Souvenirs Musings
~by Mark Blackwell
W
e are once again entering the depths of winter. Traditionally, this is a time of rest from the long summer days of laboring in the garden, and the long early autumn afternoons slaving in a hot kitchen, canning, and preserving the garden’s bounty. Now is a time of rest from putting the garden to bed for the winter, cleaning the gutters and raking fall leaves. A time of rest from cutting and hauling and splitting and stacking cords of firewood that will inevitably run out before the winter does. This is the season where we shrug off the hullabaloo of the holidays, throw another log on the fire, sit back in an easy chair, and let our minds drift forward in anticipation of spring seed catalogs and back to past pleasures and accomplishments. I know that when I settle down to do some serious reminiscing I don’t have to go far for inspiration. All I must do is just look around the house at the different furnishings, pictures hanging on the walls, books, and miscellany on the bookcase. It seems like everything I have collected has a story and prompts a memory. I guess you could just lump
30 Our Brown County • Jan./Feb. 2024
all these things under the heading “souvenirs of a long, strange trip.” I imagine that about everybody (except those seduced by the “decluttering” cult) has a collection of souvenirs. There are folks like me (border-line hoarders) who live in museums of our own making. While I am writing this article, I can see the turn-ofthe-twentieth-century stereoscope that reminds me of childhood afternoons when I visited various older folks. To keep me seen but not heard, they would let me peruse their collections of 3-D images of past times and exotic places. Later in the 1950s, I would be (and still am) the happy owner of an updated stereoscope called a ViewMaster—and now it’s an antique.
