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Being thankful for things Old: 'Tis the Season
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By: Greg Webb
I am an old house person. I am an antique person. I have feelings of awe, affection and admiration for the things and people we refer to as being "Old." Definition: Old - of or pertaining to another era. Many of the furnishings in my home are old. The Philco radio/ letter desk in the foyer belonged to my wife's grandmother. Upon getting the stuck lock to release, we discovered letters and cards written during WW. II. When I touch the radio, I always wonder about the news of wars and tragedies during the hard times of the early 1900s, which it's now dry rotted speaker once carried. When the skin on my fingers touches the nickel sound tube on the Victrola to place the needle on the record, I get a little charge of tingling energy thinking about the many fingers prior that surely have done the same thing. The trunk in my dining room is the very trunk my Grandmother used as a hope chest when she was a child, around 1912. When she and Grandfather married, she packed that trunk and followed him to Chicago, where there was work. When I run my hand across the surface of this treasure, I think I can feel her fear and excitement about putting her life into this trunk and leaving all that she knew. And then there's the house; certainly the largest "old" thing I own. The house has within it all the emotion and energy of all the souls for whom it has afforded shelter. There are those who think that something old is something to be discarded. I am grateful to those folks because they sometimes afford me the opportunity to obtain said old things.
Old things whether homes, furniture, cars, or people deserve our time and attention. They carry with them the spirit of times past, and show us, if we are willing to look and listen, something about what the future may hold from time to time.
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