Finished Sorting

The Second Box
Last night after I finished writing, and after I finished laundry, I sucked it in, and finished one more box. I was equally facinated by the pictures and the letters. There were two postcard souvenir folders; one from St. Paul with a post mark of 1914, which I had to show my husband, and another fromWheeling "the leading city of West Virginia post mark of 1916. They are addresses to my Great Grandma, and appear to be from my great Grandfather prior to their marriage. There is no writing on them except for the name and address. There was also a postcard of "Sunday April 14m 1935 Dust Clouds Rolling Over The Prairies" a very interesting post card. The number of postcards almost reminds me of Griffin and Sabine, in their unusual randomness. There were a good handful of postcards that were so personal, that I believe they are actual pictures with a postcard back, if not they are completely random. There was a letter dated 1918 from my great grandfathers brother while he was serving in WWI, he was over there as a minister. I did not at first know who this was, and had to call my mother to find out, she gave me all the scoop. After the war he married a lady from Mexico, and had an illegitimate daughter with the Post Mistress. (There are large envelopes filled with correspondences between the daughter and my Great Grandfather, I have even met the lady). Later that evening I found a letter that had my mothers and fathers name written several times on the envelope, as a girl would practice her name if she were to marry this or that boy. I opened it, and it was a letter from Celia to her mom explaining my mothers marriage, and how it was planned in a week, and no one knew if it was actually going to happen and that is why no one was invited.

The Third Box
This afternoon, my daughter took a very long nap and I ploughed through the last box, I found envelopes filled with pictures with an attemp at labeling. However the are lables like AJ's grandkids and me. I don't know who wrote this so I don't know who me is, I can only hope I can track down the presumably well known AJ, and discover who their kids are. And when I open the envelope there are a hodgepodge of pictures with people I know are neither Me nor AJ's grandkids. I found a report on the family tree, however it starts at Third Child of so and so, obviously missing pages, and it is difficult to follow because the outline structure is not maintained through the document. As I got towards the end I started to feel ill, like I was getting a cough, I am hoping that I have just been over exposed to dust, and will be able to get it out of my system soon, I am deeply afraid that some horrible mold was growing on the pictures and in the next month every one in this house will become muant freeks of one sort or another.

Next Steps
I need to get all of the pictures to a place where I can sort them. I am considering some broad categories like Older than Grandma, during Grandma's youth, During Grandma's Adult pre kids, During my mom's youth, and During my time. I am still trying to decide how much effort I want to make in figuring out who some of these people are, and when the picture was taken. There are a larger number of tintypes than I originaly expected, and they are absolutely un-documented, there are envelopes of negatives that are very well documented, but no pictures with them, but I could get a light box and start matching them up.

Ghosts

I finished the last post, and went down stairs to do laundry, that is how reluctant I am to work on this. But as I was rotating laundry, inspiration struck. Everytime I go through these pictures, my dreams are very disturbed by the prescence of my dead relatives. My mom believes very strongly that she is visited by her mother and grandmother frequently. I like to believe in the possibility of ghosts, but not the reality. If you asked me, "Do you believe in ghosts?" point blank, I would hedge my answer by saying "I believe it is possible that ghosts exist." But just watching the ghost hunter show on Sci Fi, scares the bejebees out of me, because I don't want to ghosts to be real, and who really does. I think I would be ok with the type of haunting that is a recording, no just even writing that upsets me. So....

I am finding that these pictures and letters, in a way, are a type of ghost in my house.

Reluctance

I am completely reluctant to continue to go through the letters, I am unsure as to why this may be, but I find my self just staring at the piles of memories. I did go through the other two boxes very quickly, and one of them is very much my great gandfathers stuff, it contains letters and envelopes with his writing and his thoughts, they are extremely revealing of his mental state a few years prior to his death. But it is not this which keeps me from finishing the task. I think that the task seems overwhelming, even though I tell myself that all I have signed up for is to take care of the pictures. I am now laughing at myself as I write this, because I am asking myself would I rather get the laundry done, sometimes you can get stuff done if you do it instead of something you dislike even more, and I am completely immobile because they are both equal in enormity and dislike.

Some of my new finds

• Pictures of my mom's dad's dad. I only know stories of this man, he was a hard man, but the pictures of him are very appealing. He is very tall and thin and seems engaged with his grandchildren, I find myself liking him on site, and wishing I had met him, and could remember him
• Pictures of my grandmother in her early twenties. She looks like she is a lot of fun, and she looks like she is in some ad. (She is second from the right in both of the attached pictures)
• Postcard from my Celia's dad to her mom, there is no writing on them, just the postcards.

