My friend Karen gave me some plums from her tree this past week, not quite enough for a batch of jam, so out of sheer curiosity I threw in some ripe mango–and the juice of a lime. Since we like fruit sauce more than jam, I went easy on the sugar, enough to keep it from spoiling, not enough to make it gel.

After tasting the result, I would do that again in a heartbeat.

I was pretty much out of jars at that point, though, and not done experimenting. Gail offered me her old canning jars; she hadn’t done any of that in lo these many years and she wasn’t about to start again now. (Boy did that sound familiar. She’s old enough to be my mom, though, so she might have a point.)

And so Saturday evening I went over to pick them up.

They were in two boxes in her garage.  To her surprise, they were also filled–with what, or when she’d done it, she had no idea. Clearly (squinting at the liquid black with a topsoil of green) whatever it was was in no way fit for consumption anymore.

But those jars… (To my relief, I couldn’t get them open. Nobody’s volunteered yet. But it will have to be done. Disposals are a wonderful invention, and, come to think of it, so are face masks.)

Curiosity got to me and I googled the brand. Atlas Mason home canning jars stopped being produced in–are you ready for this?

1964.

Yup, they’ve got that wide-shouldered look mentioned on another site, yup, them’s the ones, looks like.

Umm… Not to sound in any way ungrateful…

Karen asked me at church today if I was going to need any more plums. Yes, I con-Kerr-ed, and thank you, just as soon as I get some over to her of what I’ve already created (in a new jar) from her first batch.

Shortly after seeing Gail, I learned that the local Target has pints and halfpints in stock again now, that their store season isn’t over yet. They come to about a buck a jar.