Shining Brightly.......

I really don't have a collection of shiny brite ornaments.  I have the remains of three different households of the early in history created decoration.  When I first started teaching  I bought a set of red and gold balls.  That was in 1972 that I started to own just a few ornaments.  It was a sparse tree and they were the only ornaments on the tree with all red lights.  I think there were some yellow bows on the tree but it was a minimal amount of things on the tree.

When my brother lived in an apartment during his early college years at ISU he bought some for a tree at his place in Ames.  When he left school my parents inherited his grocery bag of leftover decorations. It had garland in the sack with a batch of shiny brite ballls.  They had the blue, purple and silver colors in them.  My mom had red, a magenta red and gold ones on her own tree. One year when my parents were not putting a tree up anymore, I bought them a small tree.  I took my shiny brites and wired them on the tree with some lights.  That way they had one already decorated and could just be carried out from the store room in December.  They were pretty pleased with that idea and used it for a lot of years.  

Through the years I now have that tree's ornaments and mom's and  brother's. I found some in the toy boxes when I was closing the house down and more in a crawl space under the house. This whole group is probably a couple dozen in number and they don't get put on a tree anymore.   I do remember that one red one is still among all the other ornaments that do go on the big tree.

They are a good piece of history and now the plastic ones are out there pretending to be the real thing.  This is sad.  I caved in the other day and bought some plastic ones. I put them on an outdoor tree. I have compromised now to the plastic and that is sad too.