Hi, everyone. I am writing this on my sister-in-law's computer. We are visiting here over the holiday weekend. Partly to visit but mostly to divvy up some family possessions. It's late, and my wife was very tired, so she went to bed by herself.
Quick recap: My father-in-law died last December. Since then, the brothers and sisters have been splitting up the household items. This visit is our first since the funeral. Well, sort of. I drove my wife here in April but drove home by myself the same day, while she stayed for a day or two and got a ride home with a sister.
They have been putting some stuff on the side for her, so today was a very busy day over there, as she was finally there to look over things. This might be a good time to remind you that my car has very limited storage space. They had put aside boxes and boxes of stuff for her, on a work bench in the garage. In terms of volume, maybe two or three times what the car can hold, including the back seat. (And, to be painfully honest, much of it was junk.) We selected the stuff she wanted most and pushed, prodded and packed it into the car.
One box that didn't make the cut contained model tractors. My father-in-law was a big collector of model tractors, of various sizes--most of them stood about eight inches tall. I'm not so gung-ho on tiny tractors as he was, but there was a good side. One of my wife's brothers was very interested in them, and my wife sold them to him for $100.
On this particular weekend, seven of the eight brothers and sisters were present, so it was half visiting and half sorting stuff. Today, they went through their mother's jewelry, photo albums, sheets and blankets and some money. Money!
Yes, indeed. Coins, mostly. Some silver dollars (mostly Eisenhower dollars) and many JFK half dollars. This process went extremely slowly, as they divided the coins into Bicentennial (1976) and non-Bicentennial piles. Then they looked the coins over to make sure there weren't any silver half dollars mixed in there. Then they divided the coins into groups of eight, and each took a turn to decide which of the eight half dollars in a group they wanted. It got to be very slow. Of course, there were leftover coins from each group, so they had to decide how they should divvy those up.
Add in a few Susan B. Anthony dollars and a few $2 bills. Of course, the number of those was not divisible by eight, either. There also were some older coins. A few Morgan silver dollars. One Peace silver dollar. Both are from the 1920s. Two Standing Liberty half dollars from the '40s. A Buffalo nickle from the '30s. And an Indian head penny. The date on that one: 1864! They are going to have those coins examined for collector value before deciding what to do with them.
With this very deliberate procedure, progress was snail-like. They also had a long, long talk about my father-in-law's property and what to do with it. Two (maybe three) of the sons want to buy parts of it, but they want to pay less than the appraised value. And there is a retired priest who supposedly interested in buying the land--with gold! So there was a l0ng talk about that and whether they would be able to dodge the taxman. For some of them, you can see dollars signs dancing in their eyes as they talk about it.
For me (and for my wife, I suspect) it was tedious. I, of course, am not one of the eight children, so I watched the discussions and mini-auctions (yes, they did that) of some of the items. At other times, I went off into another room and listened to music. Thank goodness my wife suggested I take along the headphones for the iPod before we left!
It was a very long day. Finally it was over. We drove back to town and got supper at Subway. Then here, to my sister-in-law's place.
Tomorrow promises to be much more fun. Another sister-in-law has gotten wind of a blueberry farm a few miles away, so we are going blueberry-picking! After that, a cookout at someone's place. We will drive home either Monday night or Tuesday morning--with some blueberries for our ice cream. Yummm!
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