Last night I was getting ready to go to bed, when I started to rummage around in books. We have a bedstand that has doors that open upon hidden book shelfs. And I was putting some away into the books on my husband's side of the bed, fixing the books up when I found it. The Lincoln plaque. I thought I had lost it.
The Lincoln plaque is a small brown hanging plaque that has Lincoln's Gettysburg address written on it. I always had it hanging in my room somewhere when I was young. I am not particularly sure where it came from...I suspect that it was my Grammies or my father's from when he was a kid. But I have always had it. Specifically, I have always had it hanging in my bedroom. I liked reading those passionate words, it always gave me chills and made me humble. And I brought it with me to my new home and hung it up in our bedroom.
And then...well, then the age of it caught up with it. It is warped (possibly by being hung up in my bedroom when I was 16--living in the basement next to the furnace (it was a remodeled basement). The heat and cold weather probably caused the warping. But now it cannot hang very well. It kept falling off. So I remember putting it aside at one point a few years ago....and then it vanished. (I think someone tiding up put it inside the bookshelf)
So. I look at this plaque. I remember this plaque as being wooden, but now I look at it and I think it may be plastic (just painted to look like a dark wood?). The raised lettering that says "Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address" used to be painted gold...most of the gold is gone now. I have a strong urge to go hunting in my Grammie's old cedar chest to find her letters to me that I put there after she died (maybe I will pull those out this weekend). The Address itself is on cheap paper (I had memories of it being engraved) and some of the letters are faded. I read it, partially from memory.
I have chills and I am humbled.
(I am thinking on how I can get it to hang...perhaps some ribbon through the hole? I am also thinking about giving this to Michael)
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2 comments:
Before we moved here I found a box of things in the basement that I thought were lost at some point.
What a relief to have found your treasure. That would be so sweet to be able to pass it on to Michael.
I love old things like this. We were trying to figure out what to hang in J's new room, and found 6 framed pictures of airplanes that hung in Mr S's room 40 years ago. The study we are fixing up will now have a name tag from my FILs office, as he and Mr S have the same initials, and alongside it will be the slide rule made in 1900 that Mr S's grandfather used in high school back in 1917.
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