New Kensington, Pennsylvania

Well organized. Well run. Well attended. Show hosts John Hovanec, Ron Barth and Tim Grantz and the membership of the Western Reserve Insulator Club worked hard to prepare a smooth running show. And it was evident. They had a lot of behind-the-scenes help; and voiced their appreciation especially for Sharon Foster.                                                                                  
                                                                                    

The show will be remembered for a lot of things, not the least of which will be for having the most CD 141.7 Twiggs insulators at any show ever. After all, until Andy Wadysz found a dozen of them in an antique shop this spring, only a single example was known.

Andy had three clear Twiggs on display at his table. The light amethyst example shown above was acquired by Butch Haltman. That's quite an underpour at the bottom.

Paul Plunkett III and Bill Plunkett created two exhibits to honor Paul Plunkett, Jr. Their display of insulators the family dug won the People's Choice award for Best of Show, and Best Exhibit of Eastern Insulators (see back cover). In the inset, they receive the People's Choice award from one of the show hosts, John Hovanec. They also displayed an original threadless pole from the Montreal Telegraph Company complete with CD 726's.

Curtis Erickson received top honors in the Specialty category with his display of CD 125's. His exhibit featured over sixty CD 125's in various colors and embossing styles. Curtis says he knows of other varieties he doesn't have yet, so his collection will continue to grow.

The range of colors is tremendous in 125's, from the green and yellow olive tones shown above, to purple and two-tone varieties. In the photo (bottom, right) below Curtis receives his award for Best Specialty display from new National Insulator Association president Dudley Ellis.

Jason Townsend earned the Best of Porcelain award for the colorful display shown on the opposite page. While Jason owns quite a few porcelain Harloe's, other collectors brought theirs to the show for what may have been the largest ever Harloe reunion. The ten in the background are marked with a slug plate, while the three in the foreground are the difficult-to-find variety marked in ink under the glaze.

Jason (left) is congratulated for his award winning display by Elton Gish. Elton plans to write up details about the Harloe reunion in a future edition of Porcelain Insulator News.

Ora & Joanne Beary displayed a colorful exhibit of glass CD 257 and porcelain U-395 insulators, better known by the nickname "Mickey Mouse". The exhibit included original, commemorative and fantasy pieces. All very pretty, and a favorite of young collectors as well as the young at heart.

TWISTED!

See, anything wrong with this CD 241 Hemingray # 23? The crown is out of alignment with the remainder of the insulator. The amber one is normal. Ken Orchard displayed this miscue from the Hemingray plant. The top portion of the mold apparently came loose, and this item was produced before the problem was discovered and could be corrected.

	C.R.E.B.S. (Crown Embossed Brookfields) A favorite among Brookfield collectors are those insulators with the embossing located above the wire groove. Known as "CREBS", those crown embossed items were made at a time when Brookfield seemed to produce insulators in a wide variety of colors.
	The chartreuse example at the top was used on the Southern Pacific Railroad in Northern California. It was removed from service in the 1960's, and rescued from a cache of 3,000 insulators by your editor in 1999. Lee Brewer owns the piece nowadays and displayed it with other outstanding CD 145's.