Nostalgia

[taylor_memorial]

Sure, it's a reason people collect and we make money.
And it's a common enough theme as we sometimes recollect the vital community we once had before Donahue. The Guides are gone and it won't be long before these gathering places are gone as well.

But this is about something else.

I just finished editing the pictures for "How to Tell Time", a first printing I acquired nearly 20 years ago when I first discovered this board and learned how to figure out how to tell a Little Golden Book first printing; and that this one with the movable arms was worth money.

So I picked it up at a garage sale, I'm sure.

Well as I was editing the pictures, I looked at the one of the fold out "history of time" because it had a stamp and under magnification it was my elementary school.

I very well might have learned how to tell (analog) time with this very book, held by Mrs. Olsen in front of my first grade class. She lived in front of the school (short commute, that) and her son George was in one of my later classes. Oy, and there was a garage sale we went to in her (still gray) salt box house on Thirteenth Street that was really an estate sale run by family.

Memories flooding in, one after another.
 
That kind of nostalgia.

Getting a hip replaced next month. I must be getting old.

[oldiebutagoodie]

Loved your story!
Recently sold a children’s book inscribed by the author that had some fantastic notes inside to the little boy receiving the book... the author personally came to the house to deliver the book to the small child, signed it and left. She did so because the small child’s father and the author went to school together. She stated that one of the characters in the book was modeled after him as well.
The buyer: was the Grandaughter of the author... and she was also said to be one of the characters in the story.
It gave me goosebumps to watch it all come together as the book was returned back to the family of the long passed author. One of my favorite sells! $14!
And that’s why I love selling books!

[bugler1998]

Taylor:  You aren't really going to sell that book?  Come on.

While we cannot all keep everything, this means something to you.

I may have told this story here before:  I was at an auction and purchased a lot of baseball cardinals memorabilia.  One item in the lot was a 1940s postcard of St. Louis's Sportsman's park, in a small frame.

As the frame was junky, I took the card out, only to see that the card was addressed to my mom from her mother.  How could I have sold it originally?  Mom was here then, and maybe I didn't realize she would soon be gone.

We can't keep everything, but we can keep some special items for our final days.

[taylor_memorial]

Yes, I am.

It's not nearly so personal as your story. I have my Dad's PHd papers his Father's chemical dictionary. I never met him. A few other things like that.

Wasn't raised to be sentimental about things. Maybe it's because too many of my Mom's family disappeared in the Holocaust and earlier pogroms.

Have you ever noticed that "mid century modern" is the pervasive decor in homes of older Jews whose estate sales you visit. Doesn't matter what their primary interests are, the decor is all "NOW".

Same thing.

[imagine.ink]

Bugler, I'm a total sentimentalist and love your story of randomly finding your Mom's postcard at an estate auction.  

David, your story of Holocaust survivors pushing aside the past is relatable, as well. 

I lived in (West) Berlin, Germany from the age of 23 to 29 (husband was in the military).  Money was tight with two babies born in Berlin, but I did manage to purchase a beautiful Victorian walnut curio cabinet with serpentine glass front for only $100.  The guy who sold it to me was an expat who lived in  Berlin.  He had a business of purchasing furniture from young Germans who wanted nothing to do with their grandparents' things.  He told me the young Berliners only wanted "modern, modern, modern" so he was able to purchase for resale wonderful old things for pennies on the dollar.

I still have that glass front cabinet (it traveled from Berlin, Germany to Maryland to Augsburg, Germany back to Maryland and on to Pennsylvania).  Over the ocean three times and it still looks great!