Glass People

Earl and Bev Sutherland were collectors of glassware made in the Depression Era. The couple lived in a gray modular home on the prairie, and traveled by car — for Bev did not fly — to glass events across the country, showing their collection and assaying the collections of their contemporaries. Earl collected pink Mayfair, while Bev fancied all colors and manufacturers. Her moongleam-green A.H. Heisey & Company cocktail shaker was their pièce de résistance, passed down to Bev from her mother, who had originally thought it a lamp base and used it for her flowers.
A man from California had fallen for Bev’s shaker at a convention in Grapevine, Texas — where the shaker won Best of Show. He would call the Sutherlands monthly to make an offer to buy the shaker. The Californian — a pejorative dubbed by Earl — would never own the shaker, but soon after Earl died of a stroke in his hobby room, the man had Earl’s wife.
Earl was ensconced with his favorite pink relish dish, a pink footed tumbler, and a pink citrus reamer. Apparently you can take it with you, glass people joked at the wake.
The rest of Earl’s collection went to his brother, and was sold on the Internet for a considerable profit.
Bev boxed up her glass and left her gray house on the prairie for a white bungalow in Temecula, set on acres of land ruled by a Samoyed called Piggy. The Californian, who was a Baptist minister, lusted over the shaker he would have but never truly own. It now lives among his collection of A.H. Heisey in a towering hutch. Bev once caught him listening to the shaker, like a child searching the ocean within a conch. The eternal hiss of moongleam and lilacs. The Great Depression. The comfort of knowing glass never gets old.
