The Mason jar is as much a symbol of the Appalachians as the dulcimer, apple butter, and a fog-draped August morning. There’s nothing fancy about it, but in these mountains, the Mason jar never outlives its usefulness. I would guess every house in my hometown of War, West Virginia has a collection of Mason jars on a shelf inside a kitchen cupboard or in the cool alcove of a cinder-blocked shed. A home is not a home without the Mason jar.
Mason jars are still used for canning beans, beets, sauerkraut, and for preserving jams, jellies, and fruit. They served as drinking glasses and probably still do, and before refrigeration, Mason jars were used for storing cooked meat. They are well suited as storage containers for “white lightning” or as most folks know it, moonshine. The “shine” can’t eat glass.
For a young naturalist, the Mason jar ranked beside binoculars and field guides as an essential tool for uncovering nature’s mysteries. What better device to capture fireflies in the backyard during a warm June night, or collect butterflies in a meadow on a balmy summer day, or scoop a water sample from a farm pond? What better herbarium to keep salamanders and other creepy crawlies? Mason jars were part of my everyday field collecting gear.
What I would not know until much later in life, however, is that Mason jars are magical. I remember my mother saying Mason jars could capture moments and store them as memories. All one had to do was open the jar, let the moment seep inside, and seal the lid. The moment would become a memory, which could be taken out anytime.
Difficult as it was for a youngster to fully understand this magical quality, as the years went by I began to understand what she meant: to hold on to those special moments that would enrich my life. She knew that as we grow older, memories become precious and we tend to rely on them more and more.
—Mountain Memories An Appalachian Sense of Place written by Jim Clark
Today’s Thankful November giveaway is a used copy of Mountain Memories An Appalachian Sense of Place written by Jim Clark. To be entered in the giveaway leave a comment on this post. Giveaway ends November 18, 2025.
Last night’s video: Digging Up Plants, Finding Old Treasure, & Planning for Spring of 2026.
Tipper
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from storing my beans, rice and grits to trinkets, mason jars are one of the most utilitarian items in existence!
What a special essay. I now have several old mason jars that I use to try to capture memories: filled with old buttons, wooden thread spools and marbles.
Mason jars (also known as fruit jars and canning jars to my family) are magical to me. I love them and have a collection of the blue-green by different makers.
We used Mason jars for everything and I still do. It is impossible for me to get rid of a Mason jar.
I would love to win this book.
Mason is also a great name for a person or a pet.
Nowadays, young women who never grew up seeing a grandmother using Mason jars for canning, jumped on the drinking glass and decorating/craft making magic of the old Mason jars we once took for granted. Even the rings are used to make “pumpkins” and other cute stuff!
This excerpt really touched my heart. Mason jars evoke many memories for me. Thank you so much for sharing it with us, Tipper.
I have a huge collection of mason jars. I use them for everything.
I would love to win this book.
Our cellar shelves are stacked with colorfully filled mason jars once again for the coming winter. We are thankful for the Lord’s provision of fresh vegetables and fruits that will sustain us. My pantry also holds many staples in jars, and jars of homemade yogurt and sourdough starter are in the fridge. Don’t know what I’d do without my mason jars.
Christmas Gift!!!! Have you ever watched the 1949 Christmas Movie called Holiday Affair starring Robert Mitchum? I just realized the little boy in the show pulls a Tipper & Granny, when he beats his mom in saying Christmas Gift, on Christmas morning. How neat is that!!
I never related Mason jars with memories before, but reading this post brought back some good ones! 🙂
Mason Jars Was Part Of My Life Growing Up. We Had Big Gardens,Canned Most Of The Summer. My Favorite Soup My Daddy Made Was Corn, Okra,Tomato Soup. With A Big Pone Of Cornbread Yummy
I love the picture collage you’ve used here for this month. I used Mason jars for so many things and have some of the older jars that have a bluish/teal tint with a wire closure. I especially treasure those.♥️
My mom had some really old jars in her cellar – including blue ones. I have fond memories of catching lightening bugs and putting them in jars.
