The box of postcards

It took about a week to go through all the elements of Paul's house. This was 3 years after his death. His house, designed and built by Paul in 2000 is simple. The environment along with everything in it was immaculately and exquisitely organized. With Paul every element of his life was precise and meaningful. In dialogue too. He never wasted words or talked too much, in fact his silence was often intimidating and awkward. I knew more people that were more offended by what he didn't say than what he did. His lack of response or comfort giving gestures opened up the hole in the socially vunerable.

Maybe it was theses factors that added to my appreciation of Paul. I was lucky to form a firm friendship with him over the years. He was a significant part of my acquired family. The people that fill the quirky & eccentric gap of my kin. Adding to my deeper feelings that we all ended up in this corner of the world because we didn't belong elsewhere, however we did & infact flourished here.

When we first looked into the storage space of Paul's it was like opening a time vault. Most of the items were stored in old cigar boxes. Some in cardboard boxes & tins. But everything had been so purposely placed & fitted into each. However it was the box with the Postcards I took home, knowing its content were a deeper cortex than initially viewed.

Now each time I open the box I get a drawn a chapter deeper into the story of Paul's ancestors. First it was just the images I was curious about. But soon the growing story of all the images combined with the dates and written script on the back, became the fascination.

Amongst the postcards was a number of old photos. Most of which were a combination of mining & ranching images from the New Mexico in the 1920's. I know this because of the references on the back. Were it not for those the landscape could easily have been mistaken for the hills and valley of the land that will live on. An introduction to the Southwest for a family that emigrated from Heidelberg to Chicago in 1908.