I received a call from Jon Green, an old friend of mine, one Friday evening in the not too distant past, and by the unbridled excitement in Jon's voice, I could tell immediately that something big was up. 

Jon and I first met in the summer of 1971 when I went to work for him as a printing press operator in a small commercial printing establishment he managed in Berkeley, California. We quickly realized that a deep love for artifacts from the past was something that we shared in common. We eventually opened our own printing business in Hayward, California, and spent every spare moment we could afford searching for old bottles and beer cans, and insulators. On Saturdays or Sundays that we did not have to work, often we could be found walking a pole line, or knee deep in an old dump, or looking over the side of a road for beer cans. We hired a press operator, Bill Grundell, who could climb poles without climbing equipment like no one I've ever seen, and set out to find what we could. Bill was the first to show us the diversity of shapes and colors that bottles and insulators possessed. We sold the printing business, but our friendship continued.

Our first major "deal" was a huge fiasco. We purchased a pallet of insulators in the state of Washington, sight unseen, and had them shipped to us in California. When they arrived, the best piece was a white milk glass Maydwell-20, and there was only one of those on the pallet. The freight charges far exceeded the value of the insulators, which were eventually sold to a couple of macrame crafters who got them for much less that we paid. I'm sure this has never happened to anyone else, has it? We became somewhat sharper while learning from our mistakes and very quickly took a position that the object of this hobby for us would not revolve around money, but would wholly center upon having fun. Some thirty plus years later we're still having fun.

In a very vocally animated dissertation, Jon, who is the foreman for a contracting company that does earthquake retrofit on large city buildings, began to relay to me how his crew was digging in the parking garage of a huge building at the corner of 4th Street and Tehama Street in San Francisco, and that they had, while digging twelve feet below the current street level, unearthed a piece of glass that he described to me as looking like someone had taken one bucket, and positioned it upside down upon another bucket. After zeroing in further on the physical characteristics of the piece, I became equally as animated and told him that he was the proud owner of a CD 700.1 threadless egg.

Jon Green holding the CD 700.1 egg 
at Tehama and 4th Streets.

I arranged to meet Jon at the jobsite the following morning and was not only amazed at the find, but also at the overall condition of the glass. The insulator is a beautiful bubbly blue aqua with significant amber streaking running top to bottom paralleling the pinhole. There was a huge pile of sandy loam dirt in the middle of the parking garage removed from the trenching operation out of which came another half of a CD 700.1, and several aqua CD 162 N.E.G.M. Co. Jon realized that he had first noticed the N.E.G.M. insulators when his crew had reached a depth of about six feet below the existing street level.

Jon at the jobsite with the CD 700.1 
at the spot it was located.

The trench from which the insulator was 
unearthed - filled with rebar and ready for concrete.

The part of the trench from which
 the CD 700.1 was recovered.

The reason these insulators were buried so deeply below the current street level is that through the years, in order to gain prime downtown real estate, a great amount of landfill was added to this area to make habitable ground sufficiently raised above the water level of San Francisco Bay. Therefore the CD 700.1 was either on the ground prior to the landfill operation, or were brought in with fill dirt from another part of the city. Most likely due to the depth at which they were found, the CD 700.1 insulators were on the ground where they lay and then covered by fill.

As I scanned the huge, dimly lit concrete parking garage area, I jokingly said to Jon that we should bring in every piece of equipment he had and dig up the whole thing. Needless to say, this was an impossibility.

I asked my old friend if he intended to keep the insulator or if he wanted me to inquire about selling it for him. Jon reminded me that money should not be an issue and that having a good time was the essence of it all. With that said, Jon handed the beautiful glass egg to me and told me that it was mine!

I will always cherish this piece of San Francisco telegraph history and the many great memories of friendship and the sheer fun of insulator collecting recalled every time I pick it up and look at it.