Hello Friends! Well, here I am again . . . all of you antique bottle lovers! I’m here to wish you, and yours, a bountiful harvest season, one overflowing with thankfulness, for God’s many and rich blessings! Last Month We had a great turnout! The sign-up sheet showed the names of these smiling faces! Len Sheaffer Jr., Dave Wilkins, Juli Sheaffer, Katie Wages, Mary Gale, Brian Wages, Ashley Carlson, Gary Dean, Kevin Seigfried, Kelly Bobbitt, Ron Smith, Lori Leybourne, Doug Leybourne, Scott Hendrichsen, Vincent Grossi, Allan Holden We enjoyed seeing and hearing all about the amazing history of canning jars! Several in the antique bottle collecting hobby, throughout the fruited plain, all know about Mr Fruit-Jar,  aka, ‘Mr. Redbook,’
Doug Leybourne!
Having Doug as our special guest speaker, was something we have  actually wanted
to do for years. Our late club President, Chuck
Parker, suggested asking Doug a few times, but,
one-thing-or- another kept stepping in our way. At
one point it was a worldwide pandemic! (Flimsy
excuse) Well, Vincent Grossi managed to string it all together and we had a great, and very educational meeting! Doug and I have been friends for a very long time. We share a mutual love of old bottles and metal detecting! We are both treasure hunters at heart! What a wonderful presentation! As a digger, I don’t actually specialize in any particular bottle category, I collect whatever I find. However, whether I am digging a dump, a privy, or muck-raking . . . canning jars do show up.  Frankly, I didn’t
know enough about them to find them very
interesting. Well,
now I know what to look for!My first experience at finding, what I figured was the Holy Grail, was when I found my first 1858 Mason!  What a let down to learn that about the only Mason jars that don’t say 1858 are the ones made in 1858! That was discouraging to say the least. Early bottlers of food or beverages struggled with the very- real problem of closing the product safely inside, and protecting it from air and leakage.  Many of the early closures that were used in beverage bottles, with-or- without corks, they all seemed to like the wire bail ‘leverage’ seal. But they were always trying to find something better.  We learned that sealing canning jars, used in food preservation, created a special challenge because of the size of the opening and the need for high heat. Some of the jar sealing methods we learned about from Doug, ranged from 1820's into the 1920's and on until today. Cork Stopple Seal 1820's Wax Sealer Ring 1855 Screw Cap 1857 Shoulder Seal 1858  Lightning Seal . . 1872 Improved Seal . . 1888 Beaded Dimple . . 1912 Bead Neck Seal . . 1900 + I come from a long line of gardeners, and it was my mother who taught me how to can vegetables. My main crop has normally been tomatoes. Fresh, home-grown tomatoes are well worth preserving. We love making Italian dishes throughout the long winter, like Lasagna, goulash, spaghetti, and my wife makes a Chili to die for! It is actually called “Outhouse Digger’s Chili!” When my mom was teaching me the fine art of putting up tomatoes, she gave me my grandma’s old 1940's (National) Pressure Cooker. She told me that the rubber lid seal had fallen apart . . . . but maybe I could find one. I had almost given-up even before I started! Who, on God’s green-earth, is going to have a rubber gasket for a 80-plus year old pressure cooker? Especially today in this throw away world. I actually was preparing myself to be laughed at, as I approached the clerk at our hometown, Bob’s Hardware. I laid out the fragments that I had left of the old crumbling gray-rubber gasket on his counter. I was hoping to be able to purchase some rubber gasket material of the right thickness, then I could cut out my own. I had mentioned to the hardware clerk that the gasket was for an ancient National Pressure Cooker. He turned around and pulled open a few old wooden drawers, spun back around and laid a new gasket on the counter and asked . . . “Is one enough?” Try doing that at Walmart, Meijers, Menards or Home Depot! 
