The ties that bind one generation to another are sometimes as fragile as a piece of thread dangling from a button saved from a beloved old sweater. That, at least, is the premise of “The Memory Box” (Sta-Kris Inc., $14.95), a book by Mary Kay Shanley.
Unabashedly sentimental in tone, this semiautobiographical book tells the story of a little girl who discovers a box full of little treasures.
Rummaging through her attic one day, she finds a “memory box” carved by her grandfather. In it are bits and pieces of the family’s past including: a tassel from college graduation, an old wooden spoon worn with age, a funeral card from a friend who died young, a cocker spaniel’s leather collar, a movie ticket stub from Grandma’s first date with the man she would marry and a pack of radish seeds given to the grandparents by a favorite neighbor.
Shanley, an Iowa journalist and mother of three grown children, says, “One of the interesting things about keepsakes is that most of the things you hold onto have little or no monetary value. But each object has a story to go with it, and in sharing these keepsakes, we become storytellers about our own lives.”
The “memory box” in Shanley’s story, a hand-carved, cigar box-size container made of walnut, maple and pine, is similar to the one belonging to the book’s illustrator, Paul Micich. Shanley herself is a bit less organized.
“I have a big old shoe box in the basement,” she says, “and I have stuff in a cedar chest, and there’s a special drawer upstairs. If I have something I want to save, I put it one of those three places.”
Wherever they’re kept, personal mementos gain emotional resonance by being shared with others, says Shanley, who plans to make keepsakes a part of her annual Christmas celebration. “From now on, every Christmas I’m going to give each of my kids something from my memory box to add to theirs. And whatever I give, it’s going to come with a story. I think it’s a way to connect the past with the future.”
We asked some of our town’s more colorful characters to rummage through the souvenirs they still savor. Some mementos were passed down from parents and grandparents; others will no doubt, one day, be handed over to a new generation. Whatever their source, or destination, these highly personal collections make tangible a crazy-quilt remembrance of things past.
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Tom Doody, the popular party planner-turned publicist, periodically tosses trinkets into a box that reflects his offbeat sense of humor. “It’s this memento box with a piece of bark on the lid–a kitschy, totally suburban-looking box of absolutely no value,” says Doody, whose namesake company promotes the doings of the Art Institute of Chicago, Hard Rock Cafe, Whole Foods, Trio, Gordon and other Chicago enterprises. “Every time I pop it open, I’m amazed to find the weirdest stuff in there.”
Included are “V.I.P.” cards to all the nightclubs Doody frequented in the late ’70s through the mid-’80s.
“I’ve got a 15-year slice of Chicago night life in there,” says Doody, reminiscing about such long-gone clubs as Limelight, O’Banion’s and Le Mere Vipere.
Other oddities: an Italian switchblade from Doody’s first trip to Italy, a wish doll from Haiti and a zippered autograph book dating back to junior high, in which Doody crossed out the American flag and drew in its place a peace symbol. Also, cufflinks he got at his first Holy Communion at age 7 and his great-grandfather’s gold badge from the Chicago Fire Department.
Artifacts with a more personal tone include a “ponytail” held by a purple rubber band that once belonged to his wife, Lynn, and the leather room key tag from the spa they stayed at on their honeymoon two years ago in Big Sur, Calif.
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For more than 20 years, actress/director/writer/producer Jackie Taylor has been presenting theater pieces via her Black Ensemble Theatre that explore the African-American experience (current productions include “Great Women in Gospel” at DuSable Museum; “Doo Wop Shoo Bop” at the Ivanhoe Theatre; and “Me and Miss D.,” opening Friday at Black Ensemble Theatre in Lake View).
In her work, Taylor consistently delivers evocative stories filled with both pathos and humor. It is no suprise that her keepsakes also draw on the full spectrum of emotions.
Says Taylor, “My most treasured keepsake is my first Elvis Presley record, `You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Houndog.’ It’s all scratched and worn, but it reminds me of my little brother, Joe, who died in 1980. When we were little, he and I used to put that record on, close the door in our room and dance all day long; we’d `houndog’ my mother to death.”
Taylor also has held on to her blue and white uniform she once wore as a high school cheerleader for the now-defunct St. Michael’s Wild Cats.
“I used to put it on from time to time to remind myself how much weight I gained,” she says with a laugh. “I don’t put that thing on anymore, I’ll tell you that.”
Perhaps Taylor’s most poignant keepsake story: the day she discovered her mother’s “memory box.”
“I never thought my mother paid any attention to my career, and that was hard for me. I was doing the movie `Cooley High,’ all the plays, all the reviews, yet it seemed like she never noticed. But when my mom passed away, we went through her stuff and there was a box marked “my youngest daughter,” and in it was every single article, photo, newspaper clipping about me, from grade school on.
“All that time, she was praising me in her own way.”
