The Treasure Chest

  

Having spent more than 30 years researching my family history, I've learned a lot about my people. 

I'm a little bit Irish, a whole lot of English, some French, a touch of German and, somewhere, one percent Native American.

I also know that I descend from a very long line of packrats -- people who keep everything and don't know how to throw anything away. This was not a surprise, really. At least I know I come by it honestly.

This notion was recently reinforced when I inherited "The Trunk," a very large steamer trunk that belonged to my great-grandmother, my grandmother, my mother and, finally, my sister, who decided it was hers (dammit). She took it and put it in her garage, which sadly flooded a few years back. But let me say this about those old turn-of-the-century trunks -- they were built to last. Remarkably, everything was very well preserved except for a few photo albums that stuck together. 

The Coach and I dragged it home, and it took me a few weeks to get up my gumption to go through it. Once I opened it and got past the musty smell from the flood and the many years, I spent a week strolling down other people's memory lanes and sifting through the memories and mementos of four generations of very sentimental women. 

They kept everything.

Bills. Receipts. Checks. Check registers. Newspaper clippings, especially of classmates who married, had babies and died. Tickets. Programs. Dance cards. Birthday cards. Sympathy cards. Congratulatory cards and telegrams.

And every letter ever written to them.

I found the funeral book from my great-grandmother, my grandmother and my grandfather, to add to the one from my mother-in-law and my father-in-law.

I found my grandmother's high school scrapbook, filled with blurry black and white photos of young flapper girls with bob hairdos. She attended Sophie B. Wright High School in New Orleans and was a member of the Terrible Tooters, a music and drama group. I have a ticket to her graduation, the program, and her senior yearbook.

   

Grannie married a boy who went to Warren Easton High School. I have a ticket to his graduation as well. He was the son of a politician in Algiers who served as a Councilman and as a State Representative. There were a few papers of his and some stationery from his role as the Union Head for the Railroad Conductors.

My other great-grandmother, Lena, was a registered nurse. There were lots of identification cards, membership cards, and calling cards from the early 1900s and many letters thanking her for her kind care.

When I was about 2 years old, my family loaded up the old white Rambler station wagon and took a trip to New York for the World's Fair, with stops all along the East Coast and D.C. We stayed in a hotel that had little Indian tepee tents. Sadly, that was one of the photo albums that got almost ruined, but there were a few fun mementos from the trip I was on but of which I have no recollection.

This was an intensely emotional journey for me, looking at the photos of my entire family who lived, kept a bunch of stuff, and died. I remember seeing these photos, hearing the stories. I enjoyed looking at the scrapbook from my grandmother's retirement after 31 years with the Louisiana Employment Agency and Grandpa's 45 years with the telephone company. 

I loved seeing the young ladies from the 1920s and a bunch of Grannie's beaus, along with her completely filled dance cards. (I have no idea who this beautiful young woman was.)

A few leftover tickets from our trip to Disneyland. 

Old physician's tools, including a very scary-looking primitive syringe. (I donated these to my own doctor, who has a display case with other similar items.)

Photos of my grandparents' house when they first bought it, with the white fence and rose-covered trellises at the end of the driveway.

My sister's high school yearbooks from the 1960s.

It was a wonderful walk down memory lane.

But here's where some of you are going to disown me....

While I did keep quite a bit of it, along with the trunk, I threw a lot of it away. I had to throw away the check registers and bills and cards and letters, along with many of the photos of people who have long gone and I never knew. 

 I have already carried on the family trait enough with my own treasure trove of stuff -- keepsakes, high school scrapbooks, things from my college years, my wedding. 

Then I became a mom. So now I have trunks and boxes of her stuff, none of which she seems to want.

Then my mama died and left me a bunch of her stuff. And a lot of her stuff was stuff that had previously been her mama's stuff, and her grandmother's stuff, and her great-grandmother's stuff.

It has gotten to the point where I need my own museum!

And someday in the not too distant future, my adopted daughter and my step-children, who have no connection to any of these people or any of their stuff are going to have to go through all of it. And they won't know what to do with it either. None of it is really worth anything (I don't think). It's all just memories at this point. And yes, some of those are priceless. 

But mostly, it's just other people's stuff. 

My family supported education!

Grandpa's retirement gift from the telephone company.

The bill for my mother's birth at St. Mary's Hospital in Patterson.