July 11, 2008
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Trash or Treasure
Image By RnBoW
This week I was talking with a friend about collecting & how we should both have something like the Sgt. Pepper’s drum head that sold at auction for one million dollars. She replied that all of her “…things are just ephemera and really junk, junk, junk and garbage, garbage, garbage!” Yes, boys and girls, she really used the word ephemera! We use our proper, nerdy English in all the right ways during a casual conversation without being ridiculed or given the “Huh?” look.
For educational purposes the definition according to Webster is as follows: 1. Anything short-lived or ephemeral. 2. items designed to be useful or important for only a short time, esp. pamphlets, notices, tickets, etc. Also, for the record, if something is really bad or good she states it in triplicate. This is part of what makes her one of my most favorite and eccentric conversational friends!
Anyway, I went on to reply that sort of thing is more appealing to me sometimes than the more expensive items. They are the things lots of people would never give a second glance or might only catch the eye of those interested in vintage items. An old handmade apron, stockings still in the drug store package, a manual for grandma’s 1951 blender. They hold nostalgia and history for those who stop to really look.
I have a treasure box of just such things, my Gram’s sewing kit. I don’t know when she began to put all these things in the faux alligator cosmetic case. It is filled with a hodgepodge of what seems to be years of snaps, buttons, threads, spools & needles of all kinds. There are travel sewing kits from hotels all over Oklahoma, iron on patches for mending, lacy hem facing in five different colors. When I need to darn a sock or sew on a button it only takes five minutes but I end up sitting with the case in my lap looking at all the things inside for another thirty after the chore is done.
It is a tiny capsule of housewifery from a time which no longer exists. These things were never meant to be anything but used and tossed aside. Who dictates the shelf life of our day to day? Someday my ephemera may only be junk, junk, junk but today it makes me feel rich, rich, rich.
State Radio-Keepsake
Comments (13)
hotels around here huh.......we don't have alot of great ones, ya know
Wow, I like your pictures. They're really artsy. Have you considered using earfl.com to blog with audio so you don't have to type everything out?
absolutely gorgeous picture . . . you inspire me to pick up my own again
I will bring you a plate of scallopwiches all you have to do is send me a first class plane ticket. I loved that recipe it was so good and had all these good things for you in it. I have my grandma sewing kit. Everything is so dry here. I spent the day watering no mowing done maybe tonight when it is cooler or Sunday morning when I come home from work at 7am, I always have a lot of energy then. Or maybe an energy drink. lol, Judi:fun:
This is a great post. Something to really think about. What will people in the distant future think of things such as TV remotes and children's toys? Or even things like notebooks and pens? Things that are so ordinary to us may be fascinating to someone discovering it a hundred years from now.
Such a great keepsake - what a neat case too.
My favorite plaything at my Granny's house was an old tea caddy filled with an assortment of buttons that she had kept over the years. Hmmm must ask Mum what happened to it. Thanks for the memories.
very cool!
Love the treasure box, and the word "ephemera". I have a cedar box that my great grandmother gave me, full of the same sorts of things.
Great song. I also love John Prine's "Souvenirs".
Ephemera. What a great word! I do try to sort through things as I go and I'm not all that much of a packrat (although you might wonder if you saw how much crap I've collected in this house over the last four years), but I have to admit that it is so much fun to go through other people's little treasure boxes! My mom gave me a box of 'crap' that belonged to my grandfather last fall. Nestled in the bottom of the box was a box of little cigar box (the box is cool!) of treasures that he had obviously held dear as a small boy. Paper cutouts of cowboys and indians, some very interesting marbles, a baseball bobblehead for the Cardinals, a yo-yo, a couple of tin ornaments. I do have sort of this martyr complex of having to hold onto the family 'stuff'--I'm the keeper of all the photos for the last couple hundred years. No pressure. lol.
AWWW...a treasure box, yes,,its a treasure,
. Old things can never be a trash.
They reminds us of our glorious past.
Weldone.
I always tell people that I collect "shit" nothing worth anything but I love it,You hit my two collections,sewing and below ,the inkbottle,I love ink bottles ,pens wells and desk sets.I sold odds and ens on ebay,a conetop beer can for $350.I thought it was a vase,it was painted blacy with flowers on it,I took off the paint and sold it.
Something nurturing in the little domestics of time and era, perhaps, and symbolic of times when little was wasted and a testament to a deeper strength. These are the ancestral skills of women and men who could survive the Winter through the grace of knowing how to preserve the garden produce and darn a sock to keep the frostbite at bay.
I think it is almost an honoring of those women and men to treasure their little tins and baskets and faux alligator sewing cases. I say men as well because my father darned his own socks on Sundays when the need arose.
Great post.
Blessings~
One persons rubbish is another persons treasure, we go to quite a few flea markets and its fantastic what people sell and what some people will buy!
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