I have many memories of our family living in Detroit, MI with my maternal grandparents in their basement at first, and then living in our own house down the street later on. This was from 1970-71, a relatively short period of time but one filled with a lot of experiences. I was about three years old. This photo of my grandparents was taken around this time, I believe.

As anyone knows who has children of their own, it can be hard to get the little ones to take their afternoon naps. All of my own children stopped doing that right about the same age I was in this story. When I was three years old, I didn’t like taking naps any more than my own kids do. I distinctly remember my Grandma telling me, “Steven, if you take a nap this afternoon, I will have a surprise ready for you when you wake up!” So I took my nap.

I wondered what on earth my Grandma would give me. I was really surprised and delighted when she presented me with my very own scrapbook that she had made for me. I still have that scrapbook; it is one of my most treasured possessions.

My Grandma made the scrapbook out of clippings from magazines and little odds and ends that she had collected from her travels and elsewhere. For example, one of the things she particularly liked, and always had a supply of in the house, was a brand of tea bags named Red Rose Tea. It was only available in Canada at that time but that wasn’t a problem for her to get, living just across the river from Windsor. Each box of this special tea came with a little surprise such as a pack of little, colorful cards, about one inch wide and two or three inches tall. Each card featured a picture of an animal with its scientific name at the bottom. On the flip side of each card was a brief description of the animal, its habitat, etc. I loved those cards! Grandma kept them in a collection on her kitchen counter and some of them she included in the scrapbook. I remember sitting on her counter looking through those cards. Later on, Red Rose Tea stopped including the little cards and began to include one little china figurine of an animal in every box. Grandma collected all of those, too, and I loved them just as much as the cards. I kept as many of them as I could for a long time when I was a kid. Nowadays we are able to buy Red Rose Tea here in the States in most grocery stores. It’s been many years since I bought a box and I wonder, do they still include those little ceramic figurines in each box? But I digress.

That scrapbook fascinated me and still does to this day. It is like a snapshot of American life and customs and products from the early seventies. It’s hard to describe how much it means to me because of the memories it evokes.

Unfortunately now almost forty years after it was made, my Grandma’s scrapbook is a little worse for wear. I now have children of my own who aren’t particularly careful about how they handle this book and consequently, some of the pages are ripped out and some of the clippings have been lost or come unglued. For a long time I have thought about how to somehow preserve it (other than locking it away somewhere in a dark, safe place). A few nights ago I decided to take a photograph of each page just to see how it might turn out. You can see them here if you’re interested. My camera doesn’t have the high-powered resolution, and the setup is just my kitchen table, so the photos aren’t as clear and professional-looking as they could be.

I dearly loved my Grandma, who died October 25, 1982, surviving only a week after a severe heart attack. (The photo on the left is the last one taken of her before her death. It shows her with her only great-grandchild at the time, my nephew, Nils.) Her features are a little fuzzy in my mind’s eye, and although her voice was distinctive, I can’t exactly recall it as I used to. But her scrapbook lives on and provides me with an important link to an important time, and a very important person, in my past.

P.S. After writing this I discovered that Red Rose Tea has its own website at http://www.redrosetea.com/ There is a page that talks about those little figurines and there is more information about its history. This is still my favorite black tea in the world to drink.