An Odd Photo Album

In a recent post I talked about a big quilted and lacey photo album that I'd inherited from my Grandma D.  I said:

Oddly, there are a lot of pictures of Presidents in this album. I would have really been shaking my head over them if one of them didn't have a printed statement on it that it had been presented to Uncle B.

Having dismembered the photo album for scrap, I must say that I was mistaken.  That was Grandpa's name on the picture of Reagan and it was either a donation request or a thank you for a donation.  There were about six pictures of Reagan, total.  Some of them were post cards.

There were also a few pictures of GHW Bush, one of Deukmejian, and two copies of a picture of Howard Jarvis with In Memoriam on the back.  These are interspersed with pictures of grandchildren, old pictures of their children, pictures of friends, and . . . other things.

There is, for example, mounted as if it were a photo, a 3x5 post it note with the words:

     1987
     Hose
     Bras
     Panties.

There was a small stack of envelopes with peoples names on them, but nothing in them.  There were a few of my Uncle B's business cards, an ad for condominiums, and a couple of pictures that turned out to be solicitations for Libery Godparent Homes.

The album was a real time warp.  Not only were different pages filled with pictures from different decades, two or three different decades could be on the same page.  I have a certain sympathy for that.  If fact, I can't swear that I don't have a similar album, somewhere.   

Perhaps I should make a note to myself to put a few random notes and grocery lists into an album some day, just to make my kids shake their heads when I'm gone.  A little mystification is good for the mind. 

I Can See Why She Kept Them

Last night I sorted through two full file boxes of old paperwork and put most of them in the recycling bin.  That makes the stack of boxes sitting in the back yard that came from my mother's place just a little noticably shorter.  Not significantly shorter, just noticably.

I can see why she kept them, though, so I don't feel even a little bit of frustration or annoyance.  Most of them are papers related to Uncle B's estate and to the trust that it set up for Grandma & Grandpa. 

Uncle B was Mom's older brother.  He died of leukemia in middle age.  Mom was his executor and then the executor of the trust for the rest of their parents' lives.  It was a big job and she was diligent at it.  I don't find it odd that she kept the evidence of it packed in boxes for decades. 

She probably could have pruned out G&G's old utility bills, but what the heck.  She probably just put all of the old files in a box at some point without sorting through them at all, just to get them out of the way fast.  And she'd have no reason to go back through them once they were packed away.

Some of the papers were official documents, and I'll be keeping some of those.  I probably have other copies of Uncle B's death certificate, but I know I don't have copies of his birth certificate, honorable discharge, and military reserve papers. 

The big stack of continuing education certificates, on the other hand, I scanned and then recycled.  The older ones were police related and the newer ones were real estate related. 

I'm going to keep what look like public relations photos.  They're professionally done and taken at the police station.  I recognize Uncle B but have no idea who the other folks are.  The shots are obviously posed.  No one is looking at the camera.  Everyone is looking up and away at exactly the same sort of posed angle. 

I'm wondering if that was a standard pose back then.

I also found several more copies of my mother's high school portrait, in nice thick book-style cardboard matts.  Guess what my sister's will be getting for Christmas.  Well, maybe not Christmas.  That might be ghoulish, since Mom died last May.  But I'm starting to get quite a stack of these and it only seems fair to share the wealth.
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Last night was also the night for opening what looked like a Rubbermaid bin full of pictures.  There were pictures in it, and I was surprised at some of them.  But a fair bit of bin space was taken up by six boxed In Memoriam books. 

I made a bet with myself on what I'd find when I opened them, and I won that bet.  The ones from my family were mostly empty.  We've never been good at filling these kinds of things out.  Two of them were for Gerry's first and second wives. 

Gerry was Mom's second husband.  He was a great guy and an appreciated addition to the family.  (Here comes the guilt.) He was also adopted.  He had no children and his parents are dead.  So far as I know, he has no relatives, certainly none that I know about.

I've been collecting his pictures and papers.  For instance, there were a handful of his pictures mixed in with pictures of our older relatives in that bin.  It kind of made it hard to sort relatives that I didn't recognize from Gerry's friends.  Eventually I learned to recognize Gerry when he was young, and that made it easier.

