toaster.
So, the toaster traveled from Denver to Indiana, from Oakland to New York, and points in between.
“The sad thing is, the majority of wives will let you have one piece of toast, and then they want the toaster to disappear from the counter,” Sawyer says. “A one-loaf wonder is what I call it.”
The current inheritors are Dana Bryson and John van Doorninck, married Oct. 10, 2009. They graduated from East High in 1988. They shared their first kiss at 16.
“An innocent kiss hello on the front porch,” Bryson remembers it. “Twenty three years passed, and we never dated, but we stayed in touch. We had good friends in common. Basically, we kept finding excuses to be in the same place at the same time. We got together last year and went to dinner, and the rest is history.”
They knew about the toaster, of course. “I think I even toasted something in it when it was in Oakland about 10 years ago,” Bryson says. “I actually had had toast from the toaster. It was very good.”
Dana and John will soon be moving back to Denver from Los Angeles. The toaster is here at her parents’ house. Only a few spaces remain upon it.
The toaster has commemorated 18 marriages over 18 years and, Tribbett says, “knock on wood,” — or, as the case may be, chrome — all 18 couples are still married.
Tina Griego writes Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
