The Unknown Thingie

I once read this piece of literature about a man in Paris who collected objects that were a complete mystery to him. Once he knew what they were, he disposed of the objects because they no longer interested him. If you were a guest at his salon, and you knew what the object was or did, you were not permitted to blurt out the function.

The story was a dark one, and if my memory serves me correctly, he found a set of objects of calibrated balls and some sort of apparatus at a flea market. For years no one knew what it was. These balls became the focus of his social life, and the source of speculative conversation at every party he threw. Eventually someone came and identified the objects as a primitive gravitometer to measure the alcohol density of wine from medieval times. The loss of the objet inconnu (unknown object) mystery was so great to him, that he committed suicide.

Well I have an unknown object that came with our house in the hills of Quebec. It was in the garage and it looks like this.

At first I thought that is was some sort of hammer. Then I realized that the blunt end was the same as the other end, but just broken off.

The other end had a fluke like an anchor, but it wasn't an anchor for two reasons. The first is that it is cast iron, and cast iron would rust.


The second reason why I don't think that it is an anchor is that it has a machine bolt on the other end and a groove that makes it bolt to a cross piece.

Might it be a meat hook? Could it be some sort of shoemaker apparatus? It really could be anything.

If you know what this is, or have a guess, please leave a comment. I am dying to find out what it is, but not dying enough to commit suicide once I find out what it is.