Garage Again

Yesterday four friends gathered for a massive re-organization of my garage. I think the garage is bigger than any room in the house. All that space! All that stuff! What is it? My dear friend, K, has filled her van twice with recyclable oddments. More to go.

Some of it has just been sitting there for a long, long time. I am finally ready to let go of much of it.

A few treasures emerged. The insignia from my father's Navy uniform cap. The course notes for an Algebra course he taught as a graduate student at Ohio State. (Along with some Ohio State notebooks from the 1940's that are near pristine condition with the unused paper in better shape than some modern tablets inside the house.

My friends worked their way to the far-back upper corner and a voice called out, "Peggy, what on earth is this? It's a table with a hole to put the kid into it". I thought for a second and hollered, "oh my Gosh! You've found it! It's the baby Tenda." Features in pictures of my sister when she was little. Papa said that he had looked for it and never found it. My sister, the same one in the pictures, ditto. It just had been so carefully tucked, so long ago that it had been in hiding. Now I will have to figure out what to do with it! Is it an antique, a treasure or something that no one will want?

Wow! The garage will not yield a whole lot more. There is a stove that needs to go. A cedar chest. A cedar armoire full of what are now very probably antique clothes. And all of Papa's tools.

Now if I could just diminish my library.

I am very tired, since I sat outside in the wind and supervised all day yesterday. I am also deeply grateful to everybody who helped. Thank you.