Big Red's "Stuff"

Since I began this blog I have alluded to the fact that my grandmother, Big Red, has contributed significantly to my packrattishness (I think I just invented a new word), hoarding, and/or my inability to part with “stuff”. Having just spent the weekend at her home celebrating her 102 birthday I have some thoughts on Big Red’s “stuff”.
Big Red’s “stuff” falls into several categories:

1. Good Stuff: an antique glass Daisy churn, an antique Roseville pitcher, the awesome circa 1950 drapes in her den.


2. Stuff that might be made into something else or that might be employed for some important function at a later date: Ski rope that might be woven around a metal lawn chair frame to make a new seat, a piece of wormy barn wood on which someone might want to decoupage a picture, a full skirt from the 1950s that could be used as a tablecloth.


3. Family history stuff: The dress her mother wore in her high school graduation photo, numerous scrapbooks, diaries, and photo albums, the original school teaching contract offering x amount of money per Choctaw pupil taught and every letter or greeting card she has ever received stored in manila folders by year.


4. Stuff that is just plain crap: 47 florist vases and containers, trashcans made from five gallon ice cream containers with sheets of rolled up glossy magazine pages covering the outside, and pantyhose and/or nylon stockings to tie up plants with or to store onions in (you put an onion in the leg, tie a knot and repeat until the leg is filled then hang it in the garage).

The category I am interested in today is #3 Family History Stuff. What a rich history our family has, and what a wonderful keeper of the history we have in our 102 year old matriarch. She has kept the almanacs of our family’s existence. Her three bedroom house and her two car garage are full of the evidence of her multi-generational family. She has the original copies of generations of diaries under her bed, stored neatly in shallow boxes. (So what if they are beer boxes.) She has the photo album/scrapbook from her teen years when she rolled her stockings and had a spit-curl in the middle of her forehead. She has the dress, tattered though it may be, her mother wore in her high school graduation portrait and the speech her mother made to her fellow classmates on that day and the deportment metal awarded. (Does anyone award deportment anymore? Maybe we should!) She has copies of civil war conscriptions. She has small account books listing pennies spent during the depression. She has a photo of herself standing by one of the first cars her family owned – an Apperson Jackrabbit. She has the baby name book with the odd spelling of my first name. She has every class photo of every class she ever taught. She has framed photos of her children, her grandchildren, her great-grandchildren and her great-great-grandchildren (or just her grands as she refers to us when she lumps us all together) in every room of her house (yes, even the bathrooms). In short, she has a house full of stuff; some great, some not so great – but it is her “stuff” and it makes her who she is and it defines the family. It is a museum of sorts where we go to learn about ourselves, where we go to laugh and cry and be awed by the wonderful people who came before us. Thank you, Big Red, for keeping the “stuff” so we have a little better insight into who we are.