Orange Bar Stools and other Quirky Keepsakes

I’m sure most people have things that follow them through life, but who’d have thought mine would be a pair of bright orange bar stools? And as you can see, they aren't even fancy bar stools, but they are cool.

In the early 60s my dad got transferred from Dallas to Fort Worth and we moved. My mom decorated our new home in the popular colors of the time. Brown, orange, and green. Her purchases involved a pair of bright orange, molded bar stools which were pretty cool for the day. Now the house has gone through multiple redecorating attempts and when we sold it and moved Mom in with us last spring, the coppertone appliances were long gone and country blue, beige, and touches of pink had obliterated every hint of the original color scheme. Except those orange bar stools that still stood proudly at the bar.

My friends and I sat in those bar stools and decorated Christmas cookies. As have my kids and grandkids. I ate breakfast there every morning and the only phone in the house was a wall phone beside the bar where I spent many hours giggling with girlfriends or flirting with my first boyfriends. We addressed Christmas cards there. The mail got tossed on the bar where we'd sit and sort through it. Grocery lists and school work and . . .

At Mom's 80th birthday a few years back, I provided a basket of paper and pens and asked everyone to write her notes. Two daughters of our friends wrote about looking forward to coming to the house because my dad made them coffee milk and they sat at the bar in the orange bar stools eating Mom’s cookies and listening to the adults chit chat, feeling all grown up drinking their 'coffee'.

Combining two homes into one last spring, we were both getting rid of lots of furniture. Mom said to put the bar stools in the garage sale. We certainly didn’t need them in our new house. But regardless, my husband and sons piled them into the truck and they spent the winter in the garage at the new house with boxes and other items waiting for hubby’s shop to be finished. Two weeks ago we started moving stuff into the shop. Shelves and the floor jack. Wood working tools and a clock tinker desk. My dad’s old workbench and you guessed it, those orange bar stools. My daddy has been gone 23 years, but last Sunday his best friend and his wife came down to visit and my husband was showing Ted the shop. I walked out to check on them and Ted was sitting in one of the bar stools smiling. He said he couldn’t wait to call his daughters and let them know that the orange bar stools made the trip and were alive and well in Waxahachie. Those orange bar stools have once again earned the status of cool.

What funny things have you hung on to? I'm not talking grandmother's Dresden china or Mom's diamond ring here? I'm talking those quirky items that just follow you through life.