bizarre family heirlooms,anyone?

Everybody’s got something…some despicable item that has been passed down to them that they can’t quite bear to part with. Maybe there’s a good story behind it, or maybe it’s a conversation-starter. Perhaps you just keep in the back of your closet, hoping that it will disappear on its own one day…

Here’s mine: “The Parent Clock”. Some time back in the seventies, my brother-in law decided to make handmade christmas gifts for everyone. He was into the latest rage at the time–decoupage-- and nothing in his house was safe from his varnish and brush.
My parents were given a clock- a cast iron frying pan with a cutout photo of Mom on the A.M. side, and Dad on the P.M. side. These photos are not particularly flattering; I suspect Dave panicked and made this gift at the eleventh hour, and used the first pictures he could dig up. My parents are also dressed in 1970’s sartorial finery :D.
Since Dave was obviously proud of his creation, Mom and Dad thanked him politely and hung the clock in the kitchen that very christmas day. As I remember, a couple of weeks later, my mom had a sudden urge to repaint the kitchen, and everything came down from the walls. The clock was missing when she was done. It stayed missing for at least ten years.
When I moved to California in the mid-eighties, Mom shipped the clock out to me. She said she was passing on heirlooms. Mom is just too kind to throw away a handmade gift. Anyhow, the clock was even more horrible than I remembered. I loved it. It was hilarious. It hung on my wall for a year or so, until it was shaken to the floor by a moderate earthquake. The pan made a huge dent in the floor! Hubby and I packed it away, using “earthquake safety” as our excuse.
I was going through some old junk the other day, and the clock re-surfaced. Maybe someday I’ll hang it up again, just not TODAY.
Anyone else have some awful treasure to share? I know that the eclectic, marvelous group of people on the SDMB can outdo me in this department. I just KNOW it!!!
Bring it on!!!

–Tabithina

I have a mastodon tooth which has been passed down my great**66000 grandfather.:smiley:

woo, baby, do I ever. Well, I don’t have them, but I have my eye on them.

When my father was wounded in Vietnam, he was sent to a hospital in Japan. My grandparents visited him over there, and my Nana apparently understandably concerned about the health of her first born son, lost control of her taste, and purchaced two dolls. They are a man and a woman, both apparently Japanese in dress. They are sitting cross legged, with their wrists drawn to their shoulders, hands pointed forward. At the wrists are small, primitive hinges, with wieghts behind them. You gently touch the wrists, and a pendulum effect is created, the hands flex upward and down. For no reason.

But the true wierdness is the tounge. The same hinge-pendulum thing is attached to the head, with a small red tounge staying stationary. So when the head is touched, it moves forward and backward, the tounge darting in and out, the wrists bobing. It is truely strange.
These dolls lived on my grandmother’s livingroom tables, and all my cousins told stories about listening to my boring Aunt Mae and entertaining ourselves knocking the head back and staring in awe of these strange things. When my grandmother passed on, it was decided that since my father was the reason the dolls were aquired, he should get them. Finally some good comes out of Vietnam. Nana died 3 years ago, and my father FINALLY got the dolls from my aunt a few weeks. I emerged from my wisdom-tooth-painkiller haze, wandered into my parents living room on the 3rd day of recovery, and saw the dolls. No one told me Dad had gotten them, and I thought I was hallucinating. I screamed (as best I could) and played with them merrily.

It’s not a heirloom (yet) but any time there’s a gathering at my grandmother’s house some brings out the “40 Funky Finn Hits” record. Good times, good times.

My father informed me a few weeks ago that when he dies, I will inherit his teeth. Yep. He has dentures, and he kept the natural teeth that were pulled when he got his dentures.

He wants me to make a necklace.

My sister (who seems to end up with all the “family heirloom” stuff, somehow) has a horsehair coat that my grandfather wore back when he was a young buck…er, stallion. Very hip in those days, I guess; stinks to high heaven now, though.

I have an ugly, twelve-inch tall gold-colored music box of the Madonna and Child passed down from my very Catholic great-grandmother. I miss her still after all these years and can’t bear to get rid of the only momento I have of her. So, in spite of the fact that I’m an atheist, the music box is in such bad shape that no one can identify the tune any more, and the object has no redeeming aesthetic value, it’s sitting on my computer desk (mostly hidden behind the monitor).

My husband somehow ended up having temporary custody of his family’s least wanted heirloom - a plaster bust (missing a nose) of Norwegian religious reformer Hans Nielsen Hauge, from whom the family is descended. I suggested it meet with a terrible accident while we were moving, but out of respect for his mother (if it’s so important to her why doesn’t she keep it???), hubby settled for sweet-talking one of his sisters into taking it.

Jesus. Do you plan to wear this necklace?

My Grandfather was stationed in Japan directly after it’s surrender. While there he came into possesion of a ribald antique sake (Japanese rice wine) set consisting of a wine vessle shaped both like a giant penis and a shinto monk with a suspicious bulge under his robes. The individual sake cups are shaped like both vaginas and bathing women.

My aunt Amy (a real charactor and totally shameless) took it to be appraised on Antiques Roadshow and idscovered them to be semi-valuble collectors items but, needless to say, they didn’t air the footage.

Not quite heirlooms yet, but I can’t help thinking about what my great great grandkids will think of these. When my sister was killed in a car wreck in 1983, my parents opted for cremation. Her remains were put in a very nice gold urn, but the local mausoleum didn’t have room at the time to display it. My parents took it home to wait the 2-3 months that it would take to get it into the mausoleum. By the time room appeared, my mother had gotten attached to the urn, and it sits on top of her TV to this day.

Even worse, when my grandfather died a few years ago, my grandmother did the same thing.

I can’t help but think at some point I’m going to have descendents with ten or twelve urns on top of their TV’s. I for one plan on insisting upon it. When I die, I’ll have something in the will where my kids will have to display me on top of the TV forever, or some great curse will come upon them. Nothing like carrying on family tradition.

When I die, I want to be cremated, and divided so both my kids get half my ashes.

I have my Nanny’s old cukoo clock, its broke, but I plan on getting it fixed - I love that old clock.

Anyone else want to see these japanese items?
Post some pics perhaps?

Bizarre? Well, I once dated a girl whose grandmother had been a stripper in ancient times. Her most treasured heirloom? A pair of her grandmother’s pasties! :eek:

A piece of metal, inherited from my grandfather. it’s round, about 1" high and 4"-5" in diameter. I think he used it (in conjunction with a hammer) to straighten various pieces of metal.

Makes an interesting paperweight.

My mother has a bull skull hanging on the wall, with a rather large bullet hole between the eyes. It was a roan, whiteface Herford that was killed because he was covered in warts. Excellent conversation bit for the dinner table.

My Gramps stuffed a beaver and made it a lamp. And guess where the light bulb sticks out? Talk about anal!