Discoveries of Long-lost Treasures! (And then..Mystery!)

While Michael was tromping around on the rooftop, I stayed clean out of sight! There are some rotten boards that need to be replaced so Son was the man for the job!  Heights bother me a mite since I am getting older so I leave any jobs that involve running about the top of the house up to that younger generation.  It does not seem to bother him at all!  I stayed inside and cleaned out the desk!  What treasures this piece of furniture held!  It should have been an easy task...pull out a drawer and dump the entire contents into the trash but noooo....I had to look at every scrap of paper!  Which, as it seems, turned out to be a good thing!  I made discoveries of things from long ago!  Treasures that had been tucked inside the desk and promptly forgotten. Treasures that some day, my kids will have to decide to keep or discard!  Treasures of ages past.

One such treasure was a graduation invitation.  Not that most graduation invitations are even kept much past the event date but this was kept for a while..a good, long while.  The date on the commencement notice was May 31, 1918!  It was to be held in the auditorium of the local high school, Biloxi High School at eight o'clock.  I figured that this has to be my great aunt's graduation announcement as it was in a box that had several other mementos from her younger days.  Great Aunt Ruth went on to college and became a nurse.  She helped many folks before becoming more or less a recluse in the old family home.  I knew she had to have graduated around that time but could not have known the exact year.  1918 sounded about right.

There was also a small greeting card congratulating her on graduating.  No address was on the envelope so I figured that it was hand-delivered as was the custom of the day.  The greeting card bore glad tidings and well wishes to "Miss Ruth"! I knew this was to my great aunt!  There was no date written on the card.

In that same little box, I found her class ring.  Back then, the rings were pretty little thing unlike the massive, gaudy trinkets of today.  These rings were something that could be worn throughout a lifetime without ever seeming pretentious.  Other than the large initial "B", the writing on the ring was quite small.  I pulled out the magnifying glass to take a look and was surprised to see that encircling the "B" was the date..Nineteen Hundred Twenty!  Whoa...something was not right here at all!  For years I had been under the impression that these things belonged to my great aunt..now, I am not so sure! She could not have graduated in both years!  Was one of these three items not hers?  Perhaps one belonged to my grandmother (her sister)!  Or..maybe one of their brothers!  The mystery stands as I did not have the time to delve into it today.  The announcement, greeting card and ring will all be put aside with good intentions of solving the mystery soon.  Hopefully!  (Oh..and the ring?  It is a tiny thing!  It will not even fit on the end of my pinkie finger!)