Unusual, Rare or Special Mementos

Unusual, Rare or Special Mementos

Woke up this morning with this idea for a thread…

It all comes from a strange gift my brother gave me a few years ago – a brick, a simple old white-ish brick. It looked old and a bit battered, but in tack.

Let me tell you the story of a country tavern in the middle of nowhere. The closest small town is about four miles away. I know because I once missed the bus and my mother made me walk all the way to school by myself. I think I was about 10 years old. Yeah, mom’s don’t let that happen any more.

My dad wanted to get out of the big city and live in the country. He was born into a farming family in Iowa. He found this little tavern and bought it and some of the land surrounding it. I think our mother was a bit angry at first but she warmed up to it. This tavern stayed in our family until the day they tore it down. We moved there in 1959. It was torn down some time in the 2000s. Memories for me abound there…

~ remember walking in the woods with our dad

~ remember collecting empty pop and beer bottles to take in for the 2 cent deposit

~ remember the old house that we turned into our playhouse…there were all these tables in it…

~ remember grandpa bartending, his hearty laugh that made everyone feel welcome

~ remember the tavern light that was off from a distance that shouldn’t have been off

~ remember being in the back seat of the car when our mother pulled into the parking lot, grandpa running out of the front tavern door after my brother who was shouting something hysterically

~ it’s strange I don’t remember who exactly told me that my dad was killed in an accident that day but I remember sitting at the bar in a horrible dark haze, it was one of the only few times I was allowed to sit there...

~ I remember my brother and I taking long walks in the woods before our mother got up after dad died…we knew she’d find some reason to holler at us for something so we just left and didn’t care what she did to us…we needed to go find some peace for ourselves, and we did

Anyway, the brick my brother gave me was a brick from our old tavern… below is a picture I took of the tavern before it was tore down. (My daughter is in the picture, but you can’t really make out her features…and this was taken over 18 years ago). Our uncle Phillip bought the tavern from our mother and kept it going until the day he died.

Lots more memories around this old tavern but I’ll save them for another time.

The point of this thread is to share old mementos. You can tell us about them or post a picture. For some reason I can’t find my brick. It’s here somewhere…can’t find it right now. If I do stumble across it, I’ll snap a picture and share it here.

So –

Do you have a strange memento you’d like to share?

And, the other part of this thread is –

What kind of strange, rare or special memento would you like to pass on?

I’ll start by sharing something I stitched out that’s pretty strange…

I enjoy listening to Bigfoot, or Sasquatch stories on YouTube, especially if I’m feeling down. Some can really sound out there. But I don’t care about the validity of the stories. I just want something interesting to listen to.

So, what do yah got out there? Looking forward to seeing what y'all come up with! 😀