Page 23 - voices-2024-04

TRUE STORIES

Do You Know These People?

Leela Seeber

Recently, my family had the melancholy task of go- on both sides to have moved to Oregon.
ing through my father’s things after he passed. My
adult daughter cleaned out a closet and brought I turned to my daughter and said, “I don’t know
me a black tin box. Inside were old tintype photos, these people. I don’t think they are our family.”
a letter with a 2-cent stamp, deeds, life insurance The black box became a double mystery. The first
policies and other documents. Also, there were two mystery is who are these people? The second mys-
oddly shaped imple- tery became how
ments - strange cork did this end up in
screws missing most my father’s house?
of their twists. Then
I realized these were My father used to
shoe button hooks rent out property
from bygone days. and it could be that
My daughter looked this had been left
at me expectantly behind by a renter.
and asked, “Who are He was also known
these people?” to enjoy picking up
bargain price curi-
I didn’t know. I osities at garage or
looked through the estate sales. How-
box at the names ever, I had a vague
and the places on the memory of seeing
documents. They were all from Oregon at the turn the box before. That it was something that my
of the century - not Y2K (the 2000’s) but the late brother saved from the dump pile at a home ren-
1800’s going into 1900. My father’s family would ovation. I remember a joke that perhaps there was
have still been in Italy then. My mother’s family was a deed to a mine in there that would make us rich.
part of the Oklahoma land rush. My mother had a When was this? I use memories of my daughter as
rocky relationship with her family. I could not imag- a yardstick in time to figure out years. It must have
ine she would be entrusted with family keepsakes been the late 1990’s or early 2000’s. I remember
like these. As far as I knew we were the first branch hustling the box away so my careless preschooler

VOICES! SPRING 2024 23