I heard of Barry Johnson in one of those “Believe it or Not” quips that crop up on the net, but I was still surprised when Kerrville County tried to take his warehouse by eminent domain. There was a story, I figured, maybe just a human interest item, but I was curious.

Barry turned out to be a rather ordinary Texan in jeans, cowboy boots and a western shirt with snaps instead of buttons. He met me with a troubled but ready smile and a handshake, “You’re that reporter fellow? I’m Barry.”

“Alex Anderson, Glad to meet you.”

“Mr. Anderson, you want to see my warehouse that they are tryin’ to tear down?”

“Alex, please. Yes, if you don’t mind.”

Barry gave me a sideways look, like there was something there I did not understand and he was not about to talk about it. That was one of the things I found peculiar, but not the last thing, the unexpected thing. That was yet to come.

He worked the combination on a huge steel lock and slid open the doors. The warehouse could have served as aircraft storage hangar at one time. It was huge.

“These are the jars and bottles. I’ve been collecting them all my life, A lot are from my dad and grandad, who did the same. There’s a lot to collect, you know.”

I walked in. There were windows high in the walls and light streamed through dusty motes and onto the worn concrete floor. Pallets and crates, bins and shelves, more crates and shipping containers were lined up, haphazard, on every wall and on several levels, stacked as high as the ancient yellow forklift could reach. Every one was filled with sealed jars, from jelly to spaghetti sauce, some with the labels still on them, and bottles, soda and beer and wine and orange juice, and some old glass milk bottles.

There were thousands, no, hundreds of thousands of jars and bottles. Every one was sealed tight.

“Barry, how many have you got here?”

He shook his head, “I don’t really know. When I started, I took over from my dad, I used to count. I got up to about 18,000 before I quit, and that was a long time ago. I stopped counting. There’s some glass back in the side shed there that’s well over a hundred years old. Like I said, there’s no shortage.”

“According to the story, these are all filled…”

“…with sorrow. Yeah, that’s the thing. I guess I inherited that from my family.”

I picked up one of the glass containers near me. At first glance it looked empty, but I rubbed some of the dust off with my sleeve and looked again. There was a slight yellow mist inside. It swirled around as I shook the glass.

“Be careful there, Mr. Anderson. Some of that glass is pretty fragile. You don’t want to spill that stuff, let me tell you.”

“Barry, what is this, really? How do you bottle sorrow? I mean, it is a little hard to believe.”

“The folks at the County told me the same thing. It’s just exactly what I said, sorrow. Unhappiness.”

I think he recognized my skeptical expression.

“Look, Mr. Anderson..”

“Alex, please.”

“OK, Alex. I come across someone hurting. The sorrow is plain on their face. I always carry a few glass containers in a leather satchel. I just sit them down and extract the sorrow and seal it in the glass. It only takes a few minutes.”

I made a sideways smile, humoring him. “So, what happens to that person?”

“Why, just what you would expect. They are happy. They smile.”

“Do they lose the bad memories? Do they forget their past? How does that work exactly, Barry?”

“No, none of that. It’s real simple, uh, Alex. I just take their sorrow. It’s a kind of service. I can’t say how it works, it just does.”

So far it sounded like a weird little side story, a half column in the back pages. Maybe the real story was the eminent domain taking.

“So they want to tear down this warehouse for a ball park? Can you tell me how you feel about that?”

“I don’t feel good about it, Mr… Alex. I’ve been fighting this for a while. The county isn’t paying me much, not enough to move all these fragile glass containers, for sure. I got a lawyer, but he doesn’t seem to be able to do much either. In fact, one of those jars,” he pointed to a bin, “is his.”

“Really. So what’s the next step?”

“I don’t rightly know. If there isn’t some miracle. the bulldozers will be here early tomorrow.”

He looked at me once more with a strange expression, “I don’t see a lot of sorrow in you, Alex. Maybe you lead a pretty good life. But if you want me to try, I will.”

I bit my tongue. “That’s OK, Barry, thanks but no thanks. I’m OK.”

“Alex, can I tell you something? Go far away from this place. Across the ocean, even.” He swept his arm over the collection of jars and bottles, “There’s a whole lot of sorrow going to be loose tomorrow.”

I thanked him, shook his hand and went back to my car. I called the County to verify tomorrow’s demolition schedule. Then I went back to my office to write it up.

The bulldozers would just drive right through the walls on schedule. In my mind I could hear the tinkling of broken glass.

That was a few days ago.

Most of us are hiding, crying, worrying.

You all know what happened. You are all gathering jars and bottles, but no one can find Barry Johnson.