Carla is helping me as Im going through the first of several boxes of photos and documents from mothers house. So much stuff. Some interesting and some Im sure were precious to her but make no sense as to why she kept them. It was like pealing back layers in an archeological dig. I would take one box out and open it and realize on which side of the family they belonged. I started sorting according to the primary person(s) in the photo. Luckily all those years spent being drilled as to who was whom when I was a child are still with me for the most part. Some of the interesting finds were things like Liberty National Life policies. These were the type of policies commonly referred to as burial policies, back-in-the-day. I remember seeing both my grandmothers make payments each month to a man who Im sure was an insurance agent for Liberty National who would stop by for a payment to the policy. We (Mike, Eddie, and myself) had already separated policies according to me and my two brothers but in looking through the boxes, I discovered some that my grandparents had on other family members. Those will be delivered to the correct survivor. Sadly, theyll probably only be worth the face value of the policy since the listed persons are already deceased. I found an old tin-type photo that Im almost postive is my great-grandmother Halliburton as a child. There were social security cards in there as well. The single most interesting one was one belonging to my great grandfather. It is so old that it appears to be made of brass. There is one card (in paper) from 1937--the first year that withholdings were taken and benefits paid. My great grandfather was about 93 when he died in 1976 or 77. So he probably paid into Social Security for about 10 years before he retired and then drew on it for the next 30 years. His is about the only case that I can attest to where he most likely got a lot more out of it than he paid into. There are school pictures--LOTS OF SCHOOL PICTURES. I found a picture in a small notepad that I immediately recognized as something I had assumed lost forever. In the very back of the notebook was a pencil drawing of a house with a chimney and smoke is rising out of the chimney. I remember my grandmother showing me that little book about a year before she died in 1974. She told me that I had done the drawing when I was 4 years old. So that drawing is now 54 years old and it is the oldest object that I have that I drew myself. Probably only a treasure that I can appreciate. This is just the first box of at least half a dozen that were collected from all over the old house on Gordon Drive by my brothers Mike and Eddie and my sister-in-law, Mary. I gladly volunteered to sort through and organize all the chaos. As I did when my grandmother died, I intend to go through each album, photo book, envelope, and box and identify what I can and make copies and then distribute them to various family members. Sadly many of the smaller type pictures have no names and no dates. Mother is no longer around to prompt me as to who they might be and they will be lost to the ages. I found my grade school report cards as well as all my diplomas. It was never a question of us (me and my brothers) keeping our diplomas--mother felt that she had earned them just as much as we did and she always kept them. I spent almost 6 months scanning and labeling all of my grandmother, Roxies, old photo albums and I thought I had found them all but one of the layers I went through in this box were yet more of the photos taken by my grandfather, Dutch, with a little Brownie Instamatic Camera, with a bulb flash, that I still have (in its original box). I even have a few of the little flash bulbs that had to be used for inside photos. Lets just say that if I regularly participated in throw-back-Thursday, on Facebook, I have about 200 years worth of throw backs already.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 01:59:15 +0000