The Collector

Anyone who knows me knows I keep every photo, school papers, newspaper clippings and cards, letters, bulletins and whatever else a historian finds valuable.  I'm a storykeeper!!  I want to make scrapbooks about my family.  I hang onto memories through items like dishes and linens and songs and more. 

Every now and then I realize I have taken it too far.  It's embarrassing to admit that I want to touch and see everything that is leaving my parents home and my big sister stands patiently by. I know we all had our moments seeing treasures come out of the cabinets and closets and shop but I have to hope on these things that maybe someone else in my family will experience the same memory I had in some way through these things.  But the truth is, it isn't the item necessarily, it's the people and the events and the family that are apart of something.  Let me share one example... Grandma Vi had a chip and dip bowl.  It was cosmopolitan in it's day and every holiday and birthday she had our favorite Old Dutch potato chips in the big bowl and the dip on a clip on stand that attached to the bowl.  After Grandma died, one of my cousins got that bowl!!  We gathered together before my sister flew back home and we had cousins coffee and chips and dip were served in that bowl!!  Yes, it was special and it reigns in a home that treasures that dish for the memories it holds.

Beyond dishes and knick knacks I have to sort through the story keepers boxes.  I have LOTS of files and three ring binders of someday scrapbooks.  I am thinning it out!!  But just like the belongings of my parents I have to see, read and decide what stays and what goes.  I'm trying to see what my sons will want to see and what they will possibly throw without care or want.  I have to fit my collection onto one book shelf and not in bins all over.  Us historians are histerical!!  I have visited enough historians that they will understand my collection.  We get called upon by those who have saved and decide to save no more.  We are like the humane society of old family photos and newspapers.  I cannot stand to see treasured family photos in antique stores.  I almost feel compelled to hunt down the next of kin and ask them to learn more about their fore fathers.

Here is the reason I save so many things.  I found four papers that Grant had to write for school!!  Each will have an elaborate page in his scrap book!! [ I will write it as he wrote it and with the misspellings ]

BEING THE YUNGEST

Being the youngegt is the best because you don't half to do much chores at your house.  But the bad thing is that you get beat up buy your brothers.  But my oldest brother is nice to me because  he lets me drive his truck and I don't mess around with his stuff and I help him alot so he won't hert me so I help him and he helps me.
  He is 18 years old and we collect baseball cards together.
  And thats why i like being the yungest

Grant Bergloff

I will never forget the day we went goose calling

When I went goose calling with my brother at 7:00 a.m..  After we got to the Pond we made blinds in the thick grass.  then we cuddle in the grass.
My brother was 10 years old I was 8 years old.  We call only one big patch of geese but they landed at the airport land so they did nut land buy us.
After about and ower and a half we herd this noise  berrrrrup out in the woods we stared at the wood four minutes, then we took a metal bar and just walk in the woods and I was so scared I thought it was a bear so I was walking with my brother buy the deer stand and we heard it from the deer stand and climb up their it was my other brother Paul in the deer stand making that noise in the woods so we got all are stuff and walk home.  And my brother was laughing so bad he had tear coming out.