Today, quite by accident my friend and I stumbled upon a place beyond what I could have ever imagined. A place with tons and tons of glass. The place looked a bit run down but not deserted, so we parked, walked into the yard and the amazement started to settle upon us.
We wandered around the front yard looking at beds and beds of glass "rocks" of various colors and any size imaginable. I felt like a kid in a candy store!
We explored the many wonders the front lawn had to offer before we reached the front door and still, no workers were in sight. There were signs about camera surveillance, but I didn't see anything which could have been used to record anything today, let alone 20 years ago.
Once inside, we wandered around for a good 15 minutes before we heard the sounds of someone coming in from the back. That's when we met Frankie, the son of the owner. Frankie is retired but still works for his dad. We assumed he would ask us if we were interested in buying anything but instead he started to tell us the history of the place we had happened upon.
Frankie was a delightful man who makes interesting noises of which he is totally unaware. Little grunts and groans punctuated his monologue and just made it more interesting. As his verbal history drew to a close he asked if we wanted to see the "back".
"Yes!!!"
So, off we traipsed, following a total stranger into a dark warehouse without any qualms. The first stop was a short aside to show us how some of the glass looks under a black light and then we entered the workshop. By-in-large, the space was fairly empty; used for storage over the years since the custom chopper parts shop quit renting the space. As we neared the back, we could see Frank's 87 year old dad, soaked to the skin in sweat, hoisting a huge steel tub filled with glass he had melted together. We walked along the row of kilns used to liquefy and combine the bits of glass into a solid chunk at 1,900 degrees.
Beyond the shop doors we could see the mountains of glass from which they would gather the pieces to be melted into the unique rocks we had seen at the front.
The glass they use comes from glass plants in the United States, but sadly, the last of those have closed and once the glass they have on hand has been utilized, this 35 year old family business will cease to exist. Take a moment to look at their Facebook page and the beautiful and amazing ways glass can be used in landscaping and architecture.
