Stuff was sold, but not the memories

My first baby shoes — plaster-filled booties glued to a wooden stand and spray-painted to appear bronzed — were in the trash, but I plucked them out seconds before the bag went into the bonfire.

I hugged a well-worn cutting board that brought back fond memories of canning with Mom as I turned it loose to the flames. I thought long and hard before tossing out my childhood doll crib that was too dilapidated to sell.

This is the kind of emotional seesawing that went on for 10 days in Minnesota as we emptied out our 125-year-old farmhouse and held a three-day moving sale. Mom moved to town months ago and it was time to deal with the inevitable: getting rid of stuff, a lot of stuff, treasured, weathered stuff.

And it was painful at times.

Actually, most of the pain was in my lower back as we lugged box after box from the two upstairs levels of the house. Mom never threw a thing away, including every edition of many different magazines dating back to the early 1960s.

I’ll bet there was a half ton of National Geographic magazines alone. She had a few worth saving — a bridal magazine and several copies of Better Homes & Gardens from 1953, the year she and Dad married; and some choice vintage editions of Life magazine — but there were boxes and boxes of worthless Reader’s Digest, Popular Science, Newsweek etc. destined for the recycling center.

There seemed to be an endless number of “miscellaneous” boxes and each was a project, with separate piles for recycling, the landfill, the sale, stuff to keep, stuff to donate to the thrift store.

And when I say my mother saved everything, I truly mean EVERYTHING. She had remnants of vinyl upholstery material that graced our kitchen chairs in the 1960s. Mom spent weeks over the winter measuring out every scrap of lace from her sewing days, bundling each bit and then marking how many inches each bundle contained. To my surprise, some of these kinds of things actually sold.

Then there was the task of pricing everything from an antique billy club used by some shirt-tail relative who was a police officer in the early 1900s to 1970s-era punch bowls and plastic snack sets. We Googled everything from vintage hankies to meat grinders in our quest to put a fair price on things.

There were no sibling squabbles over who was getting what of our parents’ possessions, thanks to our Scandinavian congeniality. Wayne got the piano; Rodney wanted the leather recliner; I got dibs on an oak rocking chair. My oldest brother was content with the Veg-o-Matic and a cookie jar he once had given Mom for Christmas.

The sale itself was kind of fun. I saw classmates, teachers and neighbors I hadn’t seen since high school. It likely was the last time our immediate family would all be together at the farm, and when it was over we toasted with glasses of champagne to celebrate lives well-lived on the old place.

A renter is moving in next month.

I thought I’d be more distraught about this, but he’s a pleasant, courteous young fellow who seems very respectful of the family history that accompanies the farm. Stop by for coffee anytime, he said.

And on the last day of the sale a young farmer whose family we’ve known for years said he’d like to lease the century-old barn to raise pigs. We were excited about the prospect of having the barn come to life again after standing empty for a decade or so.

The transition that began with my father’s death a year ago seems complete now. The stuff is gone, the memories tenderly packed away in our minds, and a new generation is ready to embark on life on the farm. That’s as it should be.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com