– Random Writings: Column by Rebecca Lindquist – - It’s not always about the money

– Random Writings: Column by Rebecca Lindquist –

In a previous column, I talked about foraging in country dump piles, unearthing treasures. Some people are probably wondering, what could possibly be worthy of rummaging through someone else’s garbage, euphoric over finding relics past their prime? I thought I would elaborate on some of our more noteworthy finds.

Dad was a farmer his whole life, even while working at various jobs as a cheese maker, a milk hauler, a livestock production specialist and an agronomist. He was also a keen hunter and trapper from a young age.

Some of Dad’s dump finds included fruit jars full of assorted nuts, bolts and screws, and the occasional coffee can full of assorted nails. As my family always says, once a farmer, always a farmer, and farmers make use of everything. Nothing goes to waste, and you never know when you will need that odd-sized bolt or a double-headed nail for a project.

One of his best finds were trap sets and a stretcher board, used for drying animal pelts. Some were in excellent condition, while other traps needed a new spring or a rusty trigger plate loosened.

Mom was always on the lookout for old bottles and was rarely disappointed. She found old milk bottles, old soda pop bottles and medicine bottles, with the cork stopper still intact. Among that, many broken or chipped apothecary items were found, too. Mom would occasionally stumble across an unscathed eye wash cup and was always searching for cobalt glass.

Today’s younger generation probably doesn’t remember when Noxema (a deepcleansing face wash and moisturizer) and Vicks Vaporub were sold in glass jars, with metal lids. These jars were manufactured using cobalt blue glass.

Cobalt glass is prepared including a compound, typically cobalt oxide, in a glass melt. Cobalt is a coloring agent and cobalt glass plates are used as an optical filter in flame tests, to filter out undesired yellow light. OK, that technical explanation leaves me just as clueless as before I knew about it.

Cobalt comes in three shades: dark cobalt, which has a purplish hue, light or cornflower blue, and medium blue. Cobalt blue glass was popular, for pressed glassware products, from 1930 through 1950. It was manufactured for dishware. It looked rich and elegant as a dinner service, being aesthetically pleasing, with one drawback – the glass could easily be scratched by the silver flatware.

Nowadays, true cobalt ranges in price, from $68.21, for a Noxema jar, to Vicks jars (with or without their metal lid) going for a respectable $10, to as high as $35.

One of my favorite finds was glass insulators. These could be found at the tops and crossarms, of telegraph and telephone poles. Hemingray was the most well known manufacturer of telegraph and telephone pin insulators. Their purpose was to insulate the electric wires they carry, so electricity didn’t leak into the pole or into the earth. Without insulators, it would be impossible to transmit electricity to homes and businesses.

Glass insulators were at peak popularity from 1920, until the end of the 1950s, when electric companies started switching over to porcelain insulators, completing the transition by the end of the 1970s. Glass insulators have always fascinated me. They were manufactured in yellow, 7-Up green, clear glass, purple and even the rare, elusive cobalt.

I was fortunate to find a couple green ones, a couple clear glass ones, a yellow one and was ecstatic when I found a lavender one. I also have a couple brown porcelain ones and a white porcelain insulator that, though smaller in size, are still magnificent.

A few old telegraph poles can still be found when traveling country back roads. The weathered poles, that once stood straight and tall, have succumbed to the ravages of time and nature’s elements, leaning at a forlorn angle, but still proudly displaying vestiges of the last one or two glass insulators from a different era.

Thinking back, it wasn’t about finding antiques to sell, but making memories, that are priceless.