Some people are just blessed with all manner of natural talent. They can run fast, jump high, sing like a bird, do math… the categories are endless, and I'm in almost none of them.

One thing I do have is a pretty good memory. And sometimes, memories are all you need.

Genetically speaking, these talents are often passed down from generation to generation, from father to son. My friend Jeff's dad was a professional bowler, and when we were kids, it showed; in a typical game, we would usually throw as many gutterballs as Jeff would strikes. (And the rest of us, Jeff being the exception, would throw our share of gutterballs.)

I didn't get anything cool like tremendous bowling skills from my dad. For the longest time, I wondered if I got anything at all from him, other than poor eyesight. He wasn't a great athlete, and I wanted to be one; he was a doctor, and I had no hopes of being one; he liked classical music and opera, while I liked almost all music except for classical and opera.

We both loved the lake, so there was that; if he was going to pass just one thing down to me, I'm glad that was it.

As the years went by, I came to realize that he had actually given me much more than I had known. We might not have liked the same kinds of music, but the fact that I liked it at all probably came from him; my mom's musical taste began with Tom Jones and ended with Englebert Humperdink, and I can't be sure it was the music she loved.

And, we both loved to read. I can remember sitting on his lap as he read the paper, and making him read the comics to me. Before long I was reading them myself, as well as everything else I could get my hands on. And there was never a short supply of reading materials; Dad tended to hang onto his books after he had read them. I got that from him, too; there are lots of bookshelves in my house, and all of them are full… and I need more. Many more. In fact, my wife and I are talking about adding on to our house, and one of the things we're going to add is a library, a room with nothing in it but floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, two cozy chairs, and a good reading lamp. (It still won't be enough… but it's a start.)

Most of my childhood books are still at my dad's house; I made it through the first 53 volumes of The Hardy Boys before my real-life adventures were better than those of Frank and Joe, and I was a big fan of The Three Investigators, too. Throw in quite a few Tom Swift and his Amazing Adventures, several in the Brains Benton collection, all sorts of sports books (I specifically remember Strange But True Football Stories, and a book about the history of the Super Bowl… and at the time, there had only been six Super Bowls,) mysteries and horror stories… quite a collection.

A collection that is no match for that of my dad. For his high school graduation he received the first English language translation of the original Arabian Nights tales; it was a 17-volume set, and there were only 500 sets published. He also held onto books that were passed down through the family; many were inscribed "To my Darling Daughter for your Father; Christmas, 1879," and the like. I'm not sure who the people were, but I always thought it was neat to have something that had been passed down from generation to generation.

A couple of other items had made it through several generations before settling with Dad; among them were an old clock, and a Nativity set. (The clock is supposedly haunted by the ghost of the original owner, who used to make it stop every night at the hour of his death. At some point it was fixed so it no longer does that, which I think is a shame; antique family heirloom clocks are cool, but haunted clocks are much cooler.)

I once told my dad that I didn't care what he left me in his will, as long as the books, the Nativity set and the clock were included. And since my sister didn't want any of them, he said "Just take them now." But all I took was the clock, and I only took it to the repair shop, because it was starting to show its age. But I left the Nativity set so he could set it up every Christmas, and I left the books because I thought the sight of all of those empty bookshelves would be depressing.

A few days before this past Thanksgiving I got a call from my cousin; she told me that they were going to have to tear out the cabinets and bookshelves downstairs and rebuild them, because apparently there was some sort of mold problem. So I said "Whatever you do, don't throw away the books. They're mine. I'm coming up in two days for Thanksgiving anyway, and if I need to come up now I will; just tell me." But, I was assured that there was no need.

So when I got to Dad's house two days later, I was appalled to see that all of the books were gone. My sister had rented a Dumpster, and thrown away every book. The books that had been passed from generation to generation? Gone. The limited edition, irreplaceable set? Gone. All of my childhood books? Also gone, even though they were kept in the garage, far from the supposed mold outbreak.

That mold must have been some powerful stuff; judging from what my sister condemned to the landfill, it was powerful enough to eat vinyl record albums (hundreds of them,) glass aquariums, chrome and leather furniture, plastic, cardboard and, of course, paper. Oh, and lead figurines, the kind that had been part of the Nativity set; it was gone, too. In fact, just about everything that had been in the downstairs portion of Dad's house was gone, except for the stuff my sister wanted.

It seems that the only things to survive were photo albums; they had been on the very same bookshelves, yet they didn't get thrown away. In fact, on closer inspection, they looked perfectly fine. They were albums full of pictures that Dad had taken whenever he had traveled, and he used to travel quite a bit. So there are pictures he took in Vienna, Italy, France, Eastern Europe, on various sailing trips in the Atlantic and Caribbean, just to name a few corners of the globe.

One of those trips was one that he and I took along with my cousin Steve, Steve's wife Sarah, and two friends of theirs; the six of us spent two weeks on a sailboat, cruising the tiny Windward Islands. It had been an incredible trip, and I decided that, at the rate I was losing things dear to me, I had better take that album home with me.

And then I discovered that not all of the photo albums had survived; that one-- and that one alone-- had been relegated to the landfill along with my books, my aquarium, my Nativity set… see the pattern yet?

I used to wonder what I had gotten from Dad; as it turned out, it was a love of reading, and an appreciation for the past. And he must have already known that, for he made sure that I would have his books, and a couple of other family heirlooms; my sister would get the rest. And then she went and threw away every last thing that he was giving to me, so now I have nothing.

Except for a good memory. I'm glad she can't take that because sometimes, memories are all you have.