Mine did show up! I thought I had hit wrong button!!!! And a lot of mason jars were transported in 39 and 40 Fords!!!
As I read about mason jars (I too have hundreds of uses for those precious jars) I began thinking about how religion provides a container for our moral compass, family & friend connections, transparency, protection, & the open jar symbolizing welcome to others.
This is a spontaneous thought and not yet fleshed out; but it is important to note that I said “religion” with none specified. When we get to the core of any authentic religion we will find concern for others as well as ourselves, kindness & respect, appreciation & stewardship of the earth & its resources, and an openness to listening to others followed by considerate sharing of beliefs & ideas.
Like the Mason jar, protection, openness to change, & transparency are essential to using it to its fullest potential.
I have gotten rid of almost all plastic storage containers and use my mason jars instead.
I like what Jim’s mother said about the Mason jar holding memories. I’m easily reminded of my grandmother canning her jams/jellies in those jars. Her plum jelly was my favorite, and I so appreciated her making it for me.
Love them, they are used as decoration and in so many utilitarian ways as well!
Love my mason jars!❤️
I see mine didn’t go again, Oh, well.
I collect mason jars! My Aunt Sarah had a rusty Buick on her property with a trunk full of mason jars, wine bottles, and beer bottles! I have several in my home! I even have one for collecting buttons because that’s what she did and I can’t sew to save my life.
I’m thankful for mason jars & fond memories!!! Thankful for all of you !!!
Ahhhh….Mason jars and lightning bugs. Nothing better and so much fun.
Tipper,
Thank you so much for your writings every morning. Oh, what memories are brought back to remembrance. Sometimes I just close my eyes and vision back as a little girl when time was much simpler. Mason jars have been in my family for as long as I can remember and I’m sure long before I was even born. I have some of both of my Grandmother’s blue ones sitting on top of my kitchen cabinets. Thank you for keeping the Appalachia Heritage alive through your daily writings. Blessings to you and your family!
I have many fond memories of catching lightning bugs in a mason jar with holes punched in the lid. Thank you for bringing back those sweet memories!
My favorite use for Mason jars is and will always be for holding wildflowers. Nothing in my mind is as lovely.
I love mason jars and use them for many different things. I indeed have them on my pantry shelves, storage shelves in the garage and 3 rose colored ones as a decor in my dining room. This post brought back many memories of my granny’s kitchen and pantry!
I love that last line that says as we grow older, memories become precious and we tend to rely on them more and more.
How very true that is!
Have a wonderful weekend Acorns
Certainly an interesting story about the mason jars everyone uses in their homes. Thanks for sharing!
Hi Tipper! A beautiful post! I love my mason jars! I have special ones – different sizes and colors! My grandmaw canned in “cans” before she used jars. I would love a copy of the book! Thank you.
I grew up with helping my mother bottle everything from soup to nuts. All kinds of vegetables, jams, jellies, apples, pears, etc. So it was natural for me to start canning when I had a home of my own. I have hundreds of bottles filled and as many sitting waiting to be filled. We always have several jars in the fridge with either jam or jelly, kraut, relishes and coleslaw to enjoy. This post has reminded me of the memories of helping mom, thank you!
Mason jars have been a big part of my life. From drinking cold water and sweet tea out of them to seeing mama’s bounty of sweet pickles, green beans, pickled beets, canned fruit (pears, peaches, figs). I had a collection of tiny seashells, little rocks and buttons all in these jars. They do hold many memories!
I love mason jars. My grandma let me “help” her can her garden’s bounty when I was little. I loved chewing the wax from a jar of strawberry jam and the smell of vegetables, grapes and steam in the kitchen. What a beautiful memory that is.
As child, many times we would use mason jars to hold lightning bugs (with holes poked in the lids of course)! Such fun memories of walking around after dark with my siblings and cousins, and our lightning bug laterns!
