“Bring the past only if you are going to build from it.”

– Doménico Cieri Estrada, award-winning Mexican writer

Will pay cash for old glass. That’s what the poster read. I had just tacked it to the bulletin board of a local grocery store. It was the third poster I’d hung that noon hour.  

I was in Grade 9 at the time. I’d been bitten by the bottle bug while rummaging around an old derelict farmstead a couple miles from home. My efforts garnered three intact beverage bottles and a couple fruit jars. Certain I had found something of value, I began looking through newspapers for collectors. A small ad in the Western Producer told of an antique glassware guild. I eagerly mailed off my $12 members fee. When a package from the g...

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