Two nights ago, in the basement room I use for storage, I came across a couple of such boxes. It happened while I was doing my best to reorganize a room where these containers seem more like boulders from the poem Mending Wall (Robert Frost, 1914) than boxes.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun...
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun...
Of course there is not much ground-swell or sun to speak of in my basement; still the boxes always seem to find their way to the floor and disarray. Nothing natural here, but more "the work of hunters" -- the result of a year’s worth of needing something stored “somewhere” in the room and the hunt that follows.
While reorganizing such a room it is fun to imagine stumbling across a lost treasure. And it is even more delightful to actually do it. One such box of “treasure” contained more than twenty complete newspapers that belonged to my Aunt Theresa, and some partial newspapers that most certainly, because of their age, belonged to my Grandmother Victoria.
Upon realizing what I had found, I decided to take photos of the newspapers that most awe struck me and share them here.
All of them are uploaded in large format so one can click on them to make the image larger (and more readable).
1 September 1939
My grandmother's older sister had a son whom would be my great grand-parents only grandson; he died this day, one of many whom tried in vain to defend Poland from the invasion.
20 December 1939
5 June 1944
8 May 1945
And the oldest Newspaper in the box...
from the end of World War One.
27 June 1919
My grandmother left Poland in December 1909 to come to America, sparing herself two world wars and the atrocities of a madman. Unfortunately things were different for the family she had to leave behind.
These newspapers are indeed treasures, if for no other reason that my grandmother and aunt put them away for safe keeping.
However, it was after looking though the newspapers that the most valuable treasure was found.
What somehow made its way to me left me speechless for a bit. It is a photo of my Grandmother with her first born son Alex. On the back of the photo the year 1914 is written. The same year Robert Frost penned the poem I spoke of earlier. My grandmother is just twenty-three years old in this photo and only four years out of Poland. My mother would not be born until 1932.
The word treasure is often a relative term. And this, in my eyes, is a treasure of immense proportion.
