"Among My Souvenirs"

Grandma’s attic used to be a great place to spend time in my younger life. I don’t recall much of what I found there or being very interested in the history of those odd unrelated things. It was more the atmosphere I enjoyed, the feeling of being among friends and relatives too far back to remember. There was a smell of the place, a temperature that only a midwest summer’s afternoon can duplicate, both dusty and humid enough to make me perspire and not stay too long. Today I own only one thing from that attic, - a heavy well-crafted hammer that belonged to Grandpa and was no doubt used in building the very house the attic lived in. That house is long gone, but the hammer is still intact, the most solid tool I own, ageless in usefulness, priceless to the eyes.

Even more fascinating to me though was Grandma’s china cabinet. In it was a beautiful cobalt blue glass vase. Sometime after Grandma died Grandpa took me over to the cabinet one afternoon and said, “Joycie, I’ve seen you looking at that blue vase often. Do you like it well enough to have it as your own? Will you keep it forever and remember Grandma by it?” Would I? I was too stunned to believe what I’d heard but I said, “Oh, yes, Grandpa! Yes! Yes! Yes!”

I loved it for its beauty, transparency and richness of color in the sunlight. It belonged in a window and I had just the spot for it in my bedroom. First I needed to clean out the old rose petals I found inside the vase. I wondered why they were there but never thought to ask Grandpa. The shape of the vase was lovely. An ample round bottom, a narrow stem-like middle and a top that opened out like a bell. Foolish little pre-teen  girl that I was, my main interest was in the visual delight this object offered me, not in its history.

Through the years I used it on special occasions for flowers but often I would be frustrated that the middle part of the vase was so slender I could only get a few stems of a large bouquet in it. Many years later when an appraiser came in to list our few antiques before a move she said as she held my blue beauty, “Do you know what this is?” I said, “Why, it’s a vase, isn’t it?” 

“No, she answered, this is a ladies’ spittoon!” She added, “You see the narrow middle? It’s meant to fit easily into a lady’s hand. The top is to catch both ashes from a special ladies’ cigar and, well, you can guess the rest.” 

In one stunned moment I remembered the comments I’d heard as a child about “Liza,” my great, great grandmother. “She was a tiny woman, always dressed like a lady of some means, even though she was a small farm wife.  She always wore white collars and cuffs. And she’d sit in her rocker and smoke a ladies’ cigar!”

I’d never met this ancestor of mine but I did know her son, my great grandfather, Thomas Pulford. He, too, liked smoking cigars and people were always bringing him boxes of White Owls. I used to sit at Grandpa Pulford’s feet on a little footstool and get him to tell me stories about when he was a boy of eight and his father gave up the life of a sailor to come to the New World and claim land under the Homestead Act in the rolling hills of southeastern Minnesota. 

Later I learned about how his mother, (the original owner of the blue “vase,”) was the daughter of a wealthy ship-builder who owned a fleet of ships. On one of these ships when she had accompanied her mother on an ocean voyage she had secretly married Great Grandpa Pulford’s father, a handsome young seaman aboard the ship. The captain had married them unbeknownst to her parents and when they were found out her father declared that the marriage must be annulled. Great great Grandma Pulford would have none of that and even forfeited her inheritance to stay with her husband. They soon moved to The New World.”

I could tell more, but what this illustrates is how much we miss of the history of old possessions. My great great grandmother’s blue vase is now in the possession of her great great great great granddaughter, Kimberly Milliken Wethe Rily. Probably her daughter, Samantha, will someday own it. I must remember to tell her the story.

 Hardly anyone knows the old song “Among My Souvenirs,” but I love that piece. I play it on the piano from a tattered piece of sheet music and weep when I come to the end where it says, “I count them all apart, and as the teardrops start, I find a broken heart among my souvenirs.”