Time travel is a reality within the pages of my shabby old address book. This book is well on its way to becoming an antique with a shining amount of provenance. Memories! It holds memories and a record of lives lived. For example, my son decorated several of those dog-eared and ragged pages with scribbles long before he could actually write.
Names of people both the living and the dead reside here. As I look through the pages, I remember that some of my friends were, if not actually quirky, at least one of a kind.
There’s the woman who lived down along the Red River. She grew gourds of all shapes and sizes and my mother and I stopped by her house on the way to Texas one day. Growing gourds is not all that unusual but not a lot of people share their home with a family of owls who live in the attic. She also kept her Christmas tree hanging upside down in her living room from one Christmas to the next, covered with a sheet. She gave me a small dog bobble head which now bobbles on my kitchen windowsill. I can always count on that little dog to agree with me.
I turn a page and there’s the elderly gentleman who lived in Texas and sold old books. My Mary Roberts Rinehart collection grew greatly because of him.
The address book is rather like an atlas. Many of my nieces and nephews moved from place to place before they settled down. My book bears record of the universities attended, their military addresses, and a lot of phone numbers.
The name and address of my grandmother’s first cousin reminds me of family roots. This Georgia/Florida cousin died only a few years ago so I’ll have to wait ’til I get to Heaven to meet Jennie in person.
There’s the Tulsa address of a special relative of my mother’s. After Mom died, this lady took remnants of some of Mom’s dresses and pieced a beautiful quilt top. The name of the pattern is Country Wife.
No, I don’t need the addresses of those who are no longer with us but it’s kind of nice to keep their names as reminders. Just in case this book sounds like a dusty relic, special only to one in the throes of nostalgia, let me say, it is still useful. On its pages, I write the names of new friends and the book is continually evolving with changed addresses as family members move from one place to another.
So, of course you can see why this decrepit book is special. True, it does look disreputable but it has fulfilled its purpose wonderfully well. Like the people on its pages, it has character. It is truly a trip through time.
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