Today, Thursday, August 2, 2018, is the 101st anniversary of my father’s birth. He died 18 years ago.

It has seemed for some time, and more so today, that my life is divided into at least two parts: before my father’s death, and after my father’s death. All the things that happened to me in the before time seem to have happened to a different person in a different world. But it all seems as real and as recent as yesterday.

When Leah and I visited Henry’s wife a few weeks ago, she brought out a metal fishing tackle box filled with memorabilia. My brother had taken it to his home when we cleaned out our parents’ house after my mother died.

A lot of stuff in the box is military. There are shoulder patches for the Army divisions he served in, Army branch insignia (artillery and infantry), rank pins (first and second lieutenant, major, lieutenant colonel — there should be captain’s bars somewhere but I didn’t see it). His dog tags are in there, as well as his service ribbons. The paper on the right is my father’s 6th grade report card for the 1928-29 session. He made pretty good grades. The paper at the top is my mother’s application for a position with the federal government on September 23, 1943. She had already been working for the War Production Board in Washington DC prior to that.

There is also a statement from McCall Hospital dated May 22, 1950. It’s the bill for my birth, a total of $72.50 for the delivery and four days in the hospital ($40 at $10 a day for board and nursing, $10 for operating room expense). My father’s Post Office insurance paid all but $20.

There are a couple of pin-on badges that my parents wore back in the late 1950’s or early 1960’s when they square danced. The badges say “Circle 8”, but I remember their square dancing group as the Western Promenaders. They danced at Rome’s old civic center, built in the 1930’s. When Leah and I drive to our current vet’s office, we pass a building with a sign for the Western Promenaders, so they seem to still be in business.

A careful examination of the photograph will reveal a Nazi lapel pin, one of my father’s war souvenirs. I wonder who wore it.

The hand-drawn and colored map of South America was done by my father sometime in his school years.

Everything is an artifact. Going through them is an exercise in archeology, digging not only into the objects themselves, but also into my own memories, and even into times before I was born.