Insulator Collector of the Month

Reprinted from "INSULATORS - Crown Jewels of the Wire", June 1978, page 13

Dear Dora, 

Enclosed is another newspaper article. If you can use any or all, please do. Thanks so much for putting the picture and my letter in your February issue. I have already received two letters from collectors here in Oklahoma (who read in Crown Jewels) as close as 50 miles away. I have found out since the newspaper articles, T.V. and Crown Jewels there are more collectors here in Oklahoma than I imagined. I'm still trying to get a club started, and with a number of persons interested and willing to help, maybe I will succeed. 

Carolyn Theesen

Keep up the good work. You and Don are doing great. Give credit to Jack Tod and Ray Klingensmith also for their very informative columns. Norman and I plan on taking in some shows this year, and perhaps Reno. I wish you would mention in Crown Jewels, anyone having any advice to give me in organizing a club, it would be most appreciated. Also, any collector friends would be most welcome to drop by and spend the night with us. About four years ago I found my first insulator, and now I have 1,000, not counting 300 I've given away.

Also enclosed is my poem if you can use it any time. 
Another Collector Friend 
Carolyn Theesen 
203 N. 40th 
Lawton, OK 73505 

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Carolyn, yours is a heartwarming letter, and we need more people like you in our hobby. I agree we need more publicity. Following is your poem and excerpts from the newspaper articles. 

Dora

BUM FINDS JEWELS

I dress up in my old blue jeans and hit the trail again,
I head out to the railroad track, for that's where I begin.
I toss the sack upon my back and start doing what I like
To find the pretty precious Jewels to put into my sack.

The moments are exciting when I see them on the ground.
I hollar to my husband, "Look here just what I've found!"
Maybe just another 42 in such a pretty blue,
Since they no longer make them, you feel they are brand new.
Hemingray last made them in the year of '69,
Knowing someday they'll be a rare rare find.
I can't believe I have so many exotic blue that's mine,
And just to think I found them all, by walking along the line!

My family says that I'm a hobo, and they know that I'm a bum,
Because I'm doing what I like and having so much fun.
Yes, my jewels are oh! so beautiful, some colors bright and bold,
It makes you want to pick them up and in your hands just hold.
This is my story to you all, my story I've just told.

An Okie Bum
Carolyn Theesen

"If it's on the ground or on old poles they're anybody's find," said Mrs. Theesen, who, with her husband, adds new "finds" to her collection of nearly 1,000 glass insulators.

Family 'Cleans Up' on Its Hobby

When the Norman Theesen family set its sights on the drainage ditches of Comanche County, its objective was modest: trash and the removal thereof. And the motive was purely humanitarian. The Theesens hate litter and like clean ditches.

Countless miles of ditches and four years later, the Theesens can report they found everything they expected -- a bountiful cornucopia of beer cans, pop bottles, hamburger wrappers and paper cups. But they also found a lot of peculiar glass objects, squatty, nozzle-shaped articles half-buried in the dirt and, unlike the other ditch adornments, showing no signs of having been hurled from a passing car.

And so it is that from the humblest of Comanche County road ditches has taken shape a most unusual collection. The Theesens are now the proud owners of a massive assemblage of glass telephone and telegraph wire insulators, and their home has been transformed into a museum to showcase them. They have nearly 1,000.

Glass insulators have been used on high wire lines since the early 19th century to guard against electrical shorts, but many have fallen prey to high winds while others were tossed aside by line crews. They lay in ditches, some merely for a few years and others for decades or more than a century, until they were turned up as gems among the junk in the Theesen ditch-cleaning campaign.

"The value of the insulators is in the historical worth," Mrs. Carolyn Theesen said. "A lot of lines are coming down. They say in 10 years you won't see these insulators. There will be cables on poles or underground."

Since the Theesens were bitten by the insulator collecting bug, they have carried their search outside the county, taking time to peruse a ditch here and there while on camping trips in eight states. Their oldest prize, found in Nebraska, was made in 1871. The bulk of the Theesen "home museum" is composed of insulators made between 1910 and 1956. Most are valued from $2 to about $45.

"A lot of them were in plain sight on the edge of the ditches," Mrs. Theesen said.

With an artistic touch, Mrs. Theesen has turned some of the glass bells into centerpieces, ash trays, pencil holders and plant holders.

The collection started four years ago when their son asked them to participate in a junior high school cleanup project. The Theesen family joined the National Insulator Association soon after their interest in the artifacts developed, and they are now among 3,000 people across the country who share this unusual hobby.