50 Years of Stuff

It’s a Claude High School letter jacket worn by my wife in 1966 when the Lady Mustangs were Bi-District Champs. And it’s the reason we’re arguing.

She wants to throw it away. “I don’t need it, and our kids won’t want it,” she says.

“But it’s history,” I say. “One day a little girl will look at it and know her great-great grandmother was good at basketball.”

“I wasn’t that good,” she says. “And we don’t have room in the new house.”

“OK,” says I. “So what about these?” I’m holding a pair of knickers I wore on the slopes of Red River in 1967.

“You haven’t fit in those since we married,” she says.

“But it’s history. One day a little boy will know his great-great grandfather . . . .”

And so it goes—as my minimalist wife and her packrat husband sort through nearly 50 years of stuff.

This is going to take awhile.