Whenever I go to my grandparents' old house (my grandpa died and my grandma has Alzheimer's; we're in the process of cleaning out the place) I make a beeline to an old cabinet in the living room. The top part is filled with antique medicine bottles, which haven't exactly aired out, so it's nausea-inducing to get within three feet of the cabinet. I hold my breath and open the lower part of the cabinet. I always grab a book or two to take home and read.
My grandparents kept a plethora of old books. My grandpa would buy them up at garage sales; he couldn't bear to see them being thrown away. These books are more valuable to me than any inheritance. There are almanacs, photo albums, novels, journals, encyclopedias, newspapers, and letters. Every one of them contains interesting little tidbits of information, and I love reading them. I've kept the majority of them because I don't want to see them get thrown away.
They say that this obsession with history is passed down to the oldest child of every oldest child in my family. It makes sense, then, that I, the oldest child of my father, who is the oldest child of my grandpa, would inherit this love of history.
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