Well, I was in the middle of my spring cleaning one August and suddenly I had this WONDERFUL idea. I so often get wonderful ideas while I am spring cleaning which is why I am usually doing it in August. Actually that was pretty early that year considering I haven’t done my spring cleaning for 2006 yet. But I digress.
I was dusting my plate collection in August of 1998 and reading the back of each plate to see when and where I got it. The thought occurred to me that when I die, my children and grandchildren might not get the significance of this collection. (Now that I am updating this in 2008, I am certain they won’t get it, since the entire collection is still packed in boxes in the attic from the 2003 move to the lake. My New Year’s Resolutions always include unpacking and hanging my plate collection. Maybe 2009 is the year! But I seem to be digressing again. That happens so often anymore.)
So I decided (back in 1998) that I needed to write down things that I would like for my children and grandchildren to remember about me. I actually did write this down, but it is woefully out of date. Since everyone and his dog is writing a book today (2008, and yes, there are dog memoir books out there! What am I talking about? My animals have their own blog now.), I thought I might attempt to bring it up to speed and put it on my blog. Now who would have thought in 1998 that I would be blogging this in 2008? Back then, I was impressed that it was even in the computer. Lucky for me that I printed a copy off, because the original file is still sitting on a hard drive somewhere and I can only hope that it is not a hard drive that is being investigated by the FBI and tied to some serial killer in Whatchamahatchee, USA. Now, however, instead of being on a hard drive in a dump somewhere, it will be posted to the World Wide Web and everyone and his dog (who apparently can read and write) will see it. Now, where was I?
Oh yes, I was writing things I want my family to remember about me. Oh yes, plates. When I was about 11 or 12 and growing up in the Center of the Universe (heretofore referred to as Olustee), our preacher and his wife, John and Ruth McLaren had a collection of all 50 state plates. I really loved John and Ruth (and had a crush on a couple of their grandsons at one time or another) and I thought that plate collection was the coolest thing I had ever seen. I dreamed of traveling the world gathering plates from exotic locales and proudly displaying them on my own wall someday, so that my children and grandchildren could see what a cosmopolitan, sophisticated well-traveled woman their grandmother was. OK. At that time, I just thought it was cool and I wanted one of my own. Well, Ruth had several duplicates so she gave her extras to me (they are marked 1965 with her name on the back of the plates) and the official Marilyn Brown State Plate Collection was born.
I think I zoomed up to 10 plates at one time. There just wasn’t much opportunity to run up to Connecticut in the 60s and pick up a plate. Time marched on, as time always does, I got busy doing really important things (I’m sure some of them will turn up on this blog at some point…you’ll just have to keep checking back). I never got around to completing my collection. But I never forgot it. John and Ruth moved on and some years later she died. We went to Stratford (OK, not Connecticut, no wait, that’s Stanford) to see John and he very kindly gave me what was left of Ruth’s collection. He had put it in storage and a bunch of kids had broken some of them, but he gave me the rest.
I proceeded to drag that box around with me for several moves (does this sound familiar? Check out the bedroom furniture and rocking chair stories). When I moved back to Oklahoma with three squalling baby boys (but weren’t they adorable?), I decided I wanted to finish my plate collection. It became kind of symbolic. I had just realized that many of my goals were not going to be reached (you know, the Donna Reed/Father Knows Best/Happily Ever After thing), but by George, I could finish a stinking plate collection!
I dug out the box, glued the plates together that could be salvaged and made a list of the ones that I needed to replace. If memory serves me right (ha ha, like that would happen), there were about 20 missing plates. I bought one here and there, but still had about 12 of them missing by 1984. My sister-in-law, Karen, on a trip to Kentucky, found a store in Missouri that had all 50 plates. She gave me a call and was able to round up the missing ones and tote them home for me.
Since then, I’ve added a couple of extra plates (Mona’s 1976 plate, one from Las Vegas, and one from Canada), but the real treasures are the ones that the kids brought me on their international travels. They seem to get around more than I do, so they have added Ukraine, Japan, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and even Soo Bak Do to my collection (Joel got that one for me when he took first place in the Nationals, WTG Joel!).
So, there you have it. The story of Marilyn’s Great State/International Plate Collection. Once I get them out of the moving boxes and actually hanging on the wall, they will once again represent the fulfillment of a childhood goal. I’d like to think that reaching that goal helped me to reach some others…like finishing college, raising 3 sons to be successful “people” (even though one of them spends every night in jail!), and updating my memoirs. Wow! Now maybe I should go do some spring cleaning just to see what that might lead to!
