A short Labor Day weekend thread about this cup:

When I was reporting Glass House, and living in my old Ohio hometown, I spent time with a glassman, and Flint Glass Workers Union man, named Chris. He’d spent about 40 years in the plant. He was about to retire.

I’d drive up to his house in a tiny village and we’d sit and talk. On my first visit I noticed he had a collection of just about everything Anchor Hocking had made, one of each. Ashtrays, measuring cups, peach glass (peach-colored dinnerware), you name it.

All assembled and displayed in another room. I recall thinking, Man, you’d think he’d be sick of glass. Of course I‘d missed the point. Then I thought about my grandfather and this red vase:

It was made at McKee Glass in Jeanette, PA. At Christmastime, the glass blowers would throw $20 gold pieces into a small batch of molten glass. (Gold helps make red.) They’d hand blow a few vases and give them away to select employees (this is the legend as handed down to me)

That vase sat in a place of honor in their home for decades. It survived abuse from my brothers and I. When my parents died, my brothers and I joked about “Who gets the red vase?!” We acted like it was priceless though it’s not worth much money.

Neither is this small, white cup. It’s what’s known as milk glass, a kind of cheap commodity glass, which is why you used to see these in diners and coffee shops all over America. That, of course, WAS the point. Chris knew these cups were held by millions of Americans in

thousands of places. And they were made by him in Lancaster, Ohio.
On my last visit, as we were saying goodbye, he walked into the other room, pulled this cup down from its place of honor, and said “Here I want you to have this.” I treasure it as if it were the Grail.