Shrine - Ali Burner

I would like to preface this post with the statement that I am not very artistic, so my shrine is a little rough around the edges. I made my shrine to my grandfather who passed away while I was in high school. I chose to make one to my father’s father, because he is the grandparent that I know the least about. I thought this would make the shrine making process a little more interesting. I used a shoebox for my shrine and I put a cardboard roof on it. I put the roof on to make it look a little more like the shrines in the book that we read, but I didn’t quite turn out the same. I decorated my shrine with the things that I remember most about my grandfather, in particular with the things he told stories about. He always told stories. Because of this, I put a picture of an oil well, the U.S. Army Seal, and a map of Alaska inside my box. These were the things he told us about the most. He worked on an oil well when he first moved to San Angelo, Texas after leaving his home in Kansas. My grandfather would always tell us about how exciting that was at the time with the oil boom, even though he wasn’t the one who owned the well. He also liked to tell us stories about the army, which he served in during World War II. I included the map of Alaska because that was the only place he ever vacationed to. He was an avid hunter, and would make the trek to Alaska about once a year for a big hunting trip. He told us many stories about running into bears. Now that I am older I am sure that many of his stories were not true. I also covered my shrine in newspapers. I remember my grandfather always had a stack of newspapers by his chair because he claimed that you had to read at least four different newspapers to find out the truth.

I also wanted to include some items that could be seen as offerings in my shrine. I thought this was one of the most interesting aspects of memorialization that we learned about in class. I have never actual brought an offering to a memorial site before, so I had to think about what to include in this shrine. I decided to include two of the things that most reminded me of my grandfather. These were corn and tobacco. However, I substituted matches in for tobacco because I had those on hand. My grandfather was a farmer, and he grew corn and cotton. I remember that every time we drove out to visit them on their farm we ate corn. We ate it with almost every meal, and by the time we left my whole family was sick of it. The tobacco was also an important symbol for my grandfather because he was always smoking cigars or a pipe, and when he could not do either of those he was chewing tobacco. He always smelled of some sort of flavored tobacco, and to this day whenever I smell a cigar I think of him.