Snapshots

by Karen-Balice Gregory

I spent the greater part of today going back in time...literally. I read about an estate sale here in town and uncharacteristically got up and around to get there when it started. Although I am a huge fan of second hand stores (where I unload things I would like to get rid of and purchase things that I usually don't need), and sometimes garage sales, I have rarely frequented an estate sale. This particular one intrigued me because the house had been locked up for 30 years. It was located only a few blocks from my grandmother's house and I was curious. Who would just abandon a home for three decades? What could they have left in there? What would it be like to walk through someone's life almost as it was lived so long ago? I spoke to the estate sale organizers and was able to glean only a few facts about the family. The names Vigo and Roger Nielsen were on the labels of piles of magazines stored there. The daughter, now in her 80's, is in a nursing home and her children live up north. Apparently the daughter (and her siblings?) did not want to deal with sorting or getting rid of anything so it has just been stored there. Lord knows this is not the only family home that has come to this fate through the years but it's the first one that I have ever had the pleasure of visiting.

In some ways it felt rather intrusive going through their things, looking at boxes of pictures, handling old toys and dolls that once belonged to people who may have died before I was born. There were dozens of old calendars from local businesses that I had only heard of. In the basement were stacks of old cigar boxes and jars. The magazines dated back into the 1930s. As I started looking through the pictures I found one of my classmates (including two of my sisters and a cousin) posing in full chorus garb with none other than my last principal, Sister Mercia, sternly looking into the eye of the camera (if that wasn't a chilling discovery!) To my surprise was yet another snapshot in time...my father's graduating class and to top that a beautiful wedding picture with my father as a groomsman. I recognized only one other person, Willie Slowinski. The crowning glory was a great black and white photo of distinguished looking gentlemen...a handful whom I recognized. It must have been a group of bank board appointees, Elks or Moose, or some professional organization. There they were: Dr. Campbell, Dr. Faust, Dr. Buck, Dr. Tanheimer and a dozen or so of their buddies. They appeared to be in their 30's and 40's but who could tell? All I know is that they were much younger than I am now. As I was standing in line to pay I found one last memory. An old friend of my parents and a neighbor when I was growing up, “Did” O'Donnell in all of his youthful glory with a head full of dark hair posing with his beloved drums. There were many nights that we Baldie St. kids were lulled (if you could call it that) to sleep by their beat. I bought them all for the price of a Mocha Latte.

The most precious find of the day was a small diary. I am a sucker for such things because they open up a world to me I would otherwise never know. Written in the year 1946 (5 years before my birth) and penned by a young woman who was a nurse, one entire year was posted in this small black book with 3 days per page, 5 lines per day. There were a handful of days not noted throughout the year and much of it was mundane "wrote letters"; "listened to the radio"; "cleaned room"; "went to church." But it's fascinating to me to walk through someone else's life lived so long ago. She speaks of friend and family illnesses, movies she saw (Bells of St. Mary, Lost Weekend, Spellbound, Wuthering Heights), studying for boards and finally graduation. Letters to and from Roger (stationed in Korea) and on and off duty references at the clinic and hospital were noted. I haven't read it all but I think I would have enjoyed knowing this woman who worked so hard to have a career, cared so much for her family and friends and was very dedicated to helping and healing the people around her. And I thought time machines were only the stuff of movies! No admission fee here but worth the time and energy it took to step back and step into the shoes of local history.