Riverbend Journal

  I started this post in early February when I screen grabbed the above shot off of Google Street View knowing that sometime in March, I would likely be there in person when I got word. My plan then had always been a sprint to just drive there, retrieve the other boxes and albums of the Kuck family (and descendants) and drive right back. But with spring break a couple weeks away (as I put the finishing touches on this post) and no real destination in mind, the thought of perhaps combining the two and making for a more leisurely drive came to mind. I wrote the store owner, definitely not pressuring them to be done sorting by then, and telling them that if this timing worked out to let me know. They wrote back saying it would be perfect and so the planning began. As you read this, later this morning I will be at the shop pictured above, located in Florence Colorado, and hopefully retrieving the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in genealogical research. Of particular interest to ...

March 2nd was overcast and kind of chilly out. The high for the day was only in the upper 40's. It certainly wasn't as nice as the last week of February when the temperatures were in the upper 60's. The forecast tipped our hand though with the next 10 days having chances of rain on all of them. So we decided to use that opportunity to start our garden for the year. My thought was that it was a bit early but worth a chance and the cost of seeds was largely insignificant compared to the labor which is essentially free these days as we had nothing better to do. So I got the tiller fired up, a job in itself for the first time since we have owned it, and was able to till the entire garden. It worked up so nicely, by far the nicest looking soil since we started this process a few years ago. The heavy mulching is starting to build up the organic matter so it is no longer chunks of clay and now feels quite loamy to the touch. I went ahead and worked the entire garden at least down ...

  Maybe as short as a year ago, I would likely have only been able to look at the writing on this postcard, ponder what secrets it might hold, and then move on without every knowing. But with the rapidly accelerating Artificial Intelligence world, those days are relegated to the dust bin of our history. I simply uploaded this very image into Google's Gemini with the instruction to translate the German to English and in about three seconds, knew exactly what it said. Dearest Klärchen (Little Clara), For the New Year, I wish you all the very best that one could possibly imagine, and much enduring success with the German language. I hope your little trip went well. Did you also think of me sometimes? Your Else is looking forward to a happy reunion on Thursday. I don't know who Else is/was and likely A.I. won't solve that one for me... at least right now.  I thought I would test A.I.'s abilities further and upload this postcard which has nary a marking describing where this...

  Just when you think you have things figured out.  You may recall that before Christmas last year, my daughter had her third dead battery in a little over two years since she has been using that vehicle for commuting to college. The last time it happened, I bought a battery from a local store and made the 90 mile drive up there to replace it. After I got it going, I drove it to the local dealership to have them do an "thorough" battery test on it only to find out $300 later that their thorough test was to hook a multimeter up to it while running, nearly identical to the one I had used earlier to do the same thing.  She made it home for the semester and then left again for the spring semester without issue. She parked her car for a month out in the parking lot and went to use it only to find out it was completely dead again. At this point, I'm confident that there is some draw being put on it that is enough to use up the battery in a few weeks time. I am not confident tha...

Seated is John Kuck, my great great great grandfather, with my great grandfather Victor on his lap and son George, my great great grandfather, standing with his hand on the shoulder of wife Elizabeth. I thought I would give you some of that backstory on why I am so terribly excited to see what pictures or other things might be revealed in the "big box of Kuck pictures" that were removed from a hoarders house and now reside somewhere in Colorado in an architectural salvage shop. When I began my family tree search over a quarter century ago, I didn't know any of the names beyond my great grandfather Victor. My grandparents didn't have much to go on further since my grandfather was just a young boy when his grandfather died and wasn't really into knowing his ancestors better. My search though soon turned up the names of George Kuck and his father John Kuck, my second and third great grandfathers. However, they were just names on a computer screen for me and would rem...