Personal Narrative

Treasure Trove

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My wife took a recent visit to her grandmother and grandfather. They aren’t doing so well. We have had to have “the talk” with them about getting them out of their house and into some sort of assisted living facility. It isn’t pleasant, of course – it never is when dealing with situations such as this.

While there, my wife was asked to go through some things and distribute them among the living family members. Most of these things hold only sentimental value. I ended up with a couple of guns, a sweet antique Marlin .22 and a beautiful bolt action Mossberg 12 gauge shotgun. I haven’t had time to research them as of yet.

As we were cleaning up the van and getting some of the items ready for a garage sale to raise cash for them, my wife informed me she also got a box of letters. What’s that, I said? Well, here it is.

I was told that these were letters from my wife’s grandfather to her grandmother. And they are. Hundreds and hundreds of them, neatly bundled and put away for nearly 70 years before my eyes gazed upon them. From an early look, the vast majority of them seem to be from when my wife’s grandfather was drafted to be in the big war – ww2, that is. They have that musty/old book smell.

He was stationed in India and from what I can glean upon reading a letter or two is that he was a supply clerk of some sort. There are also a lot of letters that he wrote to her from basic training. Most of the addresses use grandma’s maiden name. They were still courting.

Oh yea – I haven’t told my wife this yet – there are letters from other guys to grandma too. Well then.

I plan on sharing some of these letters with our readers here. They are an invaluable source of information to a historian such as myself to get a feel what it was like back then – not only from a military history standpoint, but they will be a look into the social lives of folks back then as well.

I shall change the names as these folks are still alive, but I will leave all of the language intact. I hope you enjoy these letters that I will publish as I find time to transcribe them. The first thing I need to do is figure out everything chronologically.

I am absolutely giddy with anticipation.

Alpha Male of the Kitchen

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I just picked up a $15 rice cooker at the same store where I once bought a very fine $8 toaster. Do I know value or what. But here is the thing. A rice cooker is passive — you put in the rice and water and turn it on and it does the rest. Do you even have to turn it off? I don’t think so. It just sits there, stewing. Sort of female-like. The cooked rice stimulates one’s appetite. It also takes a long time to get ready in the evening. Tradeoffs.

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Me and My MacBook

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When I started out with computers it was all Apple. We had Apple II machines and I remember the “green screens” (and then an “ochre” screen). It was quite exciting to have 2 disk drives, back in the day when you stored your programs on disk rather than on a hard drive in the machine. My father had a background in computing from the earliest days and was happy to invest in computers when hardly anyone else I knew had one and this helped me to get exposure which has been a big help in my career. The most exciting games were Choplifter which was great with the joystick (thanks to Wikipedia for helping me with all these memories), Castle Wolfenstein which startled me when the guards shouted at you, and of course the epic Wizardry game for which I have the cover sheet of the rules manual right here.

In college I had an IBM PC XT. This machine was also state of the art for the day and its casing was some sort of nearly industrial metal that you could run over with a truck. By then we had started to move on to 3.5″ disks which seemed very futuristic when compared to a 5.2″ floppy. I remember actually moving this computer around which was not simple because it was the opposite of portable.

At work we had “luggable” machines which were compacs. I am not sure which version we had it may have looked like this I do remember that it was 1) very heavy 2) if I lost it I’d probably be fired 3) it had an eerie screen color that was described as amber.

Over the years I ended up in the Windows world because this was the tool for business and in various jobs you had to program on and work with Windows laptops and desktops.  Given that, it made sense to just stay in the Windows world for my home PC’s of which I’ve had many but are quite boring so I will spare you that update.

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The Life of Celia

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(With apologies to the Obama perpetual re-election campaign. Other people have had a go at this concept – I think The Life of Brian is one of the funniest, but I wanted to have a go at this myself. )

3 Years Old Under President Eisenhower, Celia stays home with her younger brother, as her full-time work-at-home Mom helps her get ready for school by reading aloud to her, supervising her playtime and providing a secure home environment. She will join thousands of students across the country who will start kindergarten ready to learn and succeed.

17 Years Old Under President Nixon, Celia takes the SAT and is on track to begin applying for college … which college program includes two years at a local junior college capped by two years at a state university a public university system that the taxes paid by Celia’s parents over the years have subsidized. The public high school which Celia attends is in a working-class suburb, but offers academically enriched courses for those students who qualify for them.

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Estate Sale

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A few blocks up the road from where I live there was an estate sale last weekend.

The deal with these for those who don’t know, is that you hire a company to advertise and create interest in the sale, come into a house, tag everything up with prices and try to liquidate the stuff. In exchange, the company gets a cut, of course. This particular estate sale was very well attended.

The road that I live on had cars parked all along it for the majority of the time that the sale was open. I think that more people have taken up this type of thing as a hobby. I can certainly see the appeal of getting something for cheap and re-selling it on Ebay or Craigslist or wherever. And most (all?) of these transactions, I would assume, go under the radar of the tax man.

This particular house was of some interest to me since it was the Frau Becker’s house. I had a passing acquaintance with Frau Becker – she always had a little dog of some sort and she walked it in the neighborhood. When I was outside doing yard work or whatever, we always had a little light conversation. A nice lady. I asked my wife about the sale and assumed she had moved away. My wife told me that Frau Becker died a few years ago from ovarian cancer. Sad news, that. I suppose the husband finally died too, and that was the reason for the sale.

While I wasn’t close to Frau Becker, I knew her. So yesterday when I sauntered down to the sale to see what was left, it was sort of like seeing part of her that I didn’t know about.

So many chemicals and lubricants. There was a nice, barely used lathe in the basement that they were selling “dutch auction” style.

Lots of airline glassware. The Frau flew first class back and forth from the homeland, it appears. And kept the glassware. Or do you get that for free up in the front of the plane?

She kept sewing kits from all over the place. You know, the little free ones that you get in hotels? I imagine the Frau came from a depression time where you kept pretty much everything you could.

Matchbooks.

Maps from every country of Europe.

A mass of costume jewelry here, a pile of magazines there. I imagine the good jewelry was sold elsewhere by the family.

Lots of old books – in German. Those don’t do me any good.

Unwritten post cards.

An old HP laptop battery.

The dresser where Frau Becker used to keep her clothes. The dressers were quite nice but I didn’t dare bring home a piece of furniture without the express written consent of my secretary of interior decorating (i.e. the wife).

It was an interesting half hour that I spent in Frau Becker’s home. I had never attended a sale like this and it was a neat feeling to be able (yea, encouraged) to rifle through someone’s personal effects. Since I knew the Frau, I was a bit creeped out, but not too much.

I may attend a sale like this in the future. I wonder if I will think about the deceased the next time. I am sure I will – that is the historian in me.

I was reminded of a great lesson. In the end, it is all crap that you can’t take with you. It was good for me to get that reminder.

Cross Posted at LITGM.