Tipper, I don’t need the book, but I want to tell you that in Houston back in the 1960s there was a terrific little restaurant called The Mason Jar. They served water and iced tea in Mason jars along with delicious “down home” food.
I love Mason Jars. So many good memories. Thanks for the reminder.
You did a good job cleaning out that flower bed. But Come Spring you will delight in the beauty of your new flowers
I have some old blue mason jars that I have cotton balls and Qtips in my bathroom also buttons in one and old marbles in one. I love the old jars and old bottles.
Have a great day. Prayers for your family
I wish I had a penny for every mason jar I have washed in my lifetime. Not much food at the store is packaged in glass containers nowadays, but I save the ones that are and use them for storing pasta, cereal, and other grains, and save my mason jars for canning. If I can’t use them, I recycle along with anything glass or plastic to help create a healthier planet.
Mason Jars bring back great memories…opening a jar of chow chow to go with beans and cornbread,fig preserves,blackberry jam etc…but also storing buttons,marbles, catching lightning bugs…so many uses.
I don’t think I have ever not been around mason jars and I am 83 years old 🙂
I still love Mason jars! Hoping all are well & I loved that picture Corey caught of Tipper & her grand babies!
Mason jars are one of my favorite things! I love the old ones my grandmother passed down, as well as the new varieties being sold today!
Love the mason jar story and memories!
I’m using my mason jars this Thanksgiving to hold skewered cake pops I’m making for my great grandchildren and also making another memory!
My grandkids eagerly await a mason jar filled with Mommer’s Sweet & Sassy Salsa each summer. They love the salsa but my favorite part is the memories we made when they were little, first helping pick the tomatoes and peppers, then being old enough to help me chop the onions and peppers. They’re young adults now, with work and school. I don’t make but one batch of salsa now but it’s enough to share the love and bring back childhood memories for them♡ I love watching your videos on YouTube. My paternal side hails from Columbia, KY. Some of my favorite memories as far back as I can remember, stem from our yearly visit to see my grandparents, great aunt, aunts, uncle and cousins.
My love of canning was taught to me by my late in-laws. He used the pressure canner because she feared it blowing up but she always did the prep work. I cherish my mason jars as many were handed down or bought at auctions. I have many very old ones. I often wonder about the wonderful food, blessings and love poured into them over the years.
If it will fit in a Mason, Ball or Atlas jar I will use them. They are like a treasure or family heirloom, lol!
As always, praying for Granny.
Mason jars played a huge role all through my life from watching, then helping mama with all the preserving there was to do – then they remained with me as I tended to my own family, including making yogurt in them, and used as mini containers to bake banana bread etc. in and still used today for storage containers for spices and all kinds of ‘whatnots’ – button holders, pen or pencils holders – flower vases – and drinking glasses – the list can be endless – they are a handy-dandy item to have in one’s home. I loved the sweet thought of letting ones memories seep into one to hold for later as they do hold many memories for so many of us. This sounds like a wonderful book to read.
Good posts. Mine didn’t make it.
Mason jars and old Biltmore Milk bottles are and were prized in my neck of the woods. My granny canned everything in the garden and all the apples and berries . I always valued the blue Mason jars the most. The Biltmore milk bottles were used for blackberry wine or apple cider and hidden in the back shelf of her stone basement. I liked going down there to get what she sent me for. It was always soo cool and I felt she had sent me to some kind of hide away. Sometimes I would just go down there and feel the cool and the smells of fruit and veggies. She could tell when I’d been there because the dirt floor was evident on the seat of my pants. Great memories !!
I have a lot of mason jars also, from a few colored ones through several clear half gallon, I use some of them every year plus I save pickle jars and any other kind that has the ring inside the lid, these seal good and I use them if I’m canning something that I share because when you give someone something you usually don’t get the jar back they end up in the trash.
I’ve caught many many lightening bugs in Mason jars, drank good cold ice water out of them, and ate lots of granny’s green beans and salsa out of them…I miss that the most.
“A home is not a home without the Mason jar.”
