Dressers Come with Family Memorabilia

When we decided we should hit the road and travel full-time in our RV, we had to get rid of a LOT of junk things. I know I've written about this before. Bare with me here. Our bedroom set was 31 years old, made of pine, and had several scratches in it, but in my mind, still usable. True, the bottom of my dresser was falling off, but still, I thought, usable. I thought it could be saved for use in a second bedroom for when we eventually settled down again.

Jim thought the furniture was crap.

It's true that he and our son, Jason, tried to bring my dresser down the stairs.....and it wouldn't fit. I know the movers had a terrible time fitting the mattress up the stairs when we first moved in. They ended up removing our large bedroom windows in the middle of February and carrying the mattresses up a ladder. On a windy cold day. Did I mention that they broke the windows because it was so frigging cold out? Uh, yeah.

Okay, back to my story.

The movers were able to get my dresser up the stairs. But somehow Jim and Jason couldn't get it down the stairs.

I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it with my own eyes. The staircase was narrow and the floor of the closet from the upstairs bedroom jutted out over the staircase so the ceiling on part of the staircase was low.

They huffed. And they puffed.

They swore.

They sweated.

But there was no way that dresser was going to fit.

They carried it back into the bedroom.

Jim came down and sat next to me at the bottom of the stairs.

"There's only one thing I can do," he said, wiping the sweat from his eyes.

I looked over at him warily.

"I'm going to have to cut it in half."

"WHAT? I want to keep it!"

"It's falling apart! It's a piece of crap! Look. I can't get it down the stairs. This is the only choice I have."

He got up and went into the garage for his saw.

I sat on the stairs feeling miserable.

He marched past me, determined.

In a few seconds I heard the saw tear into the wood. Tears flowed from my eyes. This whole business of down-sizing, going on the road, leaving family was NOT going to be easy! Look what I was giving up!

Jim came down after awhile, carrying the carcass of my dresser. He dragged it out to the curb.

There it lay. In pieces. Just like my heart.

Well, I survived the seven years on the road. Most of the time it was great. We saw wonderful things, made a lot of friends. Sometimes it was lonely. Sometimes I was stir crazy. MANY times I longed for a home that didn't move when someone walked!

Now we are off the road and settled into a condo.

I LOVE IT!

But I DO miss traveling! BUT NOT ALL THE TIME!

I seemed to have digressed here. My main point was about dressers!

Once we got off of the road and got a place to live, we needed furniture. I DID have an old dresser that I took from my parent's house after my mom died. My sisters and I used it growing up and it was still in good shape.

Nobody else wanted it, so it stayed in my basement for years. Once we packed up everything and hit the road, this dresser went into storage. I knew I was keeping it, especially because the bottom drawer had a special message written in it from my older sister, Linda. Unfortunately, we don't know the date the message was written.

It's hard to read because it was written in pencil. The message reads,

"This dresser belongs to Linda but will pretty soon belong to the twins Loram & Hardy or Fatso and Skinny. They are little devils. They were always teasing me and getting me into deep, deep holes or trouble. But I love them. You don't really know how much I do love them. PS. I hope you two brats will like this dresser. Love Linda    XOXO"

Now seriously, how could I ever let something so precious like this out of the family? Snort! And furthermore, I'd like to point out that she is referring to ME as the "Loram" a.k.a Loran and "Fatso" person. I was never fat as a kid. It was just that my twin sister was so dang skinny that she MADE me look fat!

So instead of having a matched set for bedroom furniture, I decided to just go with old, sentimental antique furniture.

TO BE CONTINUED........