The Junk Jar

Soon, I will be posting some photos of my new collage jewelry, but, in the meantime, I thought I would tell you about one of my childhood memories. In the 50s and 60s we were easily entertained with simple things, very simple things. We had two stations to choose from on our black and white TV, so we had little technology to keep us busy. My sister and I spent our time playing with paper dolls, board games, playing school, and making tents out of old blankets, but one of our favorite past times was going to Grandma Bartocci's house and asking if we could get out "The Junk Jar." This special jar held an assortment of random odds and ends that Grandma had collected over the years. It was a Mason or Ball jar that held wonderful things like a few marbles, buttons, little animal figures , pieces of hardware, jacks, coins,Cracker Jacks prizes, and other "magical" items. I don't know why we were so intrigued with the jar, but I thought it would be interesting to make my own collection of junk for children to dump out on the floor when they come to my house to visit. Sure enough, I found that they immediately were drawn to it and the junk was the first thing they wanted when they came through the door! Of course, you can't let very small children play with junk jar because of choking danger, but you just might want to start collecting your own odds and ends for your very own junk jar! I think that part of the fascination with Grandma's jar was that we had to ask permission to play with it. So, you might keep that in mind.

I don't know what happened to that jar, but I sure would like to look through it one more time.