Defining Value$

The pics on the scroll are of the Stations of the Cross

 

  

The items pictured above are probably well over 100 years old. Additionally, chances are pretty good at least one or two of them were brought over from Europe by my mother’s paternal grandparents in the late 1800’s, and may very well be among the oldest family heirlooms that are still around and in the possession of descendants of Stanley and Kathryn Raykowicz…or perhaps even prior generations(?).  

FYI- I definitely have the trunk they used to bring their belongings to America.  

Believe it or not, these items were slated for the landfill when my great-aunt Sophie’s property on S. Meade Street was being cleaned out some ~23 years ago. I was 35 at the time, so this is not a somewhat vague childhood memory for me.

My Mom asked me to go along with her to her Aunt Soph's home ( and the original family homestead of her father when he was a child ) to help her carry anything back that she was allowed to take. What I specifically recall is that my mother’s cousins and other relatives - none of whom I really knew as they lived outside of the area – were sitting in the parlor or middle room very carefully going through envelopes, books, papers, etc. 

That scene always stuck with me.

They almost didn’t bother to look up to acknowledge who they were talking to. There were random piles of “stuff” in various rooms and the basement that they said we could look through…as long as we brought them back to a young man ( ~my age ) for final approval before taking them away. In addition to the items shown above, I grabbed several very old (circa 1860’s) mason jars, a wooden tub ( half barrel ) that I was told the men of the family would take quick standing baths in when they came home from working in the mines, and a few other odds and ends with low monetary worth but significant sentimental value.  

FYI- I also have the picture of The Last Supper that hung on the kitchen wall of my grandparent's home. Several generations of our family said grace and ate meals in their presence. To me, that's somewhere between pretty cool and priceless.

Anyway, years later, I was told that one of the reasons there was probably such obvious focus on going through papers, envelopes and the like was that a significant amount of cash had been found stashed throughout the entire house;  hidden in coat pockets, underneath or tucked within folded items in clothes drawers, inside jars in the food pantry, under (yes) mattresses, etc. Yet, I’m sure – only because I have a few of them - an incredible number of family “heirlooms” that were deemed meaningless/worthless by these folks were trucked away by the junkman to the nearest landfill. I was also told, separately, that the Purple Heart and Military funeral burial flag pictured at the top of this blog were also in one of the “to be tossed” piles.

If true, that is beyond sad.

To all who visit...there’s certainly more to follow in the weeks and months ahead.

Stay tuned.