When we consider some of these early bottle and jar
closures, used in the search for a better seal, it
is hard to imagine that one day we would put a man
on the moon! Doug, thank you, and your dear wife, so much, for driving all the way down to share so much wisdom with us! We certainly enjoyed it! VINCENT’S JOTTINGS Vince packed my e-mail box with a ton of stuff for this newsletter!  The little family of field mice living in my virtual mailbox were not happy! Greetings Everyone! By Vincent Grossi I have enclosed a few notes for the next bottle club newsletter. SAVE THE DATE ! The 44th Annual Kalamazoo Antique Bottle & Glass Show, Hosted by the Kalamazoo Antique Bottle Club, will be held SATURDAY April 5, 2025 WHERE: Kalamazoo County Fairgrounds (Inside the EXPO Center) TIME: 10 AM - 2:30 PM For More Information Contact: Show Chairman kzooantiquebottleclub@gmail.com The bottle show committee has sent out the club's first bottle show survey and early registration & vendor application to all the dealers. This is the 2025 dealer list to- date, who will attending the show: William DePeel (Rapid City, MI), Dave Eifler (Buchanan, MI), Paul Bata (Niles, MI), Richard/Carla Franks (Linden, MI), Scott/Ellen Garrow (New Era, MI), James Hall (Gurnee, IL), Scott Hendrichsen (Mattawan, MI), Jeff Moore (Elkhart, IN) and John Puzzo (Woodstock, IL). The bottle show committee will be meeting with representatives of the coin show, train show and card show on Tuesday October 29, 2024. The main objective of the meeting, “how can all groups work together to promote the April 5, 2025 weekend and overall collecting?” The bottle club would like to welcome the following 2025 New Bottle Club Members (They are all bottle show dealer as well !) Paul Bata, Richard/Carla Franks, Scott/Ellen Garrow and John Puzzo. The bottle club would like to send out A Warm Congratulations to Scott and Ellen Garrow, who just recently got married. We wish you the best! NEW CLUB DISPLAY CASE ! The bottle club will be hosting a bottle display case at the Portage District Library (300 Library Lane, Portage, MI 49002). The bottle club will be promoting bottle collecting, club information and the 2025 Show. This will start April 1, 2025. The display case will be ours for two months. Anyone wishing to loan their bottles out for the display case, please contact: Display Chairman kzooantiquebottleclub@gmail.com Thank you. THE OTSEGO AREA HISTORICAL MUSEUM'S DISPLAY CASE ! The display committee would like to change out the club's bottle display case at the Otsego Museum, sometime in January/February2025. Anyone wishing to loan their bottles out for the display case, please contact : Display Chairman kzooantiquebottleclub@gmail.com Thank you.  BAD WEATHER & MEETING CANCELLATION POLICIES. It is the season. Safety comes first overall. The main factor for the cancellation of our meetings will be the bad weather. If the public school systems has canceled school due to bad weather on the day of the club's meeting. NO MEETING. The bottle Club President has the final decision on all cancellations of any meeting. If you have any questions about weather and the meetings. Please, Contact Club President Scott Hendrichsen 269-377-6089. The truth leading-up, over the centuries, to our . . . THANKSGIVING TIME By Al Holden Sometime I wonder, ‘What went wrong?’ Perhaps, our forefathers should have been more careful to pass along, to their children’s-children’s- children . . . those hard fought-for traditional values, before they were all stolen right out from under our noses. When a nation doesn’t understand her true history, having someone come along and rewrite it to change the outcome is so easy for evil people to get away with. . . and they are forever trying! However, history is a severe judge, she bows to no one. Giver her time and she will hand down an utterly incontestable judgment because she only regards the facts. Her verdict springs compulsively from incontrovertible evidence. Like it or not, you and I confirm the reality of Christ in history every time we write today's date on any document. The general consensus today is, to present our early American settlers as villainous invaders who were here only looking to loot and pillage. Modern liberalism loves to paint these very actual true victims . . . as the evil intruders. Thanksgiving has become a holiday which they frankly despise. Puzzled by what to do with it, they enshrine football games for that date, and then mock it by naming it "Turkey Day." When the first settlers fled to this country . . . it was to escape . . . . governmental tyranny, especially as it related to worshiping God. Right after the historic reformation, led by Martin Luther, the Roman government’s Church-of-State was determined to put a swift end to any type of worship other than that prescribed by the Roman Church. Armies of Roman Crusaders, followed the little Christian groups north through Europe, rounding them up, and scores were being killed in the most barbaric fashion. The Roman Catholic Inquisition impacted the lives of those who wished to read the Bible and desired to worship as the