Foreign Insulators
by Marilyn Albers
Reprinted from "Crown Jewels of the Wire", February 1997, page 8
BEHEMOTH #4
The December 1996 issue of Crown Jewels of the Wire introduced three of the
largest and heaviest glass pin type insulators known to have been made in
France. Readers may want to go back and review that article. The first
insulator was CD 399.5 EIV // 335AT, which was referred to as Behemoth #1; CD
370.5 FOLEMBRAY/No 4390 we called Behemoth #2; and FOLEMBRAY/No 5212
was not
assigned a CD number due to the fact that an inner skirt or sleeve had been
broken off, leaving the insulator incomplete. But nonetheless, it is our
Behemoth #3 and Mike Harris of Poneto, Ohio, who sent me the information on this
insulator has asked me to make note of some errors that appeared in the December
1996 article. I wrote that the FOLEMBRAY/No 5212 was the only insulator in the
Glass Museum in Dunkirk, Indiana. Not so - it is just one of about 100 to 150
insulators, mostly common but interesting. Also, the insulator is about 13-1/4" tall, not 15". One more correction and I'm off the hook! The base
diameter was reported as 12-5/8" when it is actually just 10-3/4".
Sorry Mike, that must not have been one of my best days.
Now let me tell you
about Behemoth #4, which definitely deserves some recognition and happens to be
in my own collection - CD 370.9 FOLEMBRAY/No 416. Like Behemoth #3, this
insulator was brought from France to Hemingray for possible production of such
large insulators. I purchased it several years ago from Paul Houpt, and he told
me that the piece was removed from the plant in Muncie, Indiana by Dennis
Donovan when insulator production closed down in 1969. N.R. Woodward says that a
fellow named Ern Parkinson had it sitting on his front porch for years after he'd rescued it from being thrown away. I am not sure just how this all ties
together but at least a beautiful insulator was saved from the dump! Behemoth #4
stands 16-3/8" tall and weighs 36-1/2Ibs. The glass color is a beautiful
yellow green, almost a 7-up green. See the photo and scale drawing on the
following page. Also note the full color photo of CD 370.9 on the front cover of
this month's magazine.
A CLOSE CALL WHILE HUNTING
INSULATORS IN BRAZIL
Professor Ulrich Reiser of Stuttgart, Germany, has many talents and no grass
grows under his feet. Not only is he on call to attend meetings and give lectures
in other countries, but he loves to sail, he is a mountain climber, and as you
would suspect, is also an insulator collector who takes advantage of the
opportunity to look for insulators wherever he finds himself Greece, Turkey,
France, Switzerland, etc. He is more comfortable in jeans and a tee-shirt than in
a jacket and tie.
Prof. DipI.-Ing.
Ulrich Reiser
In late October of 1996, shortly before making a business trip
to South America, Ulrich sent me an e-mail message to ask if I knew of any
collectors in Argentina, Brazil or Uruguay. I sent him the address of Crown
Jewels of the Wire subscriber Gustavo (Gus) A. ColI of Montevideo, Uruguay, and
Ulrich was able to arrange a visit to Gus's home, meet his wife Martha, and have
a look at their impressive insulator collection. From what I understand, they had a great visit and managed to do some trading.
I don't know what kind of
luck he had finding insulators in Argentina, but he did have quite a story to
tell about his adventure in Brazil and has given me permission to share it with
Crown Jewels of the Wire readers:
"When I was in Sao Paulo two years ago, I happened to mention my hobby
of collecting insulators to the General Manager of a very big German company in
South America. I am withholding his name and will only refer to him as GM
because he is a very distinguished man in his sixties and is well known to many
people in Latin America, especially in Sao Paulo. On my recent trip, after a
long flight from Germany to Brazil, I arrived in Sao Paulo at six o'clock in
the morning, took a quick shower at the hotel and rushed off to the
International Convention where I was to give a presentation. There I met GM
again. He told me that ever since we had talked about insulators, they have been
catching his attention. Each morning as he drives downtown to work, he passes by
a house with three abandoned insulators hanging up on the wall and starts
thinking about taking them down. So now with me in town, he suggested that we
take them down together.
Well, in the afternoon between two meetings we sneaked
out and went to find the owner of the house (actually a small hotel) so we could
talk with him and request his permission to take the insulators down. Of course
it is the same story for every collector - he must explain at great length what
he
wants, why he wants it, and how he proposes to get it, etc. But in the end the owner
agreed to let us do it, as they usually do if asked nicely. Since we did not have
a ladder or tools with us, nor the right clothes (a business suit is a little
inappropriate for hunting these jewels), or even time to take the insulators
down, we told him we would come by later in the evening.
After the meetings and
dinner, we went to the home of GM to change into some work clothes and get tools
and a ladder. Come to find out his ladder was old, huge, made of wood and
weighed a ton! We somehow tied the monster onto the roof of his car (the car
being as distinguished as he) and drove downtown at about 10 o'clock at night.
There was no way for me to be tired after a long day and GM was as excited as a
schoolboy on his first date with a girl friend. When we arrived, the owner of
the hotel had gone home, but of course not without telling the night clerk about
our wishes. The clerk was very friendly but asked us to wait a short time
because the rooms we had to climb past to get to the insulators were still
occupied. We were a little astonished at his request but soon found out that the
hotel was not a regular hotel but a hotel to rent rooms on an hourly basis! So
we waited outside and now understood why there were quite a few women strolling
up and down the street. After about twenty minutes, the clerk came to give us
the green light and even helped us by mounting the big ladder on the wall. As I
am a mountain climber and the younger one of us, I went up. From about 21 feet
above the ground I had a great view of GM holding the ladder and the crowd of night strollers that had
gathered on the sidewalk and the street below. Removing the insulators was easy.
They must have been sitting there for quite a while because the plaster securing
them to the pins had nearly transformed into dust. So I worked quickly and was
happily down on the sidewalk after some minutes (happily because I had the
insulators and happily that the old ladder and I had survived). While tying up
the ladder on the roof of the car, we chatted and joked with the bystanders and
beauties of the night.
Back in the car and on our way home with the ladder
bouncing on the roof and the insulators in a bag, GM was very happy about having
hunted his very first insulators -- and relieved. Relieved that neither the
police nor (even worse) a reporter or TV team had passed by to catch our
adventure. Remember that he is a very well known person in Sao Paulo!
The
insulators were common green Hemingray 42's. One of them is now sitting clean
and shining on GM's desk and each time someone asks about it, a gleam comes to
his eyes."
Ulrich finds a great stash of insulators along an old railway line in
Bavaria.
Thanks for sharing your story with us, Ulrich. You and your friend GM must be
leading charmed lives. May you be as fortunate next time!
|
)
)
)
)
)