My Discovery

Cleaning out my grandpa's house is a monumental task that I am glad I do not have to be responsible for. The man was a pack rat for sure, and the last several years of his life he went to the Salvation Army every day at 10 a.m. to browse through the items and bring home all of his bargains. He hated to buy anything brand new, and he would never have bought a book or a phone or any kind of appliance for full price. As a result, there is a lot of junk in that tiny little house of his. But there are also many treasures, if one were so inclined to sift through the boxes and the rooms so full that you can barely walk in them. He owned literally thousands of books. Most of them are non-fiction about things that he was interested in. I even found a box of books about writing, and I don't think he ever wrote anything. But maybe he thought about it. He was a very intelligent man, even though I didn't agree with him on hardly anything. There are shelves full of books on Christianity, Catholicism in particular, the Virgin Mary, Jesus, all that type of stuff. The endless supply of right-wing political books, books about nature, birds, rocks, antiques, computers, I could go on and on. There were even books about books. And many times I ran across a title more than once.

Over the years he gave me many books that he found; he even gave me three boxes full of writing books one time. That was one wonderful thing about him...he always knew what his children and grandchildren were interested in, and always thought of them. When I started writing for a local newspaper, he bought a subscription for it, just so he could read whatever I wrote. When I had a short story published, he bought the magazine/book just to have it. These things meant more to me than he could ever know.

I could go on and on about my grandpa, and how much I miss him and how much I still want to argue with him about politics and religion and gay rights and vegetarianism and all that. I want to go to Chester Wood and swim in the beach with him and see him with his snorkel and flippers as he swam around and popped his head up out of the water.

I never meant to make this a blog about my grandpa, it just sort of happened. I logged on to write about the camera I got from his house and how cool it is. I also took a paper clip holder that I bought for him in San Francisco when I was five, a letter opener he always used that looks like a sword , and a field guide about birds. This book is the one he always had, and it's super old, like from the late '40s. I don't really have a ton of interest in birds, but Garrett does, and that makes me so happy. Grandpa had an influence on my children as well. He had a chance to share his love of nature with them, and I hope to carry on with that.

Anyway, Grandpa had several cameras in his house, but I took the Minolta SRT-101 with a Vivitar telescopic lens. I also took a smaller lens and some other accessories. I have no clue what to do with this thing, as it involves manually focusing and all sorts of settings that I don't yet understand. I know that the world has moved on the digital, and that's OK. I like digital too. I will still mess around with this thing until I can figure it out and maybe get a few good pictures out of it. It's pretty old, in great shape, and may be worth some money, but I don't care. I will always keep it, even if I never use it, because it was his, and I can still smell him when I take a picture with it. It brings me back to when I was a kid and he used to always have his camera with him.