The Ring

The curtains had blown around in the bedroom because the window was open. The hot August evening was cooling off a little and the bit of breeze was welcome.
The flapping curtain had knocked over some stuff on the night table, so I was tidying up. For no particular reason, my attention settled on the old battered jewelry box. Dark blue, battered, satin embroidered ill fitting top. It is not so much a jewelry box as a junk collector. Mostly stuff of little or no value that I can't bring myself to part with.
My Army Dog Tags. An arrowhead I found as a kid, An old gold chain, cuff links, a bead necklace made of seeds presented to me by my daughter when she was about six. My Army lapel insignias and shoulder patches.
And this battered old turquoise and silver pre-war Navajo ring. It has a very nice old stone of high quality that is cracked in a couple of spots. A lot of the detail is worn away on the silver. It has obviously been worn for a long time.
The silver looks to be coin silver, and it is obviously hand made. I am not sure exactly when it was made. What I do know is that my dad bought it in 1939 when he was working in a Trading Post on the RES in New Mexico when he was 19, I think he probably bought it out of pawn. It was a pretty standard practice for the Navajo to pawn their personal jewelry when they needed a little cash infusion and buy it back later. I suspect this was a piece that was not retrieved.
My mother says that it was the very first personal luxury that my dad bought. He was not one to accumulate things for himself. Throughout his life he accumulated a bunch of kids (seven of us). some tools, and half interest in the farm in Idaho.
So it is my personal connection to him. I can't wear this ring without feeling the connection to him, and wonder about what it was like and how things were with him at the time.
He was the strong silent Western type. He never talked about himself. Never told stories, so to me he was largely an enigma. There is a picture of him taken about the time he bought the ring, hair slicked back, sitting on a Harley Davidson, looking way cool and self assured. I hear he cut a pretty wide swath in  North-W
estern New Mexico in the late 1930s. He had cowboyed, moving herds from summer to winter pastures, and vice versa. But his first real job was working in the trading post.
He spoke Navajo, Ute, Spanish and English, so he would translate for the First Peoples when they needed to deal with the officials.
The other thing he accumulated during this time is a beautiful pair of white gloves with incredible beadwork on the backs. The beadwork is of roses and the gloves are beautiful. We have contacted the Ute tribe and will be donating them to the Tribal Museum. They are too nice to be moldering away in a drawer somewhere.

So for now I am wearing the ring. It is fairly small, so it will only fit on my little finger, but I wear it to honor the man that was my father.