I have a spent shell casing from my father’s 21 gun salute, his pocketwatch and his pocketknife. I have a shell casing from an uncle’s 21 gun salute. I have a blue and white plaid shirt that belonged to my younger brother which I wear twice a year, on Mother’s Day when my family gathers for a cookout and when we do All Saint’s Remembrance at church. I also take the shell casings, pocketwatch and pocketknife with me to the service to place on the Altar as it’s a tradition to place such things on the Altar for blessings and as a rememberance.
I am loving reading what some of you all have kept as cherished mementoes. Funny isn’t it how some of those seemingly unimportant, mundane and/or absolutely tacky things can become so cherished.
After my mom died in 2010, I received her car as part of my inheritance. The car is great, but the thing I really love is this little tiny rooster, whittled from a forked branch - very rustic but also very fine and clever from a design standpoint. She found it at some tag sale and thought it was so great, she stuck his little legs in the air vent on the dash so she could enjoy him while she drove around. At one point I thought he was lost and it really upset me…so glad when I found him in the back footwell!
Another favorite mom item is a red tee shirt with what looks like BMX bike tracks all over it. She was wearing it one day when I visited her and I commented on it. She said “It’s a Tony Hawk. For skateboarding.” Can’t let my 83 year old mom’s Tony Hawk tee shirt go to the Sally, now, can I? Oh hell no.
I also keep the four bankers boxes filled with her letters. Mom was a prolific, verbose, and very entertaining writer who kept carbons of every letter she wrote as well as all those she received. Fascinating reading and worthy of publication…someday.
One I have dibs on. My dad is a retired geologist. When he first graduated from University in the 1960’s he bought two of these rock picks.
He still has the first one he started using, so when I studied a bit of geology he gave me his spare. It’s amazing to compare my almost new pick with his after surviving 40 years of fieldwork (he has a few stories of leaving it at a sample site and then going back to get it, often under pretty wild conditions). The pointed end is now about an inch shorter and rounded while the hammer end has been pounded down by at least a 1/4 inch.
Anytime we went camping it was his constant companion and probably the one thing in the world I most associate with him.
I have my grandmother’s Betty Crocker Cookbook, from the 60s. It’s my go to book when I need to know how long an acorn squash needs to cook, or find a basic use for turnips. It has some pages stuck together, I’m sure from being used.
I have a piece of material from an aunt. She was going to do something crafty with it. That’s my plan to. So far, I haven’t figured out what.
I have a great-aunt’s pin/brooch collection. I love wearing some of them.
I used to have my grandfather’s tool box, with a bunch of handtools from probably the mid 30s through the 80s. Some bastard stole it out of the back of a car. I’m sure he got next to nothing for a bunch of well used hammers and hand drills.
I have a a wooden box, about 1’ x 1’ filled with wrenches, pliers, files, chisels, punches, hammers, measuring tape, electrical tape, pencils, chalk and other odds and ends… all surrounded by about 60 years of grime.
It was always on my father’s workbench. It sits lovingly on my work-bench as a reminder: a man Fixes things.
I have his hat in the hat-rack on my closet door too; an Irish tweed hat.
I also have a huge 2-foot high ornate solid brass barometer/hygrometer from the early 20th century with such scientific terms as “Windy”.
Besides the usual jewellery etc, I kept my Grandma’s flour sifter, and my Nanna’s tool for rubbing butter into flour (not sure what it’s called) - and I think of them each time I bake, particularly now my girls are getting big enough to help. Neither are particularly attractive or valuable, but for who they belonged to.
From my mother I have one of the exceptionally good gold ear bobs my grandmother wore on her wedding day and her hand-made wedding dress with home-made lace and a gazillian pin tucks all sewn by hand. It has a sixteen-inch waist!
From my father I have a piece of a hand-made log cabin complete with a wooden peg. It’s from his mother’s first married home on the Mississippi at MacGregor, IA., circa turn of the last century.
From my father’s father I have a ring made out of the single nugget that he was able to save from his efforts during the Alaskan gold run after his raft overturned. (At least that’s the family’s story on where the money went!)
I saved the gloves I wore as a pall bearer at my Grandfather’s funeral.
I think his passing, funeral, and service would have went just the way he wanted. I have huge respect for him, and I think he went out the way he wanted.
My grandma was schizophrenic and was kind of obsessed with dime store knicknacks and stuff. She also loved to sew - as in, get those fabric cut-outs that you sew together and stuff with stuffing.
Grandma died on my 7th birthday and I remember asking grandpa if she had gotten me anything and that I thought I should have it (cuz I was greedy, not sentimental). I hung on to the cat pillow she’d made for my birthday for ages.
The pillow ripped to shreds eventually, but I did find a set of stuffed bear ornaments she made, a bear family. I hang those bears on my plastic ficus tree every Christmas because they are so tacky and so grandma. I love them.