Bible laid out. . . as was clearly intended. Many other early Christians had already settled in the areas north of Rome. These were Christian's who were not any part of, or linked to Martin Luther’s reformation. These people were not in any way breaking away from the Catholic church, this group could trace their linage-of-faith back to the first church as recorded in the book of Acts, and in the Apostle Paul’s letters to the early Churches. But, these early believers welcomed the reformation movement, and they hid them from those who would arrest and kill them. But far too often, they too were slaughtered. In the Bible’s New Testament book of Hebrews it foretold of times like these: “And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy, they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.” Hebrews 11:36-38 Rome was extremely powerful, the 'World's Super Power' at that time, and they easily put pressure on England, and France to help eliminate the Christians.  In Geneva, Switzerland, Martin Gonin, started a mission to procure a supply of printed Bibles and religious books to be smuggled to the Vaudois Church that was in-hiding in the remote areas of the Alps. The task of bringing Bibles over the Alps was confided to discreet and daring men. They hid the Bibles, packed-up and baled in boxes of other goods. The Roman Church discovered the smuggling, and went to put a stop to it. When found, they killed everyone in the caravan, burned all the contraband and even killed the pack animals. To be captured on such an expedition . . . was fatal, it meant torture and death. The caravans didn’t stop, they were only carried out during the worst part of winter, and, they only traveled on the most dangerous uncharted routes. So dangerous that their actions were thought impossible. In some villages, Christians were given the option of publicly denying their faith, or be burned at the 
stake. In some villages, where the resistance
was strongest, the villagers were killed, and all
along the pathway to enter the city, the village
children’s dead bodies lined the pathway impaled on
stakes to serve as a warning.The people who fled to America, ‘the new world,’ were doing just that! They were fleeing! But, ending up in the new world didn’t mean the people of faith left all their troubles behind. The only way to protect the rights of future generations was to teach them about the past. Most people today do not know about the struggles of our forefathers. We can easily lose sight of who we are, unless we are taught. One time, many years ago, our club founders gave a talk about the Civil War, that was put on by, Ernie Lawson and Jack Short. The presentation had a big impact on several of us including our president, Chuck Parker. One of the neat parts was that these guys laid out a step-by-step procedure to help us learn if we have a Civil War ancestors . I found three, and another one was a Sargent during the Revolution! I asked my grandmother, “Why didn’t you tell me? She replied, “I didn’t think it was important.” Even for people of faith today, their dedication to God is relegated to a dusty shelf somewhere deep in the attic. Some people are afraid of what others will think. At one time the Christian influence was so great in America, it sparked the prohibition years! Can you imagine that today? The people behind that movement would have never dreamed one day we would legalize abortion, gambling, recreational drugs. Gender surgery . . . no way! It is all too dark to imagine! Such thinking only lurks inside a demon possessed mind! Such talk is only found somewhere outside of reality! Well, you and I know better! Today it is part of our daily lives. I pray Thanksgiving will mean more to you. God is worthy of your thanks. Eternally He is.  With
my engine build, I finally finished bolting on
everything, except the
intake manifold. Lifting the heads in place
without dropping one on my foot was a milestone. I was feeling very satisfied with my progress, and after telling the wife, she responded with, "That's nice . . . right?" There are those times when a boy just wants to call his dad. I think about him often. I have been following a daily devotional, and it is going into the book of Hebrews . . . dad loved this book in God's word. His favorite passage tells how Jesus, Lord, Creator, and God upholds all things by the word of His power. He not only created the universe, He upholds it, and, He unfolds it. Not a star that shines, not a bird that sings, not a flower that blooms, not a child conceived or one who laughs at play, they all find in Him the spring of its very being. He is cosmic . . . the soul of the universe. Jesus said; "Search the scriptures for they are they which testify of Me." Oh precious is the flow that makes someone as vile as me white as snow. One day Dad and I will sing around the throne of Jesus. Oh,
Folks!
We have so much to be thankful for! There will be a $5.00 Table! The Kalamazoo Antique Bottle Club Meets At the Otsego Historic Society Museum  at 7:00 pm The Museum is located at 218 N. Farmer St. Otsego, MI Meeting starts at 7:00 Information   |
