cleaned out

The combined might of Goodwill, a friend of the Burls who was having a yard sale and a friendly nearby dumpster has dispersed 9/10ths of the mountain of crap excavated from my mom's place.

And it feels good!


I did uncover some interesting stuff in the far recesses of the garage, suspended in the vast ocean of junk.
A pyramid of tubs containing several full sets of china and all my great grandma's crystal, a box of pretty good watercolor paintings by an as yet unknown artist, the horrible oil painting that dominated my grandparents living room, a box of leatherworking tools and supplies, a bunch of my great grandfather's shoemaking tools, and completely buried all the way in the musty spidery rear corner the sideboard from the 11th street house I grew up in.

And more pictures. Always more pictures, strewn casually about. I found one folder of ancestral tintypes in the middle of a big crate of junky Christmas ornaments from China, another album in a bag full of ancient disintegrating tee shirts and sweat pants.

You can learn a lot of interesting stuff going through old photos.

An envelope full of infant cousin Donna featured several familiar family members but no potential father.
My great grandmother's family hailed from Sioux Falls, and among the portraits of family members and their houses I found a group shot of of Seth Bullock and his Cowboys, the notable sheriff of Deadwood.

My mom's dad measured up to granny's drunken tall tales.
He was indeed a member of the 77th infantry and hauled a heavy machine gun aroiund Okinawa, . I found a picture of Ernie Pyle's grave in the mix. There's no way to tell if he actually plunged into a foxhole on a night march and won a desperate melee with an enemy soldier, but I found a silk Rising Sun battle flag and a handmade photo album of Japanese snapshots in a box of assorted war memorabilia.

In one box of random junk I found a tiny tape recorders and a bunch of miniature cassettes, which I dimly remember from the time he was dying of lung cancer. Maybe they'll illuminate more family secrets.