What I Scanned

Tuesday was scanning day and I forgot to tell you about it. Here's the lowdown on what I scanned.

All of the items are stored in olive green hanging folders in file cabinets. In those folders are other folders with labels on them. This is not my organization system, but one that was here before me. I never know what's in the folders I pull out of the cabinets.

Tuesday's folder included a packet of items from a 12 year-old boy who died in 1921. He was his parents' first child, the first in the family born in the United States, his father's namesake and #5 in a direct line of men with the same name. He had a minor illness that turned into diptheria very rapidly.

All the items in this folder were related to this boy. His school work, his poems, a death notice. It appeared to be items collected and saved by his parents, then passed down in the family to where they are now: on the desk waiting to be scanned.

After the boy's folder, I came across his father's folder. It included car registrations, membership in service clubs, business documents and legal forms. I saw the document that recorded the business he bought. I saw the document that transferred the business to his wife when he died. I saw the document that recorded the $1 sale of half of the business from the wife to her youngest son.

You might look at these cabinets as just a bunch of files. But when you get down in to the folders page by page, you see the story of a family told over many decades. They are no longer here to tell their stories but the records they left behind show their tragedies and triumphs.