Epic Win: Glass Skippy Jars
Submitted and Written by Charles H
The glass Skippy Peanut Butter jars were an essential part of my childhood. They had a million uses ranging from where dad held screws, nail and other various items on the workbench in the garage to providing a terrarium for all the bugs I hunted as a child. They were way bigger (and more useful) jars than the other brands used. There was nothing that sounded quite like that metal lid being unscrewed from the jar…it was just so satisfying.
Charles H is tapping into something big here (great write up too!). More than a win for the Skippy jars themselves, every kid had a secret container to hold their valuables. What did you use to hold your precious things — a Skippy jar, a shoebox, an ammo box from the Army Surplus Store? What’d you keep inside of it?
When I was a kid, I used a hollowed out book. I glued the pages together, then cut the middle out. That’s where I hid my basketball cards.
Picture of Jesus: Check.
Bullet: Check.
This jar holds all the important stuff!
my mom recently told me I was lucky PB didn’t come in glass jars like this anymore after my 16 month old nailed me in the face with a full (plastic) container of Jif, she was right, I’d hate to think what this one would have done. . .
I still have some of these, using ‘em for the same things Dad did. A classic is forever…right up there in re-usefulness with Sucrets tins. Didn’t everyone store pins in those? We don’t recycle – we re-use!
Wasn’t aware Skippy Peanut Butter jars were a proper storage method for ammunition.
I used a few items to hide stuff.
A hollowed out copy of War and Peace.
A pair of shoes with false bottoms.
And a speaker.
Glass Skippy Jar: The ultimate survival tool.
I actually had one of those full kitchens when I was a kid, the kind no taller than a 5 year old with a stove and an oven and real working water dispenser in the door of the fridge. And if I ever had anything to hide, it went in the fridge. Who the heck is gonna go around poking their nose in a plastic fridge?
I buy these at estate sales. I imagine an older gentlemen who took the time to save these trinkets would appreciate me holding them as valuable as they did.
Perfect size for dyeing Easter eggs.
For hiding stuff I used either the tape deck in my stereo, or an ammo box that held 5.57 NATO, It’s covered in beige latex house paint on one side. I routinely hid (for a teen) large amounts of cash, small amounts of pot and my pipe in that box, all wrapped in a black bandanna. Hasn’t been found yet.
…including by you?
That is so cool to see! For me, I often reminisce about glass mayonnaise jars with the metal lids. I remember that sound meaning a good sandwich is on its way or perhaps Grandma made some macaroni and potato salad.
Good idea L, about buying them at estate sales. A jar of tiny treasures!
I kept my keepsakes in my LEGO box, no one ever bothered to look in there but me!
Hid my first porno mag in plain sight, too. Skinned an old Nat Geo cover and glued it to the spine.
I had a box, it was a pine box with just a simple varnish on it. One year a friend of mine and I loaded it with our “treasures” and a note about what life was like that year. (We were 9 I think.) We sealed it with Duct tape and buried it next to a juniper bush in my yard. It’s been 20 years now, and I often wonder about going back to that house and asking permission to dig it up.
Those were the good old days
All my important stuff was kept in a burger patty box. And by importanr stuff, I mean a zoo map and a penny my cousin flattened on the railroad track for me.
Our house had a dumbwaiter in it leading from my room (which had once been the master bedroom) to the pantry. Before we moved into the house the previous owners had fastened the dumbwaiter at my room, so it acted as a sort of cupboard. There were little compartments in it, and I used it to store my precioussss thingsssss. I think I left some of them behind when we moved out of that house.
I used to keep my ‘important things’ in a file box, in my closet. It was pink, and said ‘only lovely things in here’, so my mom never looked inside it. My ‘imporant things’ consisted of a razor blade, my lucky quarter, $11.50, and a pair of red and white tube socks. And a leather bound book, which I never wrote in, cause it looked too pretty…
I kept my “precious stuff” in my great-grandpas old food container (called Henkelmann in german, look at http://www.hytta.de/index_f.htm?kisten/182.htm for a pic), which was made in 1908! I still own it, now it holds spare buttons and safety pins – while all my preciousssss vanished over the years. And best of all: it’s still tight, doesn’t leak a drop after 101 years.. .