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Artist-raconteur Tony Fitzpatrick plays tough guys in movies, hosts a morning radio show on WMVP-AM 1000, and designs album covers for rock musicians. Once known for a wild and wooly lifestyle, Fitzpatrick has settled down in recent years. He keeps a mini-museum of charms and trinkets on a shelf at Big Cat Gallery, the Wicker Park studio where Fitzpatrick paints.
“You want to know what my most precious keepsake is?” Fitzpatrick asks. “My son’s birdhouse. He’s 4 years old, and last week, my wife bought him a little balsa-wood birdhouse kit and he put it together, and then he painted it.
“Max colored it with markers–green, orange and purple and blue–and, with a little help from my wife, he drew this star burst on it. It put me in tears.
“Someone could come in here and steal my paintings and etchings, and I could just make new stuff. But if they took that, I’d hunt them down and rip their eyes out. The birdhouse is just big enough to hold my heart in.”
Also on Fitzpatrick’s shelf: voodoo candles given to him by the Neville Brothers, for whom he designed an album cover; a hat from Lou Reed emblazoned with the logo “Fighting for an Idea”; a rattlesnake rattle, courtesy of country music rebel Steve Earle; a gambling chip imprinted with the names of magic act Penn and Teller.
Family memorabilia: a tie his wife bought when they first started dating and an autograph by White Sox great Luis Aparicio, which reminds Fitzpatrick of the trips he used to take with his dad to Comiskey Park.
For good luck, Fitzpatrick keeps a four-leaf clover and a rabbit’s foot. “It belonged to a friend of mine that I grew up with,” Fitzpatrick whispers. “He went away (to prison) for life.”
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Miriam Despres is a big believer in what the past can tell us about ourselves. A founding member of the Chicago Architecture Foundation, she also served on the Chicago Commission of Landmarks and now belongs to the Prairie Avenue House Museums.
“I think history is very important,” she says. “How do we know about ancient Greece? From its buildings. How do we understand France’s history? From its cathedrals.”
On a more personal level, Despres says she’s in the middle of “a big production” to organize her photographs into proper photo albums; but for now, her keepsakes are scattered in various corners of the Hyde Park apartment she shares with her husband, former 5th Ward Alderman Leon Despres.
Among her prized possessions: limericks, which, she exclaims, “are not repeatable. They were written by friends for different occasions. They often sent us limericks during the difficult times of my husband’s political career, and they always made us laugh.”
Marriage mementos include a tortoise-shell cigarette box containing dried flower petals from Despres’ wedding bouquet and poems written by her husband. Among her favorite family heirlooms are a gold thimble from her mother, inscribed with Despres’ initials, and antique silver sugar tongs, a gift from her sister.
Despres and her husband travel widely, collecting a wide assortment of cherished souvenirs, such as the wooden birds hand-carved by an old man in Door County; plaster-cast figures of Indian gods (“They cost 40 cents to buy and $40 to ship home,” Despres recalls); and a duck-shaped paperweight purchased in Alton, Ill., made of lead from hunters’ bullets.
For good luck, Despres has an origami talisman given to her by a Japanese friend.
One regret: “I wish I still had a little heart made of seed pearls that my grandmother gave me long ago,” says Despres. “But I lost it when I was 18 years old visiting in Vancouver. When you’re that age, you haven’t learned how to take care of your things yet.”
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Though musician Jim Post draws on American history for many of his one-man shows (including “Mark Twain and the Laughing River,” which currently is running at The Theater Building in Lake View), he’s not much for holding onto bits of his own past.
A Texas native, Post moved to Chicago in 1964 with a guitar and “about 20 bucks,” and hasn’t accumulated much in the way of personal effects since.
Among his handful of cherished items: “I have a tape of my mom singing church music, which I treasure so much,” says Post. “And there’s a faded little photograph of my mom and dad that shows me a different side of their lives. I always knew them as strict church-going people, but here’s my mom dressed to the teeth, like a flapper, and my dad’s got his foot up on the running board of a Model T. The picture was taken right after they’d won a dance contest on a river boat.”
Other photos feature Post posing with folk music giants Doc Watson and Pete Seeger. A music box in the shape of a tin church, a present from a food charity in Rockford, also evokes fond memories.
Post, who will veer into rambling childhood anecdotes with little or no prompting, seems to be one of those people for whom memories are never far from reach.
“Sometimes memories are not what you keep, but what you see,” he says. “I never pass a tree without thinking of the time my brother fell out of a treehouse the first time he smoked a cigarette, and every time I see Wrigley Field, I think of going to see baseball games with my dad.”
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So this is the stuff that memories are made of. Whether done on a grand scale–the Pharoahs of Egypt made no small plans–or in a miniature setting, people always have yearned to set aside a few enduring clues about their lives.
“I think of my memory box as a time capsule,” explains Doody. “I’d like it to speak to my appreciation of the eclectic, and I hope that one day my kids could look at this box and see in it a reflection of what my life was about.”
