Rural Heritage April/May 2026

In addition to the broad axe was the brace and its accompanying bits that also had come down from Pappaw's granddad. I was told the story of its line of descent every time I borrowed it to walk the hillsides tapping maple trees for sugar sap. On the back wall was an odd piece of steel that lay in a flat sheet. Pappaw explained that it was a piece of the ship USS Missouri. This was the ship on which the Japanese surrender of World War II was signed. Apparently, when some of the outer gun turrets were repaired, the scrap steel was sold. The brickyard in town had bought some of the steel for use in the shop. Pappaw said he was assigned to cut the steel up and use it for brick molds, but it was too hard to be worked. Several of the men

in the shop took pieces to keep as mementos, and this was the piece he brought home. In a can of nails, I found a small copy of the New Testament. Pappaw said that a friend of the family had given it to his mother when he was born, with the instruction to give it to him when he was old enough to understand it. She gave it to him when he turned 76 and figured he might be getting old enough. I would set and listen intently to the history of each item, tucking the stories away for a future I never imagined. This jumble of junk and memories was just another part of the place I called home. At the time I took it for granted that it and everything else attached to the place would continue unchanged forever, but time, as they say, goes on and all things fade and pass away.

April/May 2026

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