THE COOPER'S TALE.(The Talk of the Town)

It is hereby noted that a cooper---a maker of wooden buckets, tubs, butter churns, and, above all, barrels--came to town a few weeks ago from Williamsburg, Virginia, for purposes of "cross-promotion," a distinctly modern concept that is nevertheless familiar to Williamsburg's Colonial citizenry. To honor the upcoming quadrennial celebration of the nearby Jamestown colony, the one-and-thirty-year-old cooper was installed beneath a tent at the South Street Seaport for several days, along with some of his compatriots, to entertain people with knowledge of practices and places obsolete. Competition was tough: the Williamsburghers had set up next to a Verizon booth, where people were distributing free pens, and a NASA booth, where you could get your picture taken in outer space. Still, the cooper made do, handing out curlicued wood shavings, and attracting his share of curious souls. "I met a Hasidic Jew yesterday," he said on the last day of his trip. "It turns out there are a lot of barrels that are mentioned in the Talmud."

But the cooper had other things on his mind. He and his wife had already visited the Metropolitan Museum, the Statue of Liberty, and Washington Square Park, where he played chess with a guy and lost fifteen dollars, but he had time for one more excursion. Feeling a pang of homesickness, he doffed his waistcoat and cravat, packed his barrels into a rented van, and, after some brief confusion getting out of downtown Manhattan, drove across the river to a different Williamsburg. (Same name, different namesake: Brooklyn's Williamsburg was named for Jonathan Williams, who surveyed the area; Virginia's was named for King William III.)

The cooper and his wife found a parking spot on Havemeyer Street and stopped at a bagel shop for lunch. The cooper looked up and pointed at a wooden water tower on a rooftop. "That's cooperage!" he said. "I think they're beautiful. I suppose to the average New Yorker they're an eyesore. Kind of archaic."

Coopers, he said, were indispensable in their heyday, when barrels served as the means for transporting such goods as meat, indigo, ...