Sorting Finds and Gadets

Earlier this year I went to my parents' house several times, and we enjoyed sorting through old pictures they had collected over the years. Included were several files that my grandmother had kept, and I found letters my mom had written her parents and siblings while she attended boarding school 600 miles from them.


This Valentine included a tiny picture of her, and she sent it home to her parents and little brother. (The two boys born after her were at boarding school with her at this point. She's the oldest of 4.) The picture is about the size of a fat thumb, and the valentine says something about "be my Valentine." I thought it was a cute especially seeing my mom's photo on it.

I sorted many things at my parents' house into piles for each of my siblings, but I took a lot home with me to sort as well.


Something for Daniel's pile. He was a huge Hulk fan back in the day. This looks to be Hulk and David Banner. See how, ahem, muscular the Hulk is? 

For awhile my upstairs had little piles like this where I sorted things into Pictures of Mema, Pictures of Mama, Pictures of Me, on and on.  I had Papers about Mema and Pop, Papers about Pop's Parents, Letters from Momzi, and so forth. I even had smaller piles of pictures to send my uncles or cousins. Even some extended family got fun mail because Momzi (my great-grandmother) often mentioned her children and grandchildren so my mom's cousins greatly enjoyed letters from loved ones gone way too soon.

Among all this stuff, I found this cute letter from my mom's youngest brother:

Here is her brother playing with some cousins in South Carolina. The family liked this when I posted it on Facebook a couple months ago.

And, of course, the Mystery Lady who was among my grandmother's pictures. I wonder if she is an aunt. My sister pointed out how much like HER this aunt looks...different hair, but I can totally see that! Even Will and Michael said, "is that you?" when shown this picture!

I found this cute picture of me and Pop.

And here is a picture of my dad's family with my dad looking disgruntled for sure!

My brother started going through old video tapes, and recorded parts of them on his phone, and then shared snippets with our immediate family on Messenger. We had some good laughs at those. His doing that prompted me to find a cassette tape Daniel and I made over two decades ago on a stereo-system my dad had at the time. I remember it had a way to record our voices and then we'd play the tape and record our voices again, and again, and again. Each time we did a different part...and we're not all that great, but it was fun playing this final recording and hearing something that sounded like at least 6 people were singing, but NO, it was just us!   I'm not sure this will upload and play correctly, but here is a bit of that.

I took the video on my phone, and I videoed the stereo that was playing this cassette so ... 

By contrast, my mom and her dad used to sing together in church, and while I'm not in love with how super-high this song (chorus part) is for my mom, I love hearing her and Pop singing here!  He was such a joyful person; the world definitely needs more folks like him in this oft-gloomy world!


My mom was 20, and her dad was 45. She actually was not married at this time so the Fuqua is not correct for the time of the recording, but is for when it was labeled and emailed to her (which was sometime in the last couple of years).  And she used to sing at this church for years after she was married, and, thus, a Fuqua so, there's that.

Speaking of gadgets - 'cause I kind of was with talk of stereos, right? -, I downloaded Zoom for Andrew the other night because the church youth leaders were wanting to hang out since they'd not seen each other in a few weeks. Andrew normally loves being with these people, but quite honestly, Zoom was a bit overwhelming for him.

He said he much prefers in-person visits with these dear folks!