Collector quits, no ifs, ands or butts

I get asked all the time to update some of the “big” stories that I’ve been lucky enough to stumble across in my 97 years of writing columns for the hometown tattler.

Well, like a full-service massage parlor, I aim to squeeze.

So on Monday morning I boarded my Vista Guzzler and set sail east to revisit the Spokane Valley’s foremost ashtray collector.

I’ll be honest.

I hadn’t given much thought to Ray Blowers or the tale I once wrote about his ashtray addiction.

It was 1995, after all.

But Blowers beamed me an email last week to jog my memory and to make an announcement.

Ashtray Ray is making a serious attempt to liquidate his entire 1,000-plus ashtray inventory.

What a shocker. This is the Spokane Valley equivalent of the Guggenheim unloading all of its Picassos.

“I am having a yard sale offering these glass-and-metal treasures for a measly 25 to 50 cents each,” wrote Blowers.

“Just thought you would like to know that at last I am at peace.”

Yep. Same funny guy who taught high school 33 years, retiring from Central Valley in 1991.

Now 79, Blowers stays busy volunteering for the food bank and cruising garage sales for various treasures.

What tickled me about Blowers 16 years ago still makes me grin. The man so obsessed with amassing ashtrays has never taken up the cursed habit.

“My father was a three-pack-a-day Camel man,” explained Blowers. “Before he got out of bed each morning he’d be lighting up his first Camel of the day.

“I knew right then I didn’t want to be a smoker.”

So why ashstrays?

In the early days of retirement, Blowers said he found himself long on time and short on plans.

So Blowers and Shirley, his wife of nearly 60 years, began traveling and visiting antique shops along the way.

Ashtrays caught Ray’s fancy.

They were cheap. They were prodigious. Merchants were only too happy to get rid of them.

Soon, Blowers was bringing them home by basket-loads.

“I never had an end plan,” he said. “It just seemed like the thing to do.”

In those nicotine-stained days of yore, ashtrays were everywhere. They were the personification of low-budget advertising and tacky gifts to let friends know where you went on vacation.

But in these nonsmoking times the ashtray’s status has diminished accordingly.

Even so, buyers over the weekend whittled Blowers’ collection down to about 800 ashtrays. They fill cardboard boxes that are piled unceremoniously on the front porch of his vintage home.

So many to choose from.

“We had a tub of fun in California,” declares one ashtray.

Another advertises the Hotel Luna.

Chrome ashtrays. Ceramic ashtrays.

Sombrero shapes. Bathtub shapes. A foot-shaped ashtray advertises Spokane’s Expo ’74.

Ashtrays from casinos. Ashtrays from San Francisco…

The compulsive nature of collectors has always fascinated me.

I’ve interviewed plenty of them over the years, like the Idahoan who had more than 100 different brands of potato mashers.

My all-time favorite collector was a Spokane man who had filled an entire house top to basement with pig collectibles.

It’s a strange world sometimes.

I couldn’t leave Blowers’ empty-handed.

I gave him five bucks for three ashtrays. One proclaims the 1947 Tournament of Roses; another advertises Ben Cohn Jewelers, a long-gone Spokane business that once took up space at 722 W. Riverside Ave.

My favorite, however, is an aged Japanese-made ashtray with a delicate floral design.

“Souvenir of Spokene, Wash.,” reads the gold text.

Oops.

Before I left, I asked Ashtray Ray if he had a word of advice to impart to anyone who may be considering getting into the ashtray collecting game.

As a matter of fact he did.

“Don’t.”