Discovering Buried Treasure

I feel like an old-fashioned treasure hunter. Saturday The Fiancee and I went to her deceased grandmother's storage unit to hunt furniture. We did find a lovely love seat, but more importantly, we discovered true treasure. I wish her grandmother was around to answer some questions.

The first two pictures at top really only matter to me. It's a set of miniature playing cards with a leather carrying case from sometime before WWII. The sides are gold leaf and every single card is there. I have found very similar cards on the Internet and they seem to be from between 1926 and 1936, but I haven't found these exact ones yet so they could be a reprint or something. I love them and just holding them makes me happy.

The letters, now there's the real treasure. We found a box full of letters, most of which are dated 1930, but they go all the way up to 1950. The main ones are to and from my Fiancee's grandmother's second husband's deceased first wife. Got that? So when her grandmother got married, her husband had all these letters from his first honeymoon. He, his wife Priscilla, his father (who worked for the Stromberg-Carlson Company) and his mother all went on a 11 week cruise all over the Mediterranean. The letter shown is printed on letterhead that reads:

The American Colony
P.O. Box 19
Jerusalem
Palestine

JERUSALEM, PALESTINE!! Priscilla complained that they covered everything old with glitzy crap and the best place there was the American Colony! Her father-in-law said that Italy was the best place they stopped and that Mussolini was doing a great job cleaning up the place!

We got a menu from their cruise, tons of letters, and the telegram pictured above. Western Union, dated Jan 24 1930. This stuff is unreal. We're reading all through it trying to figure out who all the names are, what their relation is. We also got the Stromberg-Carlson Exchange, the company magazine, with an article by the father about the trip. Under the title of the magazine it says "Connecting the Interests of All Stromberg-Carlson Workers". How many workers wanted to hear about their rich boss' 11 week trip?? The pictures are of them in Northern Africa, Egypt, Palestine and Italy. They hit just about everything off the Mediterranean and then went by train across Europe back to England to sail across the Atlantic again.

We also have a letter to Priscilla dated 1950 explaining the last 13 years of some woman's life. We're trying to figure out who that woman is. She married a German in 1937 (a total no-no) in New York City and in 1950 she was in Germany while he helped with charities and reconstruction. This stuff is so amazing I can't stand it. Turns out the Sphinx did not have a nose in 1930 (I had heard it was still there then), we know because we have a picture! We have dozens of post cards from everywhere they went and clippings from each hotel they stayed at. There were no zip codes then. And sometimes not even a street address, just Mr. X at This Town, This State, USA. Stamps cost 2 cents. When the father writes about the places they went, islands in the Mediterranian, places in North Africa, he always states which European country "owns" it right now. It really knocks it home that this is pre-WWII.

We haven't gone through all of it yet, but I am just floored by this stuff. Priscilla missed milk and ice boxes, and while she was in Italy she could not stop dreaming about spaghetti. She wrote home to her sister to tell her that she met a nice man on the cruise who asked "if there are any back home like me". Being the honest woman she is, she said yes. Now the man wants to meet and marry her sister. She apologizes and tries to describe him, saying she likes him but they have wildly different tastes in men, so she'll have to meet him.

I've never felt like a moment in time so long ago was so real. All the letters, telegrams, pictures...it makes the whole trip come alive.

I wonder if the stock market crash affected these people. They would have booked the trip well in advance, probably before the crash.

We even have a list of all the passengers onboard, Mr. and Mrs. Robert SoandSo style. One letter is addressed to Mrs. Benjamin Whatever. Women didn't even have their own names!!

Oh my god. Anyway, I just wanted to share a piece of this treasure with the world. We'll be doing more detective work and finding out more about these people. I want to make a framed collage of all the pictures and post card and letters. SO FUCKING COOL!!!

Oh, and we got a really old Heinz company clock. Perfect for the two biggest ketchup eaters the world has ever known.