They might not look like much to you. And the title includes the word "Stuff," which is not a word implying great worth.
It's even hard to read the covers unless you get in close. But Dad saved and treasured these, and after he was dead, Mom treasured them as well.
You could say that they treasured them the way that dragons are said to treasure gold. That is, they collected them and piled them with other treasured things (although in boxes in closets, rather than in a heap to lie on).
I am unsure if dragons are supposed to hoard gold for it's symbolic load, rather than their utility. Dragons don't exist and therefore writers are free to spin reasons that the gold might be useful.
In my parent's case, the books definitely represented Knowledge, Skill, and Industry. I don't think they've ever been read. They were saved so that they could be useful to the children one day, perhaps. Or the grandchildren.
They worried about basic building and making skills being lost. I can sort of see the point. They bought an empty lot and built their first house, with the help of relatives. Sometimes, looking back, it feels a bit borderline Urban Amish. From the Disney movies that they preferred, I'm sure they saw it as maintaining the American Pioneering Spirit.
I feel guilty tossing the American Pioneering Spirit in the trash. Even if the covers are all falling off and even intacts sets are going for about five bucks on ebay. There was no ebay back when these became treasure.
Back then, books were expensive. Working people didn't finish high school. If you inherited books, especially useful ones like these, you kept and treasured them.
I suspect that these had come from Ralph, which would have given them added symbolic weight. Dad didn't get along with many of the people he worked with. (Or his relatives or neighbors, but that's a different story.) Ralph was an older man when he was a younger one, and he respected him.
Ralph had an electrical workshop at home and tinkered with electrical things. He didn't just put in his time at work, he read up on things and talked about things and figured things out. He also gave my Dad rides to work for the year that he couldn't drive, himself, for medical reasons. It seemed that gratitude added to respect yields admiration. Dad admired Ralph.
When Ralph died, his wife asked Dad to take anything he wanted from Ralph's workshop. She said Ralph would want it that way. I'm pretty sure that the set of 1923 Hawkin's Electrical Guides came from Ralph. So did two oscilloscopes, some meters, and various bits and pieces.
I'd tell you what the bits and pieces were, but, hey - I was a kid when they were collected and stored out in the shed. I know about the oscilloscopes because I was able to use them, later, to get some extra credit for a high school physics class. The rest of the things just stayed in jars and boxes and drawers. I knew that some of the things out in the shed, in the upper garage, in the room off the garage, in the garage . . . (this represents moving to different houses, with different areas that Dad kept toolish things) . . . were Ralph things. But Dad had collected and bought other things, so I'd have been guessing if I tried to identify which things had been Ralph's.
Except I'm pretty sure that these were. And I'm throwing out Dad's gratitude and hopes for the future, America the way America used to be, and Knowledge, Skill, and Industry.
It's going to be a heavy trash bin this week.
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To lighten things up, the reason I'm tossing things (including the set of all that is treasured and worthy) is that I got up the energy to do some deep cleaning and organizing. And you can't do that without tossing things. Not really.
I have two big boxes for Goodwill. I threw away other things that didn't twang my guilt strings.
And I did this:
This is a completly cleaned and organized cupboard. There was also much other kitchening, but it is not complete and you will therefore see no photos.
This has room for other things. There are blanks spaces. Look at them.
Oh, and this isn't complete . . .
. . . but it had been bugging the b'geebers out of me, so you can see it, too.
Some of the things on it will be gone tonight. It had been covered with assorted things, assorted things with a heavy dust and grime buildup, in the case of the things on the bottom shelves . . . and the very top shelf. Now you can see horizontal wood.
That didn't sound right. Let's try again. You can see usable work space. Better.
The tubs don't go there, but as I said, the organizing is not complete, yet. But it's clean and there's space and I threw out a lot of other things, and donated a lot more. I'm letting that balance out my callous dismissal of Treasured Dreams.
