Rare housecleaning adventure turns up odd ashtray collection

By Scott Beveridge

Regulars who pop into this blog probably don’t need to be reminded it has a collection of stories about weird places and things.

Take, for example, the one about a strange fascination people have with Stephen Foster’s slave’s big toe on a statue outside the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. And there are story here, too, about a strange-looking lamb with three hind legs that supposedly was born on a farm near Taos, N.M., and a Pittsburgh bar that sees a need to stock four toilet paper dispensers in the commode stall in its men’s room.

This post would not be complete without mentioning a story that touches on an artist who makes keychains featuring severed Barbie doll limbs, and sells them in recycled cigarette vending machines.

However, I stopped short of writing here about the freaky woman who was wearing a big hair black wig, parts of which were styled into a beard and mustache for her appearance at a Pittsburgh craft show.

But folks who don’t know me have no clue, until now, that I also collect odd things, including ashtrays, the smaller the better.  I have nearly 30 of them, even though a cigarette hasn’t touched my lips since 1980, when I kicked a three-pack-a-day habit.

I started to purchase them at flea markets in the 1980s when I was dirt poor and they could be had for as little as a buck apiece. It struck me then that ashtrays were once fashionable and many had been produced by any number of fine glass factories that once operated in and around Pittsburgh. I suspected at the time that ashtrays might someday grow in value as collectibles in a society that was beginning to frown on smoking.

I had forgotten about these ashtrays until Sunday, while spring cleaning and they turned up stored in a bag in a corner of the spare bedroom in my house.

They really are cool. One was molded in green Depression glass at an Anchor Hocking Co. factory. There is another shaped like a crab to advertise Frenchy’s Fine Seafood Restaurants in Florida. Someone even gave me a space age one coated in Chartreuse, nonflammable rubber, as if it's a good idea to smoke let alone park a burning butt in that thing.

My favorite in the collection, shown above, likely was made in the 1940s to promote Stoney’s beer brewed by the now-closed Jones Brewing Co. in Smithton Pa., a business founded by the family of actress Shirley Jones.

I will confess this is not my only collection of odd things, but plan to save the story of my having an inability to throw away business cards for a future blog post.