An honest to goodness Treasure Chest

My parents have slowly been going through my grandfather’s things. My last living connection to the ‘old west’ passed away on Yule, 2007. It’s been hard for my dad and his brothers to empty out the house and divvy up the history. Finally they decided to give most of it to me, the oldest granddaughter, the oldest grandchild, to document, make copies where applicable and pass it on to the others.

I was a pretty lucky kid when it comes to knowing my extended and generational family. When I was born both sets of grandparents were very much here and present in my life. We spent every weekend going back and forth between my mother’s folks and my father’s folks. I also got to know and spend a great deal of time with my dad’s mother’s parents – my great-grandparents. My folks come from a very small town in eastern Oregon called Mitchell. It’s about 70 miles further east of Prineville, just on the other side of the Ochoco’s. Mitchell and the towns/communities around it sprung up in the mid 1800’s as ranching communities with some agriculture and mining, but the area did a small ‘boom’ in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s for lumber as well. By the time my folks were born the communities were doing a slow die off, the children growing up, going away to school and not returning.

When I was born the town still had a population of 350, by the time I was 5 in 1974 that number had dropped to 300 and by the time I was 10 it was down to 250. It held steady at about 250 for most of my teen years and then began another decline in numbers as I myself went off to school. I never knew Mitchell as a boom town filled with hustle and bustle.

I heard stories of course, but it was very hard for me to imagine when the town I knew had more abandoned buildings than functional and filled ones and many of those buildings were simply gone, torn down or burned down and no longer part of the towns skeleton. The stories when they when they were told by great aunts and great-great-uncles with querulous voices and eyes faded to soft greys and light blues behind thick bifocal glasses made the itchy-to-move-to-keep-playing little girl long to escape to the apricot trees and the cherry trees to climb and get into mischief. A quarter in my pocket would burn through to my skin if I didn't run down the boardwalk right away and spend it on licorice at Nortons'!

I wish I had listened more and been impatient less. Now that I want to know, now that I need to know, I have to learn from what is here, in my hands. At last I can imagine it very clearly. I have my great-grandmothers letters and her brothers and sisters post cards and the catalogs she ordered from, the receipts she kept, the pictures she treasured and the school lessons and childhood mementoes she cherished from her own babes. I also have her mother’s things.

I have my great grandfather’s trunk, his letters and receipts and memories. I have a wealth of history and so many stories to tell that I’ll likely spend the next several years doing so. Each piece I pull out of the trunk, each picture, each memento, has a story to tell. I don’t know them all yet, but I’m going to find out.