Garage sales are the backbone of America’s barter economy. You can find anything and everything there from great-grandma’s backscratcher to modern do-dads bought on impulse from HSN and quickly deemed unnecessary. You can also find a great deal of our country’s heritage for sale there in the form of objects once cherished and brought over from the Old Country by our deceased family members. These bits of china, old firearms, paintings, etc., weren’t simply objects to their former owners. They were connections to ancestral origins, values, ethics, beliefs, love. They meant something to the people who bought them here. I’m sure that their former owners rest in peace believing that these cherished objects of meaning will remain with their descendants. But somehow that connection was lost and now these objects are viewed by modern Americans according to modern American value: can I sell it, is it worth lots of money, can I go onto TV and show it off on some pawn shop or antique roadshow program? True, some of these objects have very little functional value in our modern world. We may actually need to sell them to pay our bills. Before we do, though, I hope that we take a moment to look at them through the eyes of our ancestors who found in them a purpose higher than functionality, or monetary value, or pride. I hope we look at them and find the meaning of what they represented to former family members and perhaps even present-day family members – connection.
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