What a wonderful single-sentence description of a day to day object that has both purpose and beauty! I am partial to square and or blue jars, but will use any for canning that isn’t chipped are cracked.
I opened a jar of tomatoes the other day that were in an old antique Ball or Atlas jar that was. I was trying to remember which one of my grandmothers this jar had belonged. I thought about it for a minute and after a few minutes decided at this point it really didn’t matter, but was thankful I came from a line of women folk that loved and took pride in filling these glass containers with their goodness and am proud I have a wife who took the knowledge those women and learned the magic of filling those jars entrusted to her with her own goodness.
My family has lots of jars saved from over the years. We’ve done some canning but mostly we’ve used them as water glasses. Sometimes we use them as flower vases too!
I wonder if anybody else in the world makes apple butter like I do? Out of just apples and a couple of spices? No granulated sugar? No brown sugar? Just the concentrated, caramelized sweetness of the apples themselves?
What’s that got to do with Mason jars one might ask? Well, I seal apple butter in mason jars and they magically disappear.
Love all your stories. It gives me my memories. See you tomorrow at Granite Falls!
I love mason jars! I have some I still use which belonged to my grandmothers and are nearly 100 years old. As I fill them with goodness from our garden I try to imagine what they would have canned in them. Nothing like that little popping sound when you open the jars and all that summer goodness comes out.
I still use mason jars for many things. Thanks for sharing! God bless!
Love my mason jars! Thanks for the post.
There are so many interesting facts about fruit jars on the internet such as what the numbers indicate, markings indicate that some were hand blown, and can be used for dating a jar. More interesting to me are the facts of the different logos on the jars indicating the date of manufacture. I tried one time to collect each number but never found a 13. As someone mentioned I guess in our area they were destroyed. I bought an amber quart jar in Kansas and was told it was used to keep herbs and the amber color would diffuse light for better preserving. My oldest granddaughter now has my collection of about 30 different jars. The only one I have now is a molasses jug with a metal bail. I learned very early on that mayonnaise jars could not be used in a pressure cooker. The lids are also interesting such as the zinc lids with porcelain inside and the porcelain caps with a latch clip.
Isn’t it interesting that we call glass canning jars “mason” no matter what the actual brand. Sort of like “scotch” tape for most all cellophane tape and “kleenex” for tissues.
My grandma used mason jars to can beans, tomatoes, cabbage and even pork ribs. My grandpa used mason jars for liniment and other clear liquids made from corn!!
Precious memories, indeed!
My mother used canning jars, and she had a lot! I remember sneaking one and putting holes in the top of the lid and holding it down with the ring. She would have tanned my hide and later gave me a tongue lashing for wasting it on “bugs”, as she called them. At school we talked about praying mantis’ and the teacher told us if we would go out into a field, we could find a nest on a twig. Well, being the inquisitive child I was, I found one, broke off the twig and put it in the Ball (it might have been a Mason) jar and set it by a heat register. A few mornings later, I heard my mother scream. I hopped out of bed and ran downstairs to see what was happening. The little varmints were coming out of the holes by the hundreds. Mama was scared of “bugs” and started lashing into me, “Go put those thangs out in daddy’s garden and quit using my canning jars.” I was thrilled that my experiment had hatched and grabbed the jar of little critters and went out the back door to empty them in daddy’s garden. I did use one of mamas canning jars one more time that I remember, I caught lightening bugs, put them in the jar and watched them glow before falling to sleep.
I have a collection of old Mason jars and often wonder how they were used long ago. I have new ones also. I’d love to read more about everyday life in the Appalachia of days gone by.
Good morning, Tipper and Tipper fans! I’m feeling a bit off this morning, not quite sure why, but dizzy comes to mind. Hoping that passes. I LOVE mason jars!! Growing up my five sisters and I caught fire flies and set our jars on our bedside table and fell asleep watching them flicker. Come morning we let them out. I have used them as a drinking glass. Pen holder. Left over gravy and put it in the fridge. It’s an amazing item. I hope everyone has a great day, fall is definitely in the air and I love the season. May God bless everyone, especially sweet Granny!
