Private Property

When I was about 9 years old, my oldest sister, Janet, gave me an old jewelry box of hers. I painted it and made sure everyone knew whose it was & to stay out of it.



I’m not really even sure how it is that 35 or so years later, I still have that box. Well, I suppose technically I don’t have it... Joycie found it years ago and she wanted it, so I gave it to her. My little daughter was fascinated by the stuff in the box that her mom had put there when she was little. I was looking through it last night up in Joycie’s room, and I don’t even know why I have some of that stuff. There’s a little tiny vinyl pouch with an ear phone in it – back in the days when there was just 1 for one ear, before the days of the Sony Walkmans with headphones. There’s the bones of an old fan but the silk has come off, and that’s in there too, in a bunch. I think it’s a fan that my Dad brought back from Korea. There’s a strip of 3 butterfly patches (the kind we used to sew on our jeans and jean shirts), a piece of a paperweight and little box with a Cedar Point bracelet in it... back when those were string and tin, not plastic.



A little photo album, shrieking 1970’s.



And in it, I found several photos of me from my school years. Like this one, which is from Kindergarten, I think... me, age 5:



Me, age 7 or so:



And me again, age 10 or so:



Joyce told me that those don’t even look like me. Um, yes, they do. A little girl me.

This is a book I wrote for a school assignment in probably 3rd grade. I remember doing it. The teacher had these wallpaper sample books, and we got to choose a page to make our book cover out of it. I chose something that looks like cork.



There is also this 10 Commandments charm bracelet that I got in Sunday School class & never wore. I was saving it. I was big on saving things I when I was a little kid.



There are letters in there from a friend of mine that lived in Ohio who I met up north once when we were camping. She & I wrote back and forth to each other for quite a few years.

There is also this anonymous note that was slipped into my locker at school when I was in 7th or 8th grade. I never found out who put it in there.



And there are several pages of the lyrics to “Stairway to Heaven” that a friend of mine wrote out and gave to me in Mrs. Dean’s biology class in 9th grade.



And this drawing that I think either my Mom or my Dad drew to keep me occupied once during a Sunday evening church service when I was little. I still love it & it still cracks me up!



Then there are a whole bunch of birthday cards from my 15th birthday. Why just my 15th, I have no idea. This one was from my brother, Jim (my only brother... he was the only boy out of 5 kids).



Kind of sexist, huh?! That’s 1975 for ya.



And this tacky looking one from my boyfriend at that time.



But I really liked what he wrote on the inside...



So weird to go through all this old stuff. (It all smells really old, too.) When I took the box downstairs to take some photos of the stuff for this blog post, Joyce wanted to make sure that she would get the box back. I was a packrat from birth. I have so much stuff of Joycie's and Sammy's from, well, really from day 1. Someday, I'm going to give a bunch of it to their kids. If I can bear to part with any of it.

Also in my little pink photo album is this school picture of my brother, Jim... look at that long hair.



He wrote this on the back:
To a nice kid Julie, Stay out of trouble or I’ll break your head. Love, Jim “75”