Reminders

In and around our home, I have several items that remind me of times past and gone. I’m not sure why things like this continue to hold importance in our lives, but they do. Somehow they remind us of our heritage, our history, and our roots.
On the top of the partial wall that separates the kitchen from the living area, I have placed our American Flyer electric train set, or at least part of it. I say “our” because it belongs to all of us kids in a very real sense. Back in the mid 50’s, Mom and Dad gave it to us kids as a Christmas gift. About 25 years ago, I added much more track, switches, and cars to the set. It still runs, and now reminds us of Christmases past.
The top of the refrigerator has an old Zenith radio sitting on it. It’s an AM/FM receiver with the Armstrong system of FM demodulation. It’s tubes, of course, except for the rectifier and dates from the late (I think) 1940’s. It sat on the refrigerator at home when I was a child, and also spent time on the piano in the living room. It was on that radio that I heard the “Big Jon and Sparkie” radio show. See http://www.otrcat.com/bigjonandsparkie-p-1093.html for more on that old time show.
I took that radio to electronics school back in the late 1960’s and replaced some parts, including the power supply capacitors and some tubes. It works fine after some work a few months ago.
Out back, on a tree at the edge of the park that is behind our home, I put a wren house that I think I built many years ago. It had been on a post behind our house where we raised our family. A day or two before we closed on the sale of that property a year or so ago, I went down there and retrieved that wren house, which had wrens virtually every year that we were there. I painted it and tightened it up a little, and it now is in our back yard.
On the side of one of our kitchen cabinets I have hung a match holder. It holds the wooden matches that come in a box. It used to hang in that same house where we raised our family right beside the back door on the wall. It hails from at least the 1950’s, I think, and I recall it as a child, hanging right there by the back door. I even have the strike anywhere matches in it…something that is getting increasingly hard to find.
Out in the garage, I have more things of Dad’s than I can mention. Toolboxes, wrenches, and even a workbench came from the home place and are in my memories. Probably one of the larger things I have is a storage thing made out of wood, separated into probably 40 or 50 compartments. It’s heavier than the dickens, and has been lugged around more than I want to think about.
But the thing that sets it apart is that I remember this particular item holding plumbing fittings in my uncle’s hardware store. Dad worked for him in plumbing and heating, and I spent a lot of time there, even getting plumbing fittings out of this thing in preparation to going on a plumbing job with Dad. It’s other claim to fame is that Dad wrote his initials on it, and they are still visible.
I wonder sometimes why I have carried that thing all over Kansas. Probably for the same reason I’ve carried an anvil all over Kansas…one that belonged to my grandfather…one I remember being in his barn years ago. And probably for the same reason I’ve carried the workbench that Dad had built for me, and the tools and tool boxes and the gas funnel, gas cans, a wooden six foot ladder, and other things. They are a part of who I am and where I was. They have genuine links to things that are nothing more than neurons in my head that have been modified in a certain way to enable those things we call memories. They put meat and bones on those memories and make them real. They ground me and remind me of who I am.