Friday 25th September 2009 - Glasgow under the Glass

          I picked up some music books at the festival week before last.  I thought it was time to see about shipping them home.  I pass a Post Office on the way to Charleston, so I thought I would take them along and see if I could get a box for them, and post them home.  When I got there, it seemed like a good idea to check for the cheapest way to send them.  The clerk weighed them and started stabbing buttons on his computer.  He concluded that $35 was the cheapest way. And I can put them in one of these boxes?", I asked.  "No", he said, bending down below the counter: "put them in this one".  And he produced a common-or-garden empty box which turned out to fit them exactly.  I wasn't sure I wanted to spend that much, but he let me keep the box.

          While all this was going on, a queue was building behind me.  Being British, I was sure they were forming a lynch mob.  But when I sneaked a look, they were all beaming at how helpful the clerk was being: a definite cultural difference.

 

          I was on my way back to Charleston for a repechage of the maps and pictures.  I hadn't taken enough notes, and couldn't remember some things.  In the process of doing this, I discovered that I could download pictures from the computer to my new pocket camera, and use it as a viewer.

          So I was able to look at the maps in the courthouse, and compare them with the picture from the book at Glasgow Public Library.  And what the maps describe as "Kanawha Glass Company", the picture caption describes as "Thatcher Glass Company".  And one of the maps made it clear that there was a "Flint" and an "Amber" department, and a "Blacksmith machine shop" which matched the buildings in the picture.

          The Secretary of State, on the other hand, couldn't find any incorporations for any of these names.  But the Historical Society found me a West Virginia Museum of American Glass, just up the road in Weston.  So I'm not at a dead stop.

 

          Later that night, with only that tiny crumb to celebrate, I discovered that almost everybody in the motel I'm in decamps to the Saloon across the way.  So we had a party.