I was able to remove the pertinent pages from the In Memoriam books.  Tossing the bindings and the blank pages will save a lot of space.  I may recycle even the pertinent pages after I've scanned them.  I'll have to look at them again before I decide.

Two surprising things in the bin were military photo albums.  One was Gerry's and one was my Dad's.  Dad had pulled out his military mementoes from time to time to share with us, when we were kids.  It's odd that he never showed us this album.  Stray thought - it might have been something that Grandma L kept tucked away, so that Mom and Dad didn't have it until after she died.  But that's just a stray thought.

Dad was an airplane mechanic during the Berlin Air Lift.  Gerry was in World War II.  His album includes a picture of him in a kilt, but I don't think that had anything to do with his military service.  If I had to guess, I'd guess that there was a photographer near a base who supplied costumes for photos and some of the guys liked the Scottish Costume thing.  It's definitely done by a photographer, rather than snapped by a friend. 

The biggest thing in the bin was a photo album that turned out to be Grandma D's.  It's a huge, square album.  Its cover was made of wood covered with quilting with lace ruffles around the edges to make it look even bigger.  It's heavy. 

The pages are those thick sticky things with transparent covers that can be pulled back.  I know from experience with other albums I've inherited that those things don't age well.  I'll be taking the album apart and just keeping the pictures that I don't already have copies of.  And it looks like I have copies of most of them.

Oddly, there are a lot of pictures of Presidents in this album.  I would have really been shaking my head over them if one of them didn't have a printed statement on it that it had been presented to Uncle B.  Either Uncle B was more of a go-getter than the family acknowledged or they give those out with donations.  I'm going to have to check on this.
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Let's see how the guilt's doing.  I got rid of some papers that I don't feel guilty about.  I got rid of some book covers that I don't feel guilty about.  I've filed some papers and pictures that I don't feel guilty about.  And I have a plan for some of the rest of it.

I kind of feel guilty about the little voice in my head that just wants to chuck Gerry's things.  I'm feeling a little down about the military albums, because they're bulky if I just keep them and work if I take them apart and sort and scan them.

And at the moment, my desk looks like this:

 

Beside my desk looks like this:

 

 

But I have a plan.  You may not be able to tell, but those stacks on my desk are sorted stacks.  They will not stay there long. 

 

Oh, and those thin cardboard boxes under the ipad in the lower right of that last photo - those are the Fortune Magazines that are going to be Worth Something One Day.  I'll tell you about them another day.  Right now I need to clear that desk.  See you on the other side



An Older Legacy

This is a replay of an old guilt release from before I started the blog.  When Grandma D died, I was given her shoes.  They had been bought for her after she had moved to the nursing home and had only been worn when she was taken to visit one of her children, usually my Aunt E.

When I say "when she was taken," I mean that the shoes were put on her, then she taken by wheelchair to the car, driven to Aunt E's house, taken by wheelchair inside, and sat where she wanted to sit.  Then the shoes were taken off, so that she could be more comfortable.

She had Parkinsons and was largely immobile by that time.  So when she died, the shoes were far to much like new to be thrown out.  By communal consent, or maybe just because my feet were the same size, I was given her last shoes.  I wasn't broke at the time, but I had been recently, and I had been raised by the people who considered it a family duty to be frugal and see that someone got the use out of those shoes.  Even if I hadn't had a recent memory of scrimping and pinching, it would have felt perfectly right.

 

As you can see, I got the full use from them.  In honor of Grandma and in honor of my thrifty relatives, I wore them until they wore out.  They were yardwork shoes after one sole came lose and had to be duct taped.  Then another pair of shoes descended to yardwork status.  No one needs two sets of yardwork shoes.

 

So I entered the phase of guilt.  Do I throw it out, and feel guilty about throwing out Grandma's shoes.  Or do I not throw it out, and feel guilty for having an extra pair of ugly shoes taking up space in my small closet.  (Throwing out the better pair of worn shoes wasn't an option.)

 

So I took a picture.  To remember.  And it worked.  I could throw the shoes away.  And now I've written about it, which is even better.