Tubs, totes, photos and notes
A few years ago I moved from a four bedroom home full of stuff in Louisiana into the guest room of my late mother’s home in Texarkana. My stepdad still lived in the furnished home, so there was no need for any of my stuff there.
My sons managed to cram all of said stuff into a large storage unit, where it has been for four years now. It’s surprising how many things you only thought you needed.
When I moved into my little apartment last summer, I finally got to take a few things out of storage; but that unit is still half-full. I am slowly emptying it out by filling my tiny car with as much stuff as I can, as often as I can.
I bring home tubs and totes full of stuff and methodically go through it, deciding what to keep, what to sell in my booth at Cass County Junktion and what to give away to friends and family. I not only have 50 years of my stuff, but my mom’s stuff, as well.
My mother was a collector – this was a character trait that was passed on to me. She collected depression glass – a lot of it. No road trip was complete without stops at flea markets and antique stores where she never failed to find a piece that goes with other pieces on her shelf.
For those of you wondering what the heck depression glass is, let me explain. During the Great Depression of 1929-1939, nice things were hard to come by.
The worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world was caused by the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors. Occurring during that time was the Dust Bowl – a phenomenon caused by drought and severe dust storms that greatly damaged American and Canadian prairies.
After the crash landed many wealthy business-owners in the poorhouse, the trickle-down effect made the working class even poorer when factories closed. The ensuing drought brought the agricultural industry to its knees.
But someone in the Ohio River Valley had the bright idea to refit a glass factory and put people back to work making cheap, low-quality glassware to brighten the homes of those who couldn’t afford to buy anything not necessary. The colorful items were given away free – in boxes of oatmeal and detergent, or as a prize for buying a full tank of gas.
Other factories followed suit and soon a home without pretty glass was hard to find. The glass came in many patterns in pink, yellow, crystal, green, amber and blue. The glass was mass-produced, with noticeable seams, air bubbles and other flaws.
Mom methodically put together entire sets of the stuff in several colors. Her collection just kept growing and eventually overtook her kitchen – so she had built-in shelves made. Then she bought a storage shed to hold boxes of the stuff. Her first Last Will and Testament had the glass listed before anything else; she assigned glass colors to my brother, my sons and I. True Story.
Just weeks after mom died in 2012 my stepdad called and told me to come get mom’s things. I was living in Grand Cane, Louisiana and drove to Texarkana each Saturday for over a month to pack glass. I remember wishing Mom had collected thimbles instead.
How ironic it is that five years later I moved all those boxes of glass and antiques back to sit in storage a half-mile from the house they came from. I’ve doled them out, by color, as Mom would have wanted. I’ve given some as gifts, I chosen my favorites to keep and I’ve sold some. But there is still so much more left to unpack.
What are we thinking when we buy certain items for ourselves? What is it about the human psyche that makes us collect items that just sit on a shelf for us to stare at? Does anyone ever think about what will happen to the collection when they are gone?
I never gave my own collections much thought until I had to pack hundreds of pieces of glass. Now, when I want to blow a few bucks I buy clothes; they can make you feel pretty and are easily donated when you decide to replace them.
Collectibles, furniture and home goods aside, what do we do with those things no one else in the world would care for – like photos and handwritten notes from loved ones that are gone? In this digital age, people don’t handwrite anything much anymore; and the days of printing 24 photos at a time are long over.
As I look through these piles of photos and notes, I know these memories are worth keeping. So I sort them out and put them back in their tubs and totes. I’ll let my kids sort them out one day.