Nostalgia: Old family photographs

My mother left me several boxes of pictures family that covered early 1900 to present day. I value these pictures and am scanning them as I have time, but it is a time consuming job to do them correctly. I have started a blog growingupinunionvillelouisiana.blogspot.com where I post one of the pictures and tell the story behind the picture as I remember. I hope my children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren will enjoy these pictures and stories as much as I enjoy writing them.

My family’s photo’s had quite the adventure this year and I have been itching to tell someone about it so its great you made this post!

My grandmother died in 2003 and most of the family photo’s had been given to my aunts who retired to Arizona a few years ago. My dad and I had often worried over whether or not he pictures had been kept safe, got lost in the move, etc.

At the end of this past February, my aunts decided to move here to my hometown since their husbands had passed away and they wanted to be near extended family again. They stayed with my parents when they first got here so they could take their time looking for a place in a “55 and over” mobile home community. When my dad and I asked, my aunt said that she still had the photos and they were in the the storage unit. She’d been holding on to them and keeping them safe ever since she got them in case someone might want them down the road. I told her the work I was doing for the tree, so she decided to pass them to me. The next time they were headed over to the storage unit, dad reminded them to grab the pictures. They had a lot of other errands that took most of the day so we weren’t too worried when they weren’t back by dark.
As Murphy’s Law would have it, they were in a car accident due to losing control on a slippery country road. Their van was totaled and one of my aunts was taken to the hospital for a fairly complicated broken arm (she had to have a steel plate put in)–my other aunt and their two dogs did not get hurt. Unfortunately, one of the dogs had bolted out one of the broken windows into the woods. My dad went to the hospital with the one aunt and I took the other back to a home near the scene of the accident since they had seen my aunt’s dog but when they tried to catch him he ran. They didn’t want to scare him so had waited for us to show back up. We called and called and he wouldn’t come and I finally convinced my aunt that we would have to give up the search until daylight. I tried to reassure her that he was probably still near that house and just too afraid to come out but I was honestly worried—he was a little poodle lost in the woods of rural Oregon. I just prayed he really did stay near that house! One of the first things my aunt said after she had calmed down some was “Oh God–we had the pictures with us!” Our hearts sank but we obviously had more immediate concerns to cope with. The dog search is a story in and of itself but the end result was we actually found him!
With the dog safely home again and my other aunt scheduled for surgery, we turned our attention to figuring out who had towed the van. The tow company wouldn’t release the van or even let my aunt access it until she paid the $800 bill! My dad went down with her and informed the tow company that they couldn’t legally restrict access to the items inside the vehicle and we’d need pictures for insurance anyway. They took some photos for insurance and peeked inside. Amazingly enough, the plastic storage containers that had the loose photos in it absorbed most of the impact. They were shattered but as far as my dad and aunt could see ALL of the pictures were still in there! They said it looked like maybe a couple of albums may have been outside because they saw mud on them. Even though the tow company had to let take their pictures, they still argued about releasing anything other than insurance related information. Had it not been for those photos, we would have just said “keep it” but there was no way we were going to be that close to retrieval and archiving to let them go. The drama with the tow company finally played out at paying them $600 and signing over the totaled vehicle to them so they could part it out or do whatever else they wanted with it and we could take all of the items inside. My dad and aunt grabbed the pictures and whatever else wasn’t destroyed and brought it home. The albums that had gotten muddy wiped clean and the actual pictures weren’t harmed in any way! I am now in the process of scanning them so they can then be stored in a water/fireproof location. I am also looking for good resources on how to truly archive items so they will still be around for future generations—and am definitely adding this story to it!
On a humorous note, my aunts’ last stop before the accident was to the grocery store to buy some chicken that was on sale. My aunt said “Yeah, I grabbed the food that was still good…left the chicken for the tow company though!” 🙂