Depression Glass

The other night I was on a ride and saw something I hadn't seen in quite some time: Depression Glass. I was riding around a retirement community so it made sense, but in the quiet of the evening with those blue, green, and clear vessels of various shapes and sizes I paused for a moment. 

 Growing up and delivering the Buffalo News from about 1999-2002 I had so many customers who were born in the 1910-1925 range. Many of them had stories to tell about life before the War, the early days of the neighborhood I grew up in, where many houses were built shortly after the WW2. The half of the Village we lived in was the 'new' side. With Cape Cod homes in 5 or so shapes and occasional outlier houses built after 1960. 

So around the turn of the Millennium I probably had 30% or so of my customers in that 75-90 age range. All of these folks had lived through the Depression and more than a few had these little reminders of that time in their windows. I now wonder if they kept them with fond memories of the past or if they were just more trinkets left over like so many things in their homes from a time long gone, little echoes.

 I would say I'm romanticizing the whole thing, painting a young and optimistic suburban life in my head but then I saw them in that window the other night. So they meant enough for those people to take them to their retirement home. Do they look at them and think of saving the coupons needed to trade in for the glass? Helping a parent out, a little chore?

 I really enjoyed my interactions with so many of the people on my route back then. I heard so many stories and perspectives. At 13 years old so many people would just tell me wild stuff. Opinions they probably wouldn't share with too many, but then again there were a lot of lonely people who had a spouse die years ago. So in an evening I could go from hearing a story about how a woman's brother and father died in the Pacific, and she knew it wasn't right but still didn't like 'Asian' people (Her words, the nuance of the Pacific theatre was either lost or She just didn't see a difference), to throwing snowballs at cars or whatever the flavor of mayhem was that season with my friends and I. 

 All of that makes me wonder: in a world with more and more stuff, things to buy, consume, be inundated with, I don't really think anything like the Depression Glass exists anymore. I'm not sure that's good, bad, or doesn't matter at all.