It was Memorial Day, 1972. It was traditionally the day to open up "camp." Camp is a term used to describe summer cottages in the Adirondack Mountains. I had moved to northern New York in the summer of 1959 and a year later married into a family who owned such a camp on a beautiful, sparkling lake. 

Customarily Memorial Day means trout fishing for me in the nearby streams. In fact, during the twenty years I lived in the nearby St. Lawrence Valley, my end of May trout fishing was done three times with the accompaniment of snow flurries. 

But this year would be different in two ways. It was a clear, sunny day (unusual for the Adirondacks) and I was anxious to take a trip about 60 miles to the east to trade insulators with a lineman I'd heard about over in Essex, New York near the lower end of Lake Champlain. Trading insulators was the norm in those days. Besides, I had just lost my job a few months before, and my wife and I had exactly $29.00 to our name. So money was scarce, but not insulators. 

About three years before, I had begun searching northern New York's abandoned railroads for these discarded jewels. I had lots of insulators to trade -- including several deep purple ones. I had discovered that in addition to the abandoned railroads in northern New York, Quebec had some abandoned lines also, and I had explored the lower part of Quebec and found it to be quite productive. 

So, armed with my "traders" and $29.00, I headed off to Essex, New York. After spending about 2 hours swapping insulators and stories about them with this lineman, who worked for New York State Gas & Electric, he asked me as I was about to leave, "Have you ever heard or seen a clear glass threadless?" 

My immediate rely was, "It must be a reproduction." 

Now the reason I said that was not that I was some sort of expert on threadless...not at all! At that time I subscribed to OBX (The Old Bottle Magazine) and every time someone reported a new threadless---well, that excited me! At this time I had found some CD 728's and I had traded one for an aqua Mulford & Biddle CD 735 through an ad I'd seen in OBX. After all, everyone knew that threadless were either aqua or black glass. This was still before the exotic colored threadless began to be found. The only exceptions I recall publicly known then were the CD 735 Mulford & Biddle UPRR in cobalt blue. 

So, I asked the lineman, "Who has the insulator" And he said, "The elderly lady next door." Well I just had to see this so-called clear threadless. We went next door, and the lady was home and she gladly showed us the insulator. Immediately, even with my limited knowledge, I knew this was the real thing. Besides, I don't think anyone was making any kind of reproduction insulators, threadless or otherwise at that time.

Cover Photo

I inquired if it was for sale and she said that two fellows from Maine had come through the previous year, 1971, and had offered her $100 for it. Now, the old-timers in the hobby will recall that $100 seemed to be the ultimate price asked for any scarce or unusual insulators at shows in those days. We did a lot of trading back then and we really didn't know what was truly rare yet. Besides, the $100 price tag on items we thought might be rare, was a reasonably safe way to get a good price. 

The lady said she turned them down a year ago, but she would take that amount now. Therein began my dilemma -- I knew I had to buy that insulator -- but I only had $29.00! So, I offered her $25 in cash and three of the purple insulators I had with me. I hadn't exhausted my supply of purple with the linesman. She said she had to check with her husband first. Even though my cash offer was less than the offer that had been made to her the year before, no lady can resist purple glass. Her husband ran a little restaurant downtown and after taking the insulators with her to show her husband, she returned after about 15 minutes saying "Yes" to my offer.

I could not be happier. I couldn't wait to get back to "camp" and show my new-found treasure to my wife. Needless to say, she didn't share my enthusiasm -- after all now we had only $4.00 to our name. Probably it was more like no dollars since I probably needed gas by now. This insulator became the centerpiece of my threadless collection which today numbers many pieces. It has traveled a bit though, because I sold it a year later for the then unheard of price $500.00! This little clear hat enabled me to buy many "clear" windows for the house my wife and I were building. But about three years later I bought it back from that same person and it's been back in my collection ever since.

Since the early days of the hobby, a few others of this CD 736.4 have turned up in what I have to admit are much more vivid colors. Despite that fact, this little hat may turn out to be the rarest of them all -- because, they are not supposed to be clear.