Uncovering My Family's Past, One Chair, Pistol, and Pickle Fork at a Time
After their mother.s death, Lisa Tracy and her sister, Jeanne, are left to
contend with several households. worth of furniture and memorabilia, much
of it accumulated during their family.s many decades of military service
in far-flung outposts from the American frontier to the World War Two.era
Pacific. In this engaging and deeply moving book, Tracy chronicles the
wondrous interior life of those possessions and discovers that the roots
of our passion for acquisition often lie not in shallow materialism but in
our desire to possess the most treasured commodity of all: a connection to
the past.
What starts as an exercise in information gathering designed to boost the
estate.s resale value at auction evolves into a quest that takes Lisa Tracy
from her New Jersey home to the Philippines and, ultimately, back to the
town where she grew up. These travels open her eyes to a rich family history
characterized by duty, hardship, honor, and devotion.qualities embodied in
the very items she intends to sell. Here is an inventory unlike any other:
silver gewgaws, dueling pistols that once belonged to Aaron Burr (no, not
those pistols), a stately storage chest from Boxer Rebellion.era China,
providentially recovered family documents, even a chair in which George
Washington may or may not have sat.each piece cherished and passed down to
Lisa.s generation as an emblem of who her forebears were, what they had done,
and where they had been. Each is cataloged here with all the richness and
intimacy that only a family member could bring to the endeavor.
.Even as we know we should be winnowing, we.re wallowing,. observes Lisa
Tracy in one of her characteristically trenchant observations about America.s
abiding obsession with .stuff.. A paean to the pack rat in us all, Objects of
Our Affection offers an offbeat and intriguing mix of cultural anthropology,
Antiques Roadshow Americana, and military history and lore, as well as
a thoughtful meditation on the emotional resonance of objects.what they mean
and the oh-so-fascinating stories they tell.
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