Did you ever wonder how people decide what’s of value?
When I was involved in Native American cultural preservation, I visited lots of schools and talked with hundreds of children. I would tell them about the Trail of Death, when the Potawatomi were removed from Indiana to Kansas in 1838. I would ask: “If soldiers showed up and said you were going to have to leave your home and walk to a place hundreds of miles away, a place you had never heard of, what would you take?” They would always say their Kindle or some of their modern day conveniences. They couldn’t begin to comprehend what that might have been like and they took for granted everything of practical or life sustaining value.
I was visiting my cousin, Mable (Phillips) Herron one day after her husband Jack passed away. I always called her Aunt Mable but she was was really a distant relative of the Jones family. Just as I arrived, she was coming into the house from the back yard and I didn’t think anything about it. We went into the living room and began visiting.
I asked, “What were you doing outside Aunt Mabel.” She answered, “Oh just burning some old stuff no one would be interested in. I don’t want to burden anyone with my old stuff.” Aunt Mabel and Uncle Jack’s only daughter, Bernice Herron, had passed away several years before. They had both lived so long there weren’t a lot of relatives and she was genuine in her desire to lift their burden.
I said what are you burning? She said, “Grandma’s old chest and all of Jack’s pictures from the barber shop.” I’m sure she thought I was crazy but I ran from the house to the back yard to see if I could save anything. I was too late to save any of the pictures, they had burned first. But I was in time to save the only piece of furniture that remained from what the Allen Phillips family had brought with them from Indiana in 1868. It was a three-drawer walnut washstand, which luckily was painted white and the paint had just been scorched. I pulled it from the fire, took it home, refinished it and today it is among the possessions my children are enjoying. Aunt Mable just didn’t think anyone would want to be bothered with the pictures and the chest. We both shed tears. She wished she had asked me about the photos and if anyone remembers the wall of photos in Uncle Jack’s barbershop, you will know why I was sick that 75 years of Maple Hill’s pictorial history had gone up in smoke. We all need to think about the old pictures we have and identify them and make sure they go where they are wanted and appreciated.
One day I went to my Grandmother Clark’s house in Maple Hill, looking for canning jars for a big crop of tomatoes. She said, “Oh I have a box of jars in the attic and you’re welcome to them.” While I was up there, I tripped over something on the floor. I reached down and held it up and it was an old fashioned coffee urn on a stand. It was black as tar. I took the jars and the coffee pot downstairs and asked Grandmother about it.
She said, “Oh that old coffee pot was a wedding present from Papa Jones. He paid $5 for it at Strowig’s Hardware Store in Paxico. I was so mad. I needed a lot of other things and he spent $5 on that old thing which I never used because it always needed polishing. I’ve had it in the attic for years. I took it home, polished it, and now it sits on my daughter’s buffet along with the two kerosene lamps which my Grandmother Clark and Grandmother Corbin started housekeeping with. Grandmother Clark was married in 1910 and Grandmother Corbin in 1920 so one is over 100 years old and the other will soon been 100 years old. They are now treasured family heirlooms which at one time were thought by an older generation to be totally worthless.
Incidentally, my daughter Amy Clark Allendorf still “allows” me to polish that coffee urn when I visit!! As a pastor, I was always reminded that “things” are not going to help much with our eternal pilgrimage, but I’m also glad to be able to have “things” to pass along to my family and friends, along with the stories and history that accompany them. I hope all of you have family heirlooms to remind you of the people who owned them. If you have pictures, please identify and date them NOW!!
Lora Siders, a wonderful Miami Indian friend of mine, used to say, “You know, we have things to love and cherish just until we find someone who will love them as much or more than we do—then it makes both of us happy to give them away.” Lora was a wonderful wise lady whom had the right idea!!