Wonderful story! I always love the vintage blue ones and zinc lids. I remember as a child those jars with grapes and juice in my uncle and aunts cellar.
Love my collection of Mason jars, especially the one with Dad’s old marbles. I find it impossible to share soup without one. Thank you for this story.
I use mason jars everyday for a number of things.
Mason jars are good for almost anything!
I’d rather be a plain old Mason jar than a beautiful Ming vase. That vase has value as a thing of beauty and historical significance, it’s ancient after all. But it can only be placed out of the way to be respectfully viewed, & with hefty insurance coverage. (These days there are probably better comparisons to use, but this is the one I used years ago in church ministry.) No, I’d rather be a Mason jar that arrived with something good inside to be shared, and will be repurposed many, many times. When it can’t be used to can food because the lip is chipped, it can be a vase for wildflowers or cut flowers from the garden, to hold my vintage buttons, for a young one’s 4-H project, to gift pralines and divinity like my Mama used to make at Christmas time, and of course to store essentials in the cupboard like chocolate chips, coconut, dried fruit, nuts and seeds. The expensive fancy vase is beautiful and can be appreciated, but is one dimensional where the common & practical everyday household item has much greater worth to many of us.
My great grandmother had a collection of buttons she kept in a mason jar. For some reason, she had a bunch of marbles in there too. Pretty marbles. When I visited, she would get that jar for me and let me spill it all out on the carpet and play with the marbles and buttons. She died when I was nearly nine, and I forgot all about the marble button jar. Then a few years ago, my grandmother gave me that jar. She said, Mama K (great grandma) would want you to have it. When i opened it, the smellof her little apartment hit me. I was eight yeara old again playing with her collection on the pink carpet. I have it still and let my children play with the buttons and marbles. We keep it sealed and it still smells of her apartment and my memories.
Wonder what our ancestors would have made of the Mason drinking jars with handles? I expect they might well have thought, “Well, it’s about time!” I think (don’t quote me) the whole canning industry in the US really took off as a result of the Civil War and feeding the troops. Some real odd things came about such as how is a glass jar a can? Or maybe how does a can become a glass jar? My memory goes back to the zinc lids, red rubber seals and the milk glass insert in the cap. My Grandma used them. I’ve never had any idea what those meant in terms of age just suspected they were already old when I was very young. Then there were the green-blue jars some with sloping ‘shoulders’; really not shoulders at all. My wife still cans but not much because our garden is so small and there is just us two. Our daughter doesn’t and it looks like it will ravel out with us. Here is a question: Is there a Ball-Mason Museum and is it in Muncie, Indiana? If not, there ought to be.
Mason jars, sigh….the post says it all.
Tipper, Almost everything you post stirs a memory for me.
Love the comments! My mom canned too. I regularly drank out of mason jars. My parents were depression kids and thought that coffee was a staple; as important as bread and lard. We always had a pot ready to drink and they didnt care who drank it! I started drinking coffee at about 7 years old. I would take a small mason jar, fill it with coffee and so much sugar that it wouldn’t all dissolve! My mom read Prevention and Ideals magazines. She read me an article about the evils of eating too much processed sugar. She scared me so bad that I quit putting sugar in my coffee on the spot and to this day I drink it black and never from glass cups! Once at a restaurant I was served coffee in a glass cup and asked if I could have a to-go cup and I poured it in that paper cup. My husband thought I was crazy!
Don’t forget lyrics from the talented is slightly sigoggling genius Roger Miller, “Grape wine in a Mason jar, homemade and brought to school . . .”
This is a title that’s new to me and I’ve got a pretty sizeable collection of Appalachian literature, more than a 1,000 books I reckon. Based on this excerpt alone it’s obviously a book I need to read and add to my shelves.
