Saved!

My grandparents, George and Dorothy Tyler, owned a home in Bethlehem that could well be described as a Temple to the Great Pack Rat. They were not pathological about it; that is to say, the rooms visitors saw were comfortable and easily navigable. But upstairs, on the fourth floor, and in the basement, one could find a treasure trove of, well, what anyone else would call the dispensable.

My dad, George Tyler, inherited some pack rat genes. Not nearly so much as my grandparents, mind you (who lived through the Great Depression, which may have contributed to this tendency): my dad would, within my memory, periodically "go through" rooms, which meant that he was going to get rid of stuff. In my university years I remember semi- or annual phone conversations in which my dad would say, "I found this in your closet (or dresser, or the model room)--are you attached to it?" If I said no, it was going to a better place.

But having become the repository of all my dad's memorabilia since his death, I'm discovering how much he didn't throw away. In a "Weis quality Light Spread" margarine container (I don't think Dad ever had real butter in the house; and of course the saved all the margarine containers), I found a collection of patches, pins, and plates from the past. Here's a taste of the kind of stuff my dad kept.

Two metal key chains from our high school. What's mysterious is that I entered Liberty High in 1990, and my brother in 1992:

Herkimer diamonds are not really diamonds at all:

Random brass button. What do you suppose it belongs to?

My dad spent some time in Russia during his travels. I have no idea what these pins say--although I'm sure Putin's and Medvedev's governments would not approve:

I never remember any reference to my dad going to the Rochester Institute of Technology. Then again, he was the kind of guy who would order the pin from a catalog because he heard some strange story about the guy who designed the three-cornered square on the emblem (then retell that story to anyone who asked, "Did you go to RIT?"):

Dad was a Wales buff, always interested in remembering how our ancestors (the Tylers) came from Wales, and may have had their own property there. I wonder where Dad planned to put these pins?

Dad liked to travel by backpack, so patches were a favorite souvenir. I tried this for a while myself in university, but have long since given up the canvas satchel as a living photo album. Some of his patches never made it out of their wrapping:

Others speak of adventures and locales that I never heard about:

Others remember places and events we know all too much about. Here's a patch from the First Cavalry Division, Dad's division in Vietnam:

Who knew that hospitals had their own patches? Do physicians put them on the white coats? Cincinnati General is where Dad did his residency; MCH is where he did an internship:

The last three came off the same pack (judging by the torn material to which each patch is attached). They are from Germany:

More on this patch later (it's one of the few of which I know some story):

I have no idea where this one is, but given its high-altitude reference, it may be from a trip my dad took into the Alps and nearly got himself killed climbing mountains. I remember something about that trip because my dad said that his mother had written to him about a vivid dream that he was in trouble. The time of her dream matched his ill-fated ascent. Weird:

For me, most of these patches are lost memories or, at best, pointers to vague remembrances. Thus, having archived them digitally, I am going to send them the way of all pack-ratted paraphernalia, pausing only to note the rich tapestry of travelling experiences from my dad's life reflected in their woven images.

~emrys