The Things You Learn About Family

Earlier this year, I’d sorted through nearly all the boxes I’d had in some sort of storage for about five years. Then my folks moved and, by February, I had acquired at least as many boxes of stuff as I’d sorted before. Some of it was mine. Some of it was just stuff my folks didn’t want but didn’t want to “just give away.” Some of it, I discovered today, was family memorabilia.

One huge bulging envelope was covered, side to side and top to bottom, with my father’s crisp engineer lettering. Ins...