SHOTS
AROUND THE WORLD
Local
collectors show off their shotglasses.
BY
URSULA EVANS-HERITAGE
Q: What do a nurse, a video store manager, and the owner
of a car garage have in common?
A: They all collect shot glasses.
For the last ten years Tammy
Deppert, a youthful 42-year-old with carefully
applied makeup, manicured nails, and not one blonde hair out of place,
has collected shot glasses. It started out as kind of a joke for Deppert,
who works as a manager at Flicks 'n' Pics.
 |
| Tammy
Deppert's collection |
But when she inherited a bar from a family friend
and put it in her living room, she got serious. The glasses sit arranged
carefully on shelves next to the bar. Close attention has been paid
to the décor, in a way that matches Deppert's well-groomed appearance.
The bar even has a name, the Tiki Lounge, with cocktail umbrellas
and a fake parrot to go with the theme.
Her friends and customers picked up most of the 50
shot glasses while traveling. "It's hard to pick a favorite," she
said. "It's really meaningful that friends and customers take the
time to get them for me."
Her first foreign shot glass came from England and
has a picture of the Beatles on it. Another glass has a picture of
a witch and came from Salem, Mass. She has one Buffy the Vampire
Slayer glass that she ordered off E-bay, and has her eye on one
from Sex and the City.
It's taken former Texan Carla
Richardson 25 years to collect her 150 shot
glasses. She displays them in her study on handmade shelves her father
built, arranged geographically by region and representing most of
the 50 states. The glasses are clean, not because she uses them, but
because she dusts them every two months.
Like Deppert, Richardson's collection includes glasses
from around the world that friends gave her as souvenirs. Her favorite
is a hand-painted Costa Rican countryside. An AIDS patient of hers
in Texas gave it to her. "He took his last trip and brought me back
this glass," she said.
Richardson now works as a nurse in the surgical intensive
care unit at Sacred Heart. She says the hardest things about moving
to Eugene were learning to be politically correct and taking the time
to sort her recycling.
Tom Arnold is many things:
an art lover, business owner, writer, skier, and yes, shot glass collector.
But his collection is a little different from Richardon's and Deppert's
— he collected all 60 himself.
When he started skiing 25 years ago, he decided to
collect a shot glass from every ski resort he visited. The resorts
include Whistler Blackcomb, Steamboat and all the Oregon resorts except
Hoodoo, which has never had a shot glass as far as Arnold knows.
He doesn't make a big deal out of his collection,
preferring to display it in a corner of his living room. "I would
like to display them on shelves, but I need my wall space for more
important things, like art," he said. Indeed, the art in his home
is quite striking, as are the deer that often wander through his backyard.
"Car Talk" plays on his radio, which seems fitting for the owner of
a car garage. Arnold still loves to ski, although he has been spending
less time on the slopes since he began devoting every Sunday to writing
his novel.
Although Deppert, Richardson and Arnold all place
different levels of importance on their collections, one thing is
clear — they collect more than just shot glasses. They're collecting
memories of people and places and dreams of journeys they have yet
to take.
