Pot of Gold

Although this shows the results of day three of our spring break trip to Colorado Springs, I knew most of my usual readers were probably most interested in this particular day. I was able to find the salvage shop and met Erin the owner soon after she opened for the day. She had prepped for my arrival as well and had an empty table in the back of her shop where she brought all the boxes of things she had sorted out for me and allowed me to sort though those things to see what I might like to keep.

It was a lot of stuff to sort though and in the hour the four of us (my wife and kids were with me), we still barely skimmed through most of it. I decided the safest option was to just take everything and made that offer to Erin. She had done her homework too though and evidently there were a couple of first editions books in a box of books that had hand written inscriptions on the inside covers that were likely worth some money. We didn't discuss value but I knew she was in the business of making money and I really am not a collector of first edition books and so I decided to compromise a bit and just take photos of the inscriptions written in the books and leave them for her to sell. I also left behind a high school yearbook which would likely have more value to locals of the area than to me. 

Erin was more than kind and was willing to give me the family items at no cost since they held little value in her store but I also realized that without her time and effort, this would have all ended up in a landfill unbeknownst to me and so I made her an offer that she accepted and I carted my stuff back to the Airbnb we were staying out. The following day I bought a large plastic tote from Home Depot and sorted through it all again as I packed it away for the journey home.

Most of what had been in the house of the hoarder had belonged to Clara Kuck though the hoarder was a direct descendant of her older sister Bertha. So somehow after Clara's death in California at age 83, what remained of her possessions ended up in the hands of her niece, sister Bertha's only daughter, who hung onto them and passed them onto her son who died with them in a house full of trash. Among the things I have found are a handful of pictures of John Kuck and several dozen of Clara when they were older in life. Up until now, I have only seen pictures of them when they were young. I did indeed find a hand drawn family tree though at first glance, no family secrets were revealed. I found Clara's master thesis, various college diplomas, more photo and postcard albums and some self published books. I also came away with a new theory on the life of Clara which I will share in time. 

Overall, at the briefest of glances, I have a much deeper understanding of Clara Kuck than I did before I arrived in Colorado Springs, and I'm sure that will only grow exponentially as I carve out the time to do a more in depth review of everything and begin the work of preserving it. I'm not sure how much I'll be able to do during this summer as I am usually busy with other projects but hopefully I can do some to just get my anticipation whetted until next winter when I can really dig into it. 

Below is a picture of the hoarder's house that turned out to be the end of my genealogy rainbow. It has been cleaned up considerably from the Google Street View images I have seen.