Slow Time

Back when I first was in communications with the Good Samaritan who mailed me the albums, I also reached out to contact the salvage store where they found those items. I was told that the items had been found in a house belonging to a hoarder and largely hadn't been sorted through though she was pretty sure there would be more things and that they would let me know when they were gone through. I wrote back and sent a couple pictures of the family I was interested in, John Kuck and his first two wives, hoping that they might recognize them and allow them to be separated for me to obtain at some point. They thanked me for the reference and then lapsed into silence.

A couple weeks went by and I hadn't heard anything back so two things crossed my mind. First, I have done 25 years of research on this family and that is hard to transfer to a new stranger with just a few photographs. Two, at least two of the albums had already been sold to the Good Samaritan. How many other things were being bought by others that weren't interested in finding interested family members who might want them?

With those thoughts, I resolved to make an emergency trip out there, a twelve hour drive, to rescue what remained, if anything. I thought about flying but didn't want to deal with bringing things potentially fragile and in rough shape, back home via carryon or checked bags. Plus the cost of last minute tickets and rental car costs were a lot more than my time and gas to drive there and back. Either way, there would be sunk motel costs. However, I didn't want to take a 12 hour drive and learn upon arrival that the store wasn't open, all the items had been sorted and nothing of interest was found so they were disposed, etc. So I wrote an email a few days in advance telling them I would be coming and verifying that everything could be ready when I got there.

I received a quick email back saying don't come. There were a few back and forth queries before I learned all the reasons and my mind was set at ease. The Store Owner had been busy and hadn't sorted through the boxes which were currently buried under an mountain of other stuff. The only reason the two albums had been sold was that the Good Samaritan came by just as the truck was being unloaded and picked them off the top of one box. It had been a spur of the moment transaction. The Store Owner promised me that when she got to sorting them, she would set aside anything I possibly might be interested into a separate pile and that she would give me first refusal on anything she found. They weren't being made available to shoppers until after I could get there and sort through it all.

Those conversations made me sleep a lot easier but still in the back of my mind, I keep going back to what might be in all those boxes from the hoarders house. Maybe another two or three weeks went by and I got another email from the store owner saying she had sorted through some of the boxes and found a box "full of old pictures that appear to belong to the Kuck family" and "a hand drawn family tree"! She thought it might take another two or three weeks before she could sort through the rest but she would let me know when she was ready for me to come.

Talk about restless nights! I feel like a kid again waiting for Christmas morning to arrive. I have a sheet of paper on my office desk of addresses, phone numbers, possible motels to stop at along the way and even some sights to possibly look at while in the area, including the hoarders house and the graves of the hoarder and his mother, the likely path these pictures and family tree passed down through. 

All I am waiting for is another email.