I thought it’d be interesting to start a thread where we all share the times we’ve stumbled accross an important/touching/interesting bunch of memrobelia. I’ll start:
My parents got divorced when I went through college, so much of my stuff was packed up in boxes and was sitting in my mom’s garage. Since I just recently moved off campus, I decided to go through the stuff and move some of it to my place. I found tons of stuff!
To start, I found notes passed between me and friends in high school. This one where I very tactlesly told this girl she was being to agresive and needed to back off (I laughed since I have a couple more social graces these days). I found these things called “warm fuzzies” people in my youth group used to write one another. They are nice little letters/ego boosters you write to one another. Sort of a platonic love note. I found a whole mess of choose your own adventure books, I found a 10 year old greeting card from my grandma. All sorts of crappy poetry I wrote. Lots of old schoolwork. It all made me smile warmly.
Anything handwritten by my mum (dead now just over 5 years) always causes a start t’ my heart, then a smile, cause it’s a piece of her still remaining.
When I come across old school work of mine, old letters to papers published and preserved in yellowing clippings stuck on makeshift folder pages – that whacks me back to more idealistic, clear-sighted, less politically convoluted days.
Then again, the entire house is one big archaelogical assignment. One day, I’ll pick up th’ shovel, and reconnect with my past. 
if i can’t find something with in a few minutes, i will clean or straighten clutter until the thing i’m looking for will appear. a bit of trickery because things will hide if you are obviously looking for them.
one time i was cleaning the dish cabinet, looking for a tape measure that i knew was in there somewhere. i found a notebook my grandmother used when she was taking english classes. she came to the us in 1914 and took the classes in the 30’s. the things she wrote in there for her classes were a trip through time. i guess the class mixed reading and writing english as well as studying to become a citizen.
she had listed the president and his entire cabinet, tidbits from the revolutionary war, civil war, and current events going on while class was in session. i showed it to my mum who said that gran was so proud to be able to go to school and learn to read and write. she didn’t go to school in russia, and was barely literate in russian.
until i found this book i never saw her handwriting. this was the most amazing find i have ever come across.
Before we moved (2? years ago), I found some yellowed paper in the attic in a box. Turned out to be school papers, written by my grandmother in the 20’s and 30’s. She would have been around 10 years old at the time of the oldest papers. It was so neat to touch those papers that were written by a woman I never met…she died in the late 1960s when my father was in high school.
I just recently found this coin again, it’s a novelty copper coin about the size of a half dollar (maybe a little smaller) with Nevada on one side and the hoover dam on the other.
It was given to me years ago by a friend who was moving there.
Don’t know why, but it’s just something I’ll never forget. I’m glad I found the old thing.