Some of the "Groovey" stationary I have found

My Grandfather's Death

I am still in the air on whether I should read the letters, or let them lie (although both definitions of this word work here, I do not currently precieve the letters to be untruthful). I have scan several and can divide the letters evenly between three piles; letters written that are painfully sad, letters written that are the day to day lives of a close family unaccustomed to the use of the phone, and letters written that contain information of an embarrasing nature. It is these last letters that I am afraid to read.

There is a mixture of letters written to my grandmother, and letters written to her parents. It is to be expected in any family when someone was troubled by the actions of someone else these concerns (tattles) are reflected in the correspondences. It is only to be supposed that these letters were not meant to be shared with some unknown reader in the future. And as I am easily embarassed by imagining others embarassed, I am hesitant to read on.

I did overread a letter from my aunt to my grandmother about the death of my dad's father. I have always known that his death was a big deal, he was the cornerstone of my fathers world. I am now impressed with the impact his death had on the lives of everyone in my family, not just his.

One Box Sorted

My Finds
I have completely sorted one box. My sort was a very quick; is this a picture, a negative or something else. However, I accidentally mixed up the negatives and the something else. Many interesting finds. Of historical significance, a newspaper clipping of the marriage of Mickey Mantle to his "19-year-old schoolday sweetheart". Towards the end there were several letters from my mom when I was three, that she was very young, came across very clear. I also found three years worth of picture Christmas cards, in my naivete, I assumed picture Christmas cards were a recent trend, but after seeing all of my grandmothers friends cards from the early family days I am reforming my opinion.

Issues
For the task I agreed to, I am seeing several issues. The first two are obvious, who is this, when was this taken. The next two are subtle, and have to do with significance. There are pictures of telephone line, I personally have taken pictures of downed telephone line after a big storm, but these seem to be installed correctly, even knowing that my grandfather was an electrical engineer, I am still slightly baffled by these photos. Then there are pictures of places, apparantly famous places, that I just do not have enough southern experience to appreciate. Side Note on my Grandmother. Although my grandmother was neither born in the south, nor primarily raised in the south, she would consider herself the epitome of the southern gentle women, or at least that is my impression of her. While she did graduate from high school in Dallas, attend Baylor University, and marry a very blatent Texan (one of the founded families of Jasper Texas with ties into most of East Texas), as a young child, her parents traveled considerable, teaching in the small towns of most of the midwest.

My First Thoughts

My initial thought is to write some background information about my grandmother, but I want these to be about me, which leads me to think I should provide background into my relationship with my grandmother, but I don't want to get bogged down in the details of a relationship established as an infant and evolved over many years.

So last night I opened the box where I have stored the letters and pictures, they are in two smaller boxes and one garment storage bag. My very first thought was of bugs and mice, but I am hoping that by storing these in an air tight plastic container I will kill off any bugs, and any small rodent type animals would have destroyed the letters and made a mess of my moms closet prior to my discovery of the items. Having laid rest to my initial fears, I picked the smallest box with which to start.

I need to expand on these thoughts, but here are the synopsis of my first day of organization
My grandmother looks very much like herself even at a young age, and my grandfather does not.
I am feeling like an eavesdropper, and am dreading and am eager to discover letter written about me.
The importance of marking your pictures - do I need to go back through mine

The Discovery

Christmas 2005
I was looking for baby pictures of myself to proove to my husband that I look like my daughter and had as much hair as she does as a baby. In my mothers closet where she keeps all of the photo albums, I discovered a bag of pictures and correspondences of my Grandmothers. Now I am not a huge scrapbook artist, but I do enjoy the process of taking pictures and telling a story through scrapbooking, and this bag of pictures appeared to me to be an opportunity to create the story of my Grandmother. I asked my mom if I could do this for her, and she jumped at the chance, offering to pay for the supplies. So I pulled the bag out and dicovered two more boxes and several mounted professional photos. My mom helped me locate a large plastic tub to haul the pictures home. (oddly, stored in the tub were pictures from my dad's mom - next project I guess) So the pictures are now in my computer room awaiting discovery.

My first look
My husband was not feeling well, and went to bed early. I have been debating with myself if I should get started going through all of the 'stuff', or wait till I had some organizing tools. With some self reflection I realized that if I did not get started, it might be months before I got all of the 'correct tools' to manage this task, and that I was better off just grabing some boxes (and at this time of the year we have plenty just laying around). My intial thinking was to just start weeding out all of the pictures from the letters, box the letters up and send them to my mom. That is not what happened however, and this has lead me to create this blog to journal my thoughts as I sift through the letters of my grandmother and her parents.