stuff i found at mama's

Anyone from Samson, my hometown, who has seen my childhood home on Johnson Street knows that in the back yard stands an old storage building.  Its not a big building, its shaped like a mini-barn, made of tin and is rusted on all sides in the corners and doors.  As a young child, I even had thoughts of living in this little barn, even though it had no kitchen, no bathroom and no air conditioning, something that is usually pretty key when it comes to summers--heck, even late spring and much of fall--in humid, hot South Alabama. 

In that storage unit, for the last 15 years or so, have been two large plastic bins with some of my stuff in it.  Stuff that I had when I was a kid, books, papers, trinkets, things... just random, random things.

When my Mom died last fall and the house passed to my aunts, my Mama visited the house and grabbed those two bins for me so they wouldn't get tossed or mixed up with other things that would be disposed of.   (if you are confused by the "Mom" and "Mama" in that statement, then read this)

So, in the Easter weekend trip I took with The Lovely Steph Leann and Campbell down to Andalusia, Alabama, it was time to go through these boxes... in the late evening of Easter Saturday, I pulled out the two heavy bins that hadn't been opened in over a decade and a half, ripped off the crusty, dirty duct tape that held the lids on, and opened them up. 

And here is some of the random crap I uncovered...

These little tiger guys... about an inch high, puffy, and silly. 
And you would get these when you got a "highest average"
in a class over the six week period.  I had like, 14 of these
piled up in the bins, though some were pretty ratty.

So, in 2nd grade, at Ridgetop Elementary School in Austin, Texas, we had some sort of school assembly for Cinco de Mayo.  We were doing some sort of re-enactment of the Mexican
revolution or what have you, and naturally, I was on the Mexican side.  And I wore this. 
Don't ask me why.  And also don't ask me why we were doing something to
commemorate Mexico's independence on Cinco de Mayo, when the two are
actually months and months apart. 

For some reason, I have this knack for saving newpaper clippings of various events, disasters, celebrations and yes, deaths.  And here is John Candy, from the March 5th, 1994 clipping in The Dothan Eagle

I've got the newspapers from the Colombine shootings, the 9/11 attacks, last years tornadoes in Tuscaloosa, and in this bin, wrapped up for a 15 years, The Dothan Eagle from the day after Elba's major flooding.

I don't even know how I got this... and I am pretty sure I never read it. 
An original Family Ties story?  Talk about fan fiction...

Did any of your schools have random bands come and perform duing a school assembly, then later on a concert? Free Fare was that band for us.  They came and did a few songs in the gym, then had a concert that night in the same gym.  I was in 8th grade, and went alone because I wasn't that popular.  Looking back, I remember them being a little silly, but at the time, I thought they were cool.  Cool enough to spend the $2 for the hankerchief/flag thingy here.

Oh, you think thats a bunch of crap, wait til the nex post...