War, WV-as a WV hillbilly born and bred, let me tell you that town is God’s armpit or worse if He has one! The coal fields are a sad and dirty place. Now on to Mason Jars-every word Jim wrote resounds in my mind. Mason jars are the petrified dishes, flasks and beakers of the hillbilly impromptu homemade “science class specimens, prepared garden bounty, and fine crystal stemware for shine and the like!” I personally wouldn’t want to be caught without my Masons or Balls or American Harvest fine and fancy uppity glassware. Where do you think I keep my cream (evaporated milk?) You got it-a mason jar. If I got stuff needing hid or the odor hid, guess what yall? Yep-a mason jar again! I can hide “her” in the wall, on a shelf or under the ground! True story-had to dig a new water line and what do reckon I found? Yep-right again-a quart size Mason jar half full of water some feller was drinking from about 1930 and that water was as clear as could be and smelled just fine after dang near 100 years of being hid in the dirt…Notice-the companies manufacturing mason jars continue to drop off and cheapies good for nuthin’ fill dollar stores, etc so beware of cheap never duplicated, often imitated foreign dingaling, no seal fake jars good for a trash heap…lol I may not have much, but I have mason jars aplenty! lol and God bless you all as we hoist and lift the mason jar full of a favorite beverage in Tipper’s honor!!! Yahoo! Have a good day all! You should see my fassade “copper antique tile” kitchen backsplash! When the sun hits just right it’s so PURTY I could cry like Charlene Darlin’! That and my YELLER wall will blind ya!!! lol so PURTY AND cheery indeed! This hovel is shaping up slowly yet surely…
Sounds interesting. Thanks for all you do
As a child, I was embarrassed because we had to drink from mason jars. Now, I use them all the time even though I have a large assortment of drinking glasses in my cabinets. There is a restaurant in Pigeon Forge that serves sweet tea in quart mason jars, and I love it!
I agree with Gaylia! Your posts and the the comments of readers always make me recall fond but forgotten childhood memories. I look forward to reading them every morning! Thank you!
Hi Tipper, I just used a Mason Jar yesterday, to hold chicken broth. I boiled chicken breasts and the juice left on the chicken was super good. The broth was cooled and then went straight in my fridge for later use. I can’t think of a better way to store it, than in a Mason Jar!
I enjoyed all the “uses” for mason jars as well.
I have to agree with this, I have lots of memories tied to my mason jars, mainly canning all of that food from our garden knowing we grew it, tended to it, picked and cleaned it in preparation of it the canning process to be enjoyed later on. I’m thankful to Mary who really got me interested in canning. She was the person who showed me what to do and how to begin. I remember my Grandma doing some canning, but at that time I was pretty young and more interested in playing then learning the canning process.
I would love to receive a copy of this book by Jim Clark. Thank you for all you do!
I have collected “ball jars” my whole life. My home town of Michigan City, IN is at the bottom tip of Lake Michigan. Back in the day, there was a HUGE sand dune called The Hooiser Slide. It was a big tourist attraction. People came from all over to see it and play on it. One day, the people who ran the city wanted to make money so they sold all the sand to a glass company to make mason ball jars. Alot of those jars came from the “singing sands” of Indiana. They sold the land to a coal powered electric company. I was mad as a child when I heard this story. I wanted the Hooiser Slide back! That’s my story about mason jars.
Andrea, not Mason jars but the old glass Coke Cola bottles having the name of a city on the bottom of them. I once worked at a company where some of the men in my department at lunch time would gamble 10 cents each day on whose Coke bottle had the name of the farthest city. The drink machine only had 12oz Coke Colas.
Mason jars have been a part of my life as far back as I can remember. Both my mom, grandmothers, and Aunts used them to put up vegs,pickles,jellies,as drink glasses, etc.
Good morning Tipper!
This is a wonderful snippet! I love my jars! We still can….making applesauce and apple butter this week!
I never heard of this book but if I don’t win it, will have to search for it.
Thank you for keeping some of the old ways in remembrance.
I certainly have a small collection of unusual “blue” jars on the top shelf of my old pump organ…memories.
