Little Egypt Heritage Articles eduda tsunogisdi © Bill Oliver 21 January 2007 Vol 6 Issue: #03 ISBN: pending O’siyo, Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen of Little Egypt, “What’s In Your Attic?” “This is the most valuable thing I have ever possessed.” [Ye-Whell-Come-Tetsa, 1815] Though I believe he was speaking of color in the blah days of winter, the expression could easily apply to today’s topic. The expression, “What’s In Your Attic?” was recently spoken and used in an article by Lolita Thayer Guthrie with the word “Township” inserted between ‘Your’ and ‘Attic’. This was a theme she brought to the Ohio Township Trusties meeting last week. Township Trusties were urged to inventory what records they had stored away in various places and thus, mostly forgotten. In taking inventory of records that our Genealogical Society has in its possession, we too have records that we have laid aside for one reason or another and effectively ‘forgotten’. We, individuals, also have places where ‘treasures’ have been stored for ‘eons’ and have been out of sight, thus out of mind. How about that toy steam engine you had as a youngster? Where is it now? Or, that coronet that your Dad once played? Did Grandma sell it after rediscovering it years later in her attic? Just think of what was in Booth’s trunk. [Last week’s article: “A Venegère was found in Booth’s things.”] I can just imagine this on e-Bay. Things like this do happen to find their way into garage/yard sales or flea-markets. How many of your family’s things, including pictures are being sold? Some of us do not have attics, so we use our basements. These are subject to flooding in many cases. My family really had neither during many of the years I lived with my parents. We did have trunks though – and overseas shipping crates. Each time we would move, these would be re-packed and used for the next destination. Dad, being a Marine, had trunks – green ones. I still have one that he used when he was stationed in Bermuda before and at the start of World War II. The lid has pictures of my sister as a toddler pasted to the inside. In these trunks, sister and I kept those things we treasured. One of the items in my ‘treasure chest’ was a Mickey Mouse bank in the form of a trunk. Grandma Lester got it at the World’s Fair in Chicago [I think it was Chicago] – memory is going and the bank was recently given to one of my children with a page of information about its origin and so on. I’ve a ‘Lindy’ bank in the form of a bust of the aviator. This will go to one of our sons. It lacks the plate which locked it up. It was lost many years ago when this son was using it to play with. Above I mentioned Dad’s coronet. Well, I don’t have any musical instruments except a harmonica. Yet, I do have something from Grandma Oliver’s attic hanging on my wall. It’s a cow horn that she used to call Grandpa in from the fields when it was time to eat. She could make some notes on it, but a bugle player I’m not, so I can only make noise with it. Every so often it is re-discovered by a grandchild who then entices me to ‘blow’ on it. It is now over one hundred years old. As for the harmonica, well, I have a grandson who is both learning to whistle [driving his family crazy] and play the harmonica as proficiently. Maybe that Hohner Chromonica ought to go to him. This is my second one. I had one while I was in service with Uncle Sam. I still have the case for it but the instrument had disappeared so I finally replaced it. Recently in my area a cardboard suitcase was auctioned off for the grand sum of $27.50. It was bid on without any knowledge of its contents. As it turned out it contained more than five hundred letters between two high school sweethearts. They were dated in the 1940s, during World War II. What a treasure!! Well, the story has a most happy finale – with some ‘research’ a son of this couple was located locally and these letters were given back to the ‘family’ where they truly belong. Recently I opened a box that was given to me that belonged to my Dad. My sister had dropped it off to me not long following Dad’s passing. It was full of the slides my Dad took of our family. I started scanning them on a flat bed scanner with an adaptor, but the results are not to my satisfaction. These slides are of one family which began in the very early 1930s through most of the 1990s. The reproduction and preservation of them deserves better, so I’m now searching for a scanner dedicated to copying slides and other film. I began this preservation of old photographs some years ago with my Mother’s picture albums. These old pictures are brittle and fading, yet with modern technologies I have been restoring them to look as they did when they were first printed. Computers, scanners and software are miraculous today and improving every year. One other ‘attic’ I’d like to mention. That is the ‘attic’ of your local historical and/or genealogy society. These small town groups have often preserved local newspapers that can be read in their headquarters. Well, even if the headquarters are someone’s room off their living room, they are accessable. Many of these societies do not have large memberships nor monies aplenty, but they sure have hearts that are ‘deep’ and burst with excitement when folks come ‘a visitin’ to learn what is there. My very best to Art Buchwald as he journeys upward. I think his self published obituary in the clip at the New York Times newspaper says it best – “Hi, I’m Art Buchwald, and I just died.” e-la-Di-e-das-Di ha-WI NV-WA-do-hi-ya NV-WA-to-hi-ya-da. (May you walk in peace and harmony) Wado, Bill -=- 928 PostScript: "Myths are universal and timeless stories that reflect and shape our lives ..." Alexander McCall Smith, Dream Angus “This is the most valuable thing I have ever possessed.” Ye-Whell-Come-Tetsa, 1815 Archived articles: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index?list=ilmassac