Decoding the past...

Well, I started cleaning out the crawlspace in the attic today...I'm really tired. So the rest will have to wait. :)

There were three air conditioners in the crawlspace. One was a small one that currently sits in one of our frontroom windows. Another was a very big 18,000 btu unit that is sitting on the floor in the dining room, because I couldn't find the outside shell for it (I checked the basement crawlspace, which is where it was...don't know why they were separated, but oh well). The third was this ENORMOUSLY HEAVY unit that looked like it was from the 1960s or something...it was so old it was rusty in a lot of spots. I didn't even bother to try and turn it on, for fear that it would explode or something. :)

Thankfully, my brother-in-law came over to help me struggle down the stairs with that one...even so, it took a LOT of energy and maneuvering--I'm betting that thing had not moved from the attic/crawlspace since the 1950s.

More interesting a discovery, however, was a box of photos/albums/family history on what must have been one of the previous owners. I mean, literally, there are hundreds of pictures, a couple family albums, two wedding albums, two diplomas, a high school yearbook, numerous grammar school class photos, Mother's Day cards, baby shoes, etc., etc., detailing a family's history. I believe that the parents in this family must have owned this bungalow at some point, and somehow, this box was either forgotten, left or lost in the attic or somewhere in the house over time. Anyway, I thought, "Boy, if someone found this kind of stuff for my family, I would want them to track me down so I could have it." So I hunted for the people online, and found a guy who has the same name as one of the kids in the family history. He responded and said he would ask around his family to see if indeed this stuff was theirs...