What Is It About Canning Jars?

It’s canning season, and I just realized I am obsessed with canning jars. There are canning jars that get used for canning tomato products such as juice, salsa, ketchup, spaghetti sauce, and diced tomatoes; pickled okra; pickled beets; pickles…dill, bread and butter, lime, and relish; salsa verde; apple butter; blackberry jelly, and strawberry and peach jams. Wow! That makes me tired just thinking about all that work! Then there are the jars that stay on the shelf and sadly don’t get used, and of course, the prized jars that get a special place on the shelf. Who’s with me?

I have no idea why I have so many canning jars and why I keep buying more. Many got passed down from Grandma Mattie Sue and my mom. Some came from auctions, yard sales, and some I bought new. Yep, I just had to have the new purple Ball canning jars that came out a few years ago, in both pint and quart sizes mind you, because they matched my purple kitchen. My kitchen is now blue, but the purple Ball jars still hold varieties of nuts and dried fruits in my pantry.

In my collection, you’ll find Atlas, Presto, Kerr, Ball round and square, Port, Boyds, and Drey. There are pints, quarts, and half-gallons. Blue, light purple, clear, and the newer purple ones. Zinc lids, glass lids, some with wire bails. There are two Crown jars with glass lid inserts from The Dominion Glass Companies of Montreal, Canada in my collection. The half-gallon has the Diamond D logo and 1943 (showing the year manufactured) on the bottom. And I have a #13 Ball Perfect Mason jar. More about that later! I’m not so obsessed that I know how old each jar is by looking at the logo, and I’m ok with that. I just like them. They make me think of living in a time when you canned your food because that’s what got you through the winter. And they remind me of my grandma and the farm.…it’s that plain and simple.

Did ya know that Ball Brothers Glass Company was based in Muncie, Indiana and they mass-produced those bluish-aqua or “Ball Blue” jars we all love until 1937?

But why are they blue? Ball Brothers used sand, a major part of glassmaking, from the shores of Lake Michigan, and that’s what gave the glass it’s blue color. Different impurities in sand produce different colors of glass. Who knew?

Have you ever turned over a Ball jar and noticed a number on the bottom? Those numbers are “mold numbers” and were used to identify which mold was used in making the jar on the machine. Most will have a mold number of 0-15. They basically used the mold number to determine which mold was producing inferior jars. When one was replaced, it was usually with one of the double-digit numbers. Each mold was hand-cut, and they say it is nearly impossible for the logo to be engraved identically from one mold to the next…meaning each could be unique and like little snowflakes where no two jars are the same.

So, what’s the story behind the elusive #13 jar? Rumor or urban legend, whatever you want to call it, is that during The Prohibition years of the ’20s to early ‘30s moonshiners often used fruit jars (mason jars) for their shine or hooch. It was said that being the superstitious type, the moonshiners would break the unlucky #13 jars so as not to fall on bad luck. When I first heard this story, I ran home and went through my jar stash and guess what I found…a #13 jar…guess they aren’t so unlucky after all!