KIOWA COUNTY COLLECTORS: Jerry Simmons and his glass bottles

Stepping into Jerry Simmons’ classic Haviland farmhouse you’ll see display cases filled with minerals, delicate glassware and shelves brimming with all shapes, colors and sizes of medicine, soda pop and ink bottles.

“My interests began when I was real young,” said Simmons admiring the large glass display case of brightly colored mineral stones. “It started with the rocks. What captured my attention about the rocks were the colors. I like the naturally occurring colors and shaping.”

Simmons fondly recalled growing up on a ranch in Northern New Mexico, meandering through vast farmland around his family home.

“When I was out walking on the ranch, I would find these old homesteads and once in a while I’d find [rocks and minerals] but more often I’d find [old bottles and glassware]. I started to study them and what intrigued me was that the same metals that are in minerals are also in the glass.”

Simmons credited this connection with his life long interest in the sciences and in his private life as a prolific collector of all things glass. His “collection room” was lined with all types of rocks, and archeological nick-knacks. Standing in front of a large wooden shelf lined with bottles, the science professor at nearby Barclay College, expounded on the ages of a pair of prized inkwells.

“They did not invent the screw top until about the 1920s. Before then they were all cork tops. So, this [inkwell] is a cork top, so we already know it is pre-1920s. Also the way they blew the mold will tell you a lot about the age.

“Around 1910 or 1911 they invented the ABM, the automatic bottle machine, they started to mass-produce these [inkwell] bottles.  These bottles have a seam all the way to the top but you’ll see that it disappears [near the neck]. That means that this one had a top that was formed by hand, by a tool and so it is imperfect. If you look at the machine made top, it’s very similar, but it will be almost perfect. This dates it to about 1910.”

It can be difficult for any collector to pick a favorite piece. During his years of collecting, Simmons says that there are things to love in all of his bottles. But pulling out a late 1800s Schultz soda bottle, his smile got a bit wider.

“When I started to find these they were fantastic,” beamed Simmons. “This is one of the first soda bottles, a 1870s Schultz company carbonated soda bottle. It’s one of my favorites. [What makes them collectible is] they were not to be sold. They were like milk bottles; they were owned by the company and would need to be returned and refilled.”

According to Simmons, many bottle collectors prefer to dig for their treasures, instead of buying them in stuffy auction houses and a large contingent share stories of finding bottles in one of the most unlikely of places.

“People might laugh about this, but there are two primary sources for old bottles. The first place is the old family homestead trash dump. Finding these old trash dumps at these old homesteads, I’d find a few laying around but I’d find where there would be a concentration of cans and I’d start to dig.

“The second was the old outhouse. They would throw their trash down into the outhouse, particularly where there was a lot of snow, because you didn’t want to go out to the trash. They would just take it out with them and dump it, now it’s just fertile soil,” laughed Simmons.

“I never know what I’ll find in the old outhouse. I can tell a lot about the family when I dig in there. Different bottles, marbles, doll parts, guns, rings, watches, false teeth, it all tells me about the family. Sometimes I can tell when the family had come into some money, because I find more glass and more stuff, as they get more affluent. It becomes an archeological thing, I find it incredible fascinating.”

Simmons says that digging and excavating hundred-year-old privies might seem like work to others but to him, it’s fun, exciting and relaxing. 

“It helps me get rid of stress. Some people say ‘watching you do your hobby wears me out’, they see it as work, but for me it’s like going to the gym and pumping iron. It’s a stress reliever.”

Simmons also has found divine intersection between his fascination with minerals, colored glass and his faith. Although he grew up in a strongly atheistic household, he couldn’t help but notice the connection between patterns in nature and patterns in man. 

“The aesthetics and the design [of the bottles] spoke to me deeply of engineering because you have to blend things to get shape and color. For it to be a pleasing thing, there had to be certain things to occur. It couldn’t be random. And it was repeatable and predictable. Random processes cannot create predictability.

“I went into college and studied chemistry and I liked geology, the sciences and evolutionary theory. The thing that kept bothering me, being out on the farm and the ranch so much around nature, it felt like there was too much orderliness. Randomness doesn’t do this. There has to be a design here, and to have a design there has to be a designer. That really drew me to the creator. I see him in natural things.”

Every collector has a “white whale,” the piece that would make a collection complete. That item that is almost unattainable, yet we think about it every time we are out hunting. What is Simmons’ “white whale?” What is the piece that would complete his collection?

“I tease a friend of mine in Nevada, we go on digs in a couple of spots up there. When I call him I ask him  ‘Lance, have you found that cobalt blue Kelly’s Old Cabin Bitters yet?’ and he laughs and chuckles.  That’s the piece. It’s a cabin shape. I have a brown one, but it’s a generic brown, those are still worth a couple of bucks, but the cobalt blue one could be tens of thousands of dollars. It would just knock my socks off if I saw that. My heart would be pumping; someone would need to resuscitate me. I would be totally shocked if I was digging and even saw a little piece of it I would turn to the other person and ask them to pinch me. That bottle, at this point, is a phantom.”