50+ Years of Stuff

Sorry for abandoning all of you the last couple of days, but this has been a weekend without any time off, even to look at the computer. We went 12 1/2 hours today, starting this morning with the decision to rent a truck for a week. The first load was stuff going to my house. I finally left Santa Paula at noon, drove 110 miles south, unloaded the truck, loaded up something that was going back, and drove 110 miles back. All in all, about 5 1/2 hours on the road.

When I got back I found this:

That's my wife digging through stuff in what was at one time her bedroom. All that other stuff above came from the kitchen cabinets and will either end up at Goodwill or in the trash. Very little of it will go on to other family members. There's just hordes of stuff here.

I also took a shot of this:

Those are the medals earned by my father-in-law during his service in WWII, including a Bronze Star with "V" device (for valor), a Silver Star, Purple Heart, and various other infantry and scout badges.

And, I thought you might be interested in this:

That's the commendation letter he received personally signed by Gen. George S. Patton. Pretty cool.

More work tomorrow, though I'll be departing in the early afternoon to catch a train home. My wife will stay one more day, though it's obvious that this job will go on for some time.