I’m too young to remember glass Skippy jars, but I bet I’d find some in my grandfather’s workshop if I went down there. I just bought some all-natural Smucker’s peanut butter in a very similar glass jar, complete with metal lid. I think I’ll start saving them for nails and such in memory of my Poppy
This is a good one. When we were little my Sister and I used to fight over who got the PB jar, if, and only if, my Mom didn’t need it for sewing or crafts or my Dad didn’t need it to soak some dirty machine parts in gasoline or lacquer thinner. Lots of little Molotov cocktails in the garage, those were the days!
My Mom still had a Skippy jar of this vintage under the kitchen sink until she moved into Assisted Living. It was full of curtain hangers, those big Z-shaped pins you can’t touch without being stabbed. She hid the key to her safe deposit box in it. No matter where she lived, we knew where to look in an emergency.
Since I was very young I always remember buying every cigar box I ever found at a garage sale. Some of them are incredibly well decorated, and I keep my favorite childhood mementos in them now.
I have 6985476 of those full of different sized nuts, bolts, findings, bus fuses, etc. I would rather look through them all than label them.
Sucrets tins were great… so were Band-Aid tins!
We used these as pee jars when we went camping with our camper (the kind that went in place of the cap on a pickup). Instead of having to find a rest area with a 5 year old and 2 year old, the wide mouth of the Skippy jar made a nice potty.
I had a variety of containers, jars, bags, wooden boxes [mostly from cigars], candy boxes, and collectible tins. unfortunately, i buried most of them around the house while still too young to know better. makes for interesting moments though… mom just moved her veggie garden to the back, and while tilling discovered the rather large stash of silver dimes my sister and I took from her & buried 30 years ago!
It wasn’t so much the container, but the location of where I hid my childhood valuables. We had a HVAC vent high up on the wall whose duct was no longer connected to the new furnace system. I could reach its grill if I stood on my bed. So I would unscrew the vent cover, put the precioussssss in a plastic bag and hang it from a nail inside the duct. A bit cumbersome, so only certain things went there.
Ah, hiding places… I had many Band-Aid tins. I also had several hiding spots around the house: inside the bathroom air vent, inside the unused fireplace… But the best one was one I had wanted all my childhood, but didn’t get until we pulled up some old linoleum in my bedroom: a loose floorboard that opened into the space between the living room ceiling and my floor. It was a PERFECT place to hide things, like in numerous movies and books. I was so excited… Of course, I didn’t have anything to actually HIDE there… :-/
I believe it was the Orson Welles radio version of HG Well’s War of the Worlds that used the sound of a coffee jar being unscrewed in a WC pan for the sound of the Martian spaceships. (1930’s, 40’s?)
Altoids boxes – the new Sucrets box.
When my dad died, I took his band-aid box of wheat-backs, and his band-aid box of little screw drivers. I also took his vaseline jar of screws. It’s been a year, and I haven’t had to buy a screw since then. The exact right screw is always in dad’s jar.
Wow. I’m kicking myself that I didn’t get all of the coffee tins and various glass jars of stuff my Grandpa had on a set of 2X4 shelves in his garage. I only got the “most important ones”, with wire nuts, beaded venetian blind chains, and maybe one jar of screws.
Anyway, I have had several stashes over the years, one was a tin Snicker’s box that was painted like a boom box that I fixed a small lock hasp to. That’s where I hid computer discs, marbles, and random rocks… not all at the same time mind you. Another was the space behind the intercom speaker in my room, which housed money for sure, and random other valuables. I also used this strange little round wooden jar type thing a friend gave my mom to hide money in.
Also as a kid, me and my cousin uncovered a previous kid’s stash at my house. There were all kinds of coins stuck in the space between the inner and outer boards of my back yard fence. SCORE!
I still have a dent in my forhead (left side at the hairline) from where a glass jar of peanut butter fell out of the cupboard and hit me when I was two.
People needed to learn to feed me when I asked…
man, my brother loved hiding stuff in his room (mostly because I was always snooping around). But when his best friend moved away in 5th grade, he started showing them to me because he had no one else to share it with, and if he told my parents they’d get mad for the hole he carved in the wall
. I always wondered why he hung that ugly picture there… he still loves hiding stiff, he made a secret compartment for spare keys under his car in case he gets locked out.