Chapter 8 · America the Beautiful

Glass Hunting and Senior Discounts

Cranberry glass, a birthday buffet, and an unforgettable senior discount

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When we weren’t spending time with family and friends, Grandma and I liked to visit a few local blown-glass manufacturers who sold to the public, gave glass-blowing demonstrations, and offered tours of their facilities. Our favorites were Blenko and Pilgrim Glass. They were well known throughout American history over the past century or so and, in their peak heyday, could sell for a handsome price because of their delicate details, beautiful colors, and high quality.

We would hunt through their wholesale shops, perusing for the perfect addition to our collections back home. Pilgrim Glass was our favorite because its cranberry glass had to be infused with gold during the manufacturing process to achieve that color. I’d spend months saving my grass-cutting money and grocery store pay just to buy a Pilgrim Glass tea light holder that sold wholesale for nearly $20, or a Blenko water jug vase that caught my eye. Grandma’s collection back home was—and still is—something to admire, with at least two large see-through cranberry glass vase lamps, several more cranberry vases in varying sizes and shapes, then more from Blenko, and even a few from Fenton, another famous glass company from West Virginia. This was something else we bonded over, adding to the many reasons why Grandma was my best friend in those days.

That evening we were having dinner with her Uncle Dick, also the uncle of her cousins, being their parent’s sibling. Great Uncle Dick was just like the rest of Grandma’s lineage. He looked just like my great-grandma in the face, except for the masculine features of being a man. He was rather tall compared to my great-grandma’s short stature of barely five feet and my grandma, who was about 5’5″. He seemed more sophisticated than my Uncle Dickie, his nephew, but he still lived alone nearby, I’m pretty sure in a retirement home, as he was in his 80s.

This was Grandma’s birthday, so we planned something special: Western Sizzlin, for steaks and a buffet. Back then, senior discounts started at age 50, so, of course, I had to announce at the register, when it was time to pay, that Grandma now qualified for her senior discount! She earned that 10% off, and a free dessert for her birthday! Sometimes it doesn’t get any better. She rolled her eyes at me as Great Uncle Dick paid for the meal and told people for years how I asked about her senior discount on her 50th birthday dinner, shaking her head and rolling her eyes all over again.