Vintage on line

I don't know about you, but I can completely lose
myself in an antique store. This reminds me of
my great grandmother's kitchen and that reminds
me of something my grandmother had...I just
start thinking about the people who all these
treasures once belonged to. Particularly the old
pictures. I really didn't have very many old
family photos until about 10 years ago, so I
was always so envious of people who had their
family's entire history in pictures! And it
would really tug at my heart strings to see all
the boxes of old photos in antique stores...who
were these people? why didn't their family
want these pictures? how did they end up here?
Well, once upon a time, in an antique store in
Whittier, I came across a box of the nicest old
pictures, they were in such great condition, I
was so thrilled!!!! But I soon noticed that they
were of the same people...and all addressed to
one person...the kicker was that they had been
sent from a tiny town in Nebraska that is
very near to the small town where my a lot
of my family lives. I made up all sorts of stories
in my head, about why someone's entire family
history would just be sold off, and they were all
very sad! I decided to buy all the pictures
and see if I could get them back into the right hands.
Verdigre, NE. is very small, (yes, smaller than
Wasilla!) so I figured that the Postmaster would
know everyone there (this was before everything
was on-line). I wrote him a letter and explained
what I was trying to do and he wrote back and
told me he had forwarded my letter to the family.
Soon I received another letter from the sweetest
little old lady who was so excited to be know that
I had all her pictures. Her name was Marie and
she was the little girl in most of the pictures that
had belonged to her favorite cousin, also Marie,
who had recently died and her "no good" (her
words :) son just sold off the entire contents of her
home.
I was so happly to be able to reunite a family,
well, sort of, and so was she. She even sent me
a little set of Nebraska salt and pepper shakers...
it was adorable.






The Marie I returned the pictures too, as a little girl.