Right now I have a mason jar full of elderberry syrup because I have two sick kiddos. Another full of salad dressing and another full of saurkraut. I couldn’t live without them.
I’d love for you to tell us in a post where you buy your Postum “coffee” and “hot chocolate” TY.
My mama canned so many vegetables from the garden every year. She and daddy also canned deer meat. It was so delicious. They water bathed everything in a big canner over an open fire pit my dad made just for canning. They had to lift the canner off the fire together it was so heavy. Mama would be so proud of her mason jars all lined up on the shelves my dad built for her. They were full of green beans, lots of other kinds of beans, carrots, deer meat, jellies, tomatoes, peppers and more. I love my mason jars too. I don’t can near as much as my mama always did, but I am proud of the jars I have sitting in the basement. They are full of applesauce, apple pie filling, apple butter, honey, and grape jam for this year. Our tomatoes and peppers didn’t do well, and we always freeze our deer meat. I would love to try canning some if hubby gets one this year. Mason jars really do hold memories!
What a beautiful thought. Ill never look at a mason jar the same way again.
I hope to learn how to use this magical Mason jar. There must be some history to be shared on the name?
TY for sharing all of these books with us but most of all your reading of them to us. Tipper, I hope you know what a treasure you are. I’m so thankful for the internet and your being here. You have been blessed with many gifts from GOD and I think your greatest is LOVE (1 Corinthians 13:13.) TY. I’m still praying for the sweet folks up Wilson Hollow and from Dugger Hollow, I love Y’all.
Coffee and Tipper, morning pleasures!
I guess I am number one this morning. lol Yes, mason jars are as much of my life as breathing. I would suppose that I have about 4 to 5 hundred in my basement along 2 canners, several big crocks and several containers of long term food storage containers. I am now 78 years and still can even though most of those jars set empty. What memories those simple jars played in my life. When I was a young girl around 7 years old it was my job to fill up the wash tub and clean all the unused jars out of the basement. For whatever reason (probably time) moms would just rinse them out after every use and I hated having to clean dried food out of those jars. We always used mason jars to drink out of and catch all of those creatures in. Well, God bless all today.
There’s nothing but truth there. I’m so blessed to be canning in some of the same jars passed down from my great grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and precious Momma. I have a mason jar that was my great grandfather’s jar. He canned grape juice. I know they’re just jars, but I feel like it’s kept our heritage alive. My daughters will can in them one day too. Keepers of the old ways.
I have a blue half gallon #13. It’s a rare one because of the number. Most were busted because of superstition.
God bless all y’all! Have a wonderful day!
I still drink out of a mason jar, and long for the days when I could chase and catch fireflies or as we called them ‘lightening bugs’….ahhhh childhood memories, Ira and Woodrow do not know they are living and will be living their most precious prized memories over the next few years with their grandma and grandpa and that most of those memories will happen OUTSIDE –down at the creek, in the garden, in the woods, in a flower bed, sliding down Granny’s hill in the snow (as an old folk I almost envy their coming adventures but only because I enjoy so much reliving mine–and oft times due to you Tipper and your blogs)
I find myself holding on to Mason jars ( Ball or Atlas) and use them for many things. I have some that belonged to my grandparents. I never thought of a Mason jar holding memories, but it is true, I never look at a Mason jar that belonged to my grandmother without having a good memory of her. Another good memory is of a dearly loved preacher from my youth at our church. Before our new modern church building was built, we had a large picnic shed at the old church, Preacher John would always drink out of a quart Mason jar. The tea and old fashion lemonade made with real lemons would all be poured into two separate # 2 galvanized tubs with a big block of ice in them. I expect today’s health “exspurts” would tell us drinking anything out of a galvanized tub is unhealthy and will kill us. I guess it is true, many of the older church members that did this are now dead, all along we thought they had just died from old age.
Randy, experts or as you put it ‘ex spurts’ would now be just big drips. Think about and it will make sense.