Soozie (shown in color on the inside of the back cover) is an H.G. CO. petticoat beehive, CD 145. She first saw the light of day in Covington, Kentucky around 100 years ago. Her first memories are of being rather warm as she was picked out of her mold and set on a conveyer belt moving toward the annealing lehr. After going through the lehr with hundreds just like herself (with just slight variations in embossing and color), she was put on a wire rack to cool. Then she was washed and packed in a barrel.

The next light she saw (after a bumpy ride in the barrel which lasted several days) was when she was hoisted up to a crossarm in a leather bucket. She was placed onto a wooden pin, her home for the next 84 years! She sat atop a pole near Bowie, Arizona, close to the famous Apache Pass where Cochise and his Chiricahua Apaches ruled years earlier. She endured many types of weather, and performed her duty extremely well as shy sat on the pole doing railroad signal work beside a busy track. She must of been very sturdy, because she never got a stress crack or chip in all those years.

Early one morning in 1970 some men came along and removed her from the pin, tossing her unceremoniously into a box with other insulators. Fortunately she was made of strong stuff, for even then she didn't get one bruise or scratch. After another uncomfortable ride lasting about eight hours, she and her boxmates were put in a back room. A few days later a lady came in, picked out the best insulators in the box, and put some of them out in the front area on shelves and in drawers. Because Soozie was just a plain aqua color, she was put in a drawer.

That night she got to talking with some of the other insulators, and found out from some who had been there awhile that she was in an antique shop in Cortez, Colorado. She was flabbergasted to hear that in the same shop was a Muncie, a Coolie, and even a Pluto, all of them in mint condition, just as she was. It was an honor to be in the same room with such high-class pieces.

A few years went by, and many people came in to look at antiques and insulators, and although they bought many things, they sometimes never thought to look in the drawers. Even when they did, they just overlooked Soozie because she wasn't anything special.

But one day my family and I stopped by for breakfast in a little town about 50 miles away. We noticed an antique shop next door to the restaurant with aqua insulators in the window. I asked my husband what that aqua glass thing was, and he said it was a resistor. The shop was closed, so we ate, and when we came out, the shop was still closed. But I made up my mind that at the very next antique shop I saw, I was going to get one of those resistors. because not only do I love glassware, but my favorite color is aqua.

The very next antique shop we saw was Country Boy Antiques in Cortez. (It is no longer there.) We went in and looked around. They had hundreds of resistors....it was a resistor bonanza. I don't know why I did it, but I opened a drawer, and there near the top was the prettiest, cleanest, clearest aqua piece of glass that I had ever seen. I bought it along with 19 others in various shapes, paying a dollar each.

Well, that was the summer of 1972. I have since learned that "resistors" are insulators, and that Soozie is a beehive. And even though in the beginning of my insulator collecting I changed specialties several times, I never sold that little aqua beehive. Yes, Soozie was always special to me, and each time we'd display our beehives, she held her own right beside the ambers, purples, blues, and greens. To me, she was never common or ordinary. And although my original beehive collection is gone now, I still have Soozie. And as I try to rebuild my collection, she sits proudly beside my "newcomers", knowing that she has seniority. .

Soozie's beauty was the reason I began specializing in H. G. CO. Petticoat beehives in 1973, and my curiosity over exactly what her embossings meant started me on my long road of Hemingray research. So Soozie was the beginning of something wonderful for me...she was the beehive that started it all!

Soozie, my first beehive. 

"Bea" Hyve's Beehive Collection