My aunt, when I was an infant, bought me a tiny little gold ring, and I think I only wore it to have a photograph taken wearing it, but I found it later when I was a young adult. This was around the time that I learned that my aunt had given up a son for adoption very shortly after I was born, and, I don’t know, it just has a special meaning because I think that loss for her,…
My dad passed away maybe 8 or 9 years ago, and I got about 4 of his guitars. He had so many guitars, but I got 4 of them. We had a flood in the basement, and I was like, the guitars! That was the first because they were in the basement. It was strange, they were up on this kind of ramp where they were dry. There was water up to here, but they were dry. I just went…
You know what this is? This is cheap, but good, therapy. This came to mind right away because it’s kind of new, and it is a hard question. I acquired my brother’s 1967—well, first of all, I’m from a musical family, and my brother was 4 years older, great musician, teacher, plays everything. I acquired his D18 Martin Guitar 1967 when he passed away a couple of years ago. So it’s kind of a sad story, but I love it…
So, this question about a treasured possession was a difficult one for me because I don’t feel like I have physical possessions that I treasure, so my first response was my husband—and we acquired each other together, I guess—we met in college and dated for a long time and then got married, and I consider him my treasured possession, I guess, but he’s not a possession. My second answer is my house and gardens because I love gardening and I…
I like to cook, and I have some 3 x 5 cards that have recipes in my dad’s handwriting. I would say that’s something that I like to look at even though it’s a 3 x 5 card, but he has this beautiful handwriting, which is also rare today, plus a recipe, which I like. [Do you cook those recipes?] Yeah, I have lefse, which is a Norwegian flatbread, and he made it, so that’s what I make.
One of the many hobbies I have that I don’t have time for, like most of them, is that I’m interested in astronomy. So I have several telescopes I’ve accumulated over the years and actually, a couple of them are kind of treasured possessions, but I’ll just talk about one. A telescope consists of two large parts: a tube assembly that you look through and the mount that it sits on. So I bought a very large tube assembly—which people…
I didn’t think that I really had anything that I would run back into the house to get if the house was on fire, except [my wife] and I have been married for 41 years. At our 40th anniversary, our three children put together a compilation—an album—with pictures, and it’s got our friends in it with quotes and the evolution of our family from when the day we were married—June 21, 1975. It’s just delightful to look at the years…
Just seeing this little baby here…A lot of times, you know, I’ve been through a lot of years, and sometimes I get thinking, oh, is there a God? They even have these programs at the Senior Center. I believe in God and Christ, but a lot of times, you know, if you get depressed now and then. But then I think, who made these babies? God made these babies. Nobody else made those babies, only God. [The moms helped.]
Does anyone have any last wonderful thoughts? This has been very nice, sharing and it’s really so nice that we have small people and middle people and older people all together in the same room because all of our stories are different, but in some ways, a lot of them are the same. The kinds of feelings, right, that we have about people and places. And it’s really nice to be able to share, and then we have some good…
I grew up in Davenport/Bettendorf, and then we moved out to the country, but I’ve been going camping up at the reservoir since I was two or three. And so being back and so close to it is really nice, and it reminds me of my dad. And whenever I go I text him a picture. It’s nice to see that it’s still around and the same as when I was little. The campsite is now the gorge.