Anybody collect something? Obviously by the amount of coffee cups I’ve found in the high cabinets here, my mother collected them. Never saw her drink but one cup of coffee a day but guess she didn’t want to use the same cup more than once. I’ve been slowly weeding them out to thrift store piles and save piles and grandmother piles. I’m insisting all the grandmothers in the family need to take a couple of the “grandmother saying” ones home and maybe Christmas we can play “take a Gran cup home” with her grandchildren. My sister-in-law visited and took home 6 of them, thank goodness.

The earliest thing I can remember collecting are Barbie doll shoes. I had pill bottles full of the little shoes, all high heels, myriads of colors. Mama had learned to drive and was going to Auburn University taking classes to renew her teaching certificate. Every afternoon when she came home she’d hand me a little cardboard package that contained a Barbie dress and shoes. Surely it wasn’t every trip but in my feeble mind, I’m recollecting it was every trip.

I had the pink Cadillac, the Barbie dream house, Ken, Midge, and Skipper. Guess Barbie’s boy friend only had the pair of shoes he arrived wearing. I can’t remember playing with anything but the shoes. Pouring them out of the amber pill bottles and matching them up. I’d sit on the floor in the sun room and line them up in rows. I was sitting in the sun room watching Gunsmoke this morning and had a flashback to a sunny day playing with the shoes. I gave my Barbie things to a younger friend down the street. I bet I kept the shoes!

From the Barbie doll shoes I graduated to Raggedy Ann dolls. Bought my first one on a trip to the beach with my sister-in-law and her mother and sister. It was so pretty, wore a yellow calico dress. She had 35 friends join her through several years of collecting. When Rosalyn was a little girl she wore the life size Raggedy Ann’s clothes as a Halloween costume. Studying art at Wesleyan produced some pencil drawings of the dolls.

Then came a collection of Dr. Seuss books, (I gave them to the Baptist kindergarten and they burned up in the fire), a gallon jar marble gathering, and a rock hammer and rock samples. Then Santa Claus left me a Hope Chest. My brothers called it a “Hopeless Chest.” That chest started a collection of Christmas china that is still ongoing.

When I got married I had a chicken and rooster collecting problem! I remember Chief remarking once that he was tired of always buying me “chicken stuff.” For my first Mother’s Day he gave me a small flock of chickens. I was thrilled and I loved those little biddies! Forty years later those peeps are still my favorite Mother’s Day gift. And I can’t forget my shelves and piles of western paperback novels and historical romances and best sellers and bird guides and children’s books. Add Chief’s 20 plus collection of sets of encyclopedias and we could open a book store.

My friend Linda taught me the art of thrift store collecting. She has the patience of Job and will find the one piece of sterling silver or a Monteblanc fountain pen in the bottom box of junk every time. Those trips began an agglomeration of ladies white gloves and fox stoles — I used to love to put an antique purse and gloves in a dining room chair and drape my fox stole on the back of the chair — unique high heels (made a cornice with them in the dining room years ago), odd glassware and crystal pieces, demitasse cups, Christmas ornaments, old sequined prom dresses to use as Christmas tree skirts, china, song bird stuff, and clip on earrings and costume jewelry for my bathroom Christmas tree. Yes, I usually have a tree in every room.

Now in my dotage with a three story house bulging I’m proud to say I’m confining my collecting to song bird Christmas ornaments.