Furniture.

   I have been spending a lot of time with mom the past three days and noticed today that she really doesn't have any furniture that I can remember as a child. My wife's mother and her Aunt Marge, both had furniture that she can remember growing up, it belonged to the family and was always in the houses where they lived. My mother in law had a golden dog that a women she had cleaned house for in the 1930's had given to her. I remember my grandson Sam used to carry that dog around our basement; after gluing it together about twenty times, we had to put it in the garbage--so much for family keepsakes.
   The only furniture I can remember always being there was my parent's bedroom set. I asked mom about it. She said they had purchased it when they were stationed at Offutt A.F.B, in the 1950's. It was the first furniture that they owned. Being a military family, we didn't have much furniture. I can remember moving to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Okinawa, with only a suitcase. We did have two beds that folded up and were passed from child to child, but mostly we had little or no furniture while I was growing up.
   Mom and dad's bedroom furniture was here when she moved from Mississippi, but when she moved to a smaller apartment about a year ago, I took it to the Indian Reservation in Walthill, Ne. My sisters can perhaps remember furniture from the post Okinawa days, but when we returned in 1968, I was 19 and leaving for college.