Picture Perfect

The deep cleaning continues. As much as paper is my “arch enemy” (as I have said before), pictures are my “best friends forever.” Here’s the problem: I have too many pictures. I not only have too many, but many of them are in terrible condition and I don’t even know who is in them. The bigger problem is that all my pictures are all mixed together in such a way that I can get stopped in my tracks by a hugely significant picture in the middle of a stack of meaningless pictures. This means I have to look at and make a decision about every single picture. I have thousands of my mom and dad’s pictures, my grandparents’ pictures, and my aunts and uncles pictures, in addition to my own. This job of getting through pictures feels like it could take me the rest of my life.

My next goal is to begin the process by sorting the pictures into categories. Who says there’s no such thing as time travel? Earlier in my cleaning journey, I discovered that I tend to treat closets like the TARDIS: I think they are bigger on the inside. And now I've been reminded that when we know the stories that go with them, old pictures can take us back to a simpler time and put us anywhere in the world. I love getting ambushed by a pictorial picnic, or finding turn of the century (and I mean the 20^th century) postcards with messages from long-gone loved ones on the back. If you talk to me any time in the next month or so, you might find that I am just returning from some far off, long ago land. If you are interested, I might be able to tell the stories to take you there, too.

Many of these pictures have a rich history, but there is no hi-“story” without a story. My goal is to tell the story of as many pictures as possible, but I can't do that if they are buried and inaccessible. Here's a sampling of the kind of pictures I have: I have all the individual senior pictures of the graduating class of my dad’s sister, Aunt Esther. I also have all the junky pictures my mom took with her 110 Instamatic where everything is blurry or heads are chopped off. I have approximately 1391 extra "school pictures" from my kids. I have individual and class pictures of many of my mom's kindergartners. I also have pictures that have been wet and/or have smoke damage from the attic fire we had at the family home. (Those I plan to scan.) I have old "magnetic" albums with pictures pretty much cemented in them. But they are all worth the trouble. It's a job I have been putting off for over six years, but now's the time! Some pictures will sacrifice their lives so I can manage and do something important with the ones that are left.

This is the barn on the Arnold family farm, close to the time it was built.

This caption on this post card says it all!

Our next-door neighbors, during my growing up years, the Kelly girls!

Grandpa Ray and Uncle Thomas, in the farmhouse as I remember it from my childhood.

There are tens of thousands of pictures to go through. It could easily be a full-time job, if I could make myself do it full-time. The adventure lies in the fact that it overwhelms my emotions to go all the places these pictures take me. I hope I am up to the journey that lies ahead.