This old newspaper clipping was among many, many items uncovered this past week out in Arizona, as my brother and I closed up an unused (in years) condo where our mother had taken stuff from Indiana.
It depicts a VERY young and quite skinny picture from the swim club our family used each summer in Indianapolis. I wasn't only the fourth generation to swim there, but also the last generation. Swim clubs like the Riviera existed in the post war period, and ultimately many (not all) would fall prey to individual family pools on larger suburban lots. The civil rights movement also impacted this business, and yet from an internet search, this club lives on with their web page displaying many faces, all of them pale. Groucho Marx once said "I wouldn't join any club that would have me", and as memory serves, neither would have this club have admitted Marx back in the 50's.
I did a Google search and found that this particular club exists as a private swim, tennis and fitness club. Apparently it remains as it was sixty years ago, as the photo page on the Internet shows Caucasians for every occasion, and nary a dark countenance to be found. But I digress - this picture was only to intro the story of my last five days in Arizona.
I arrived by aircraft, while my brother and his wife made the trip from Indianapolis by aged Chevy Suburban with my 90 year old mother in tow. She is a tough old bird, and while I had visions of National Lampoon's "Vacation" and Aunt Edna coming into Phoenix strapped to the top of the "family truckster", apparently this was not to be the Griswold family vacation. They arrived a day before me,and my brother had arranged for a four cubic yard dumpster.
When I got there, that first dumpster was about three feet full, and with my help we found enough true trash to take it to the four foot high limit. They picked it up Friday afternoon, and delivered another. That second dumpster was to last till the following Monday, as the process slowed down due to time devoted to shredding five years of old records with identifying numbers therein.
My job was also to mind the meals and meds for my mom, as brother and wife left Thursday night for Disney in Anaheim. This was to be their vacation, the first for many years. My brother is a saint who watches over mom from his home half a block away from the family manse. That house is next on the cleaning hit parade, and it holds not ten years of stuff (as did the condo) but closer to fifty. I remember moving into that home (5 bedrooms chock full of stuff) about the time of the picture taken above. My mother, an only child and one who remembers the REAL depression (not this fake Obama replica) saved everything. I swear we threw out the bathing suit she was wearing in the picture above - some of the few items she was willing to let go at age 90.
Dan returned late Sunday night, and fueled by a dozen cups of coffee kept the old gal up till three sorting and throwing out no longer needed stuff. He was a tour de force to watch, and that second dumpster got its fill by Monday noon. The moving van came Wednesday, a day after I once again returned to my calm life in St. Louis. Perhaps I'll write more about this journey down memory lane tomorrow, but till then remember this "if you don't use it in five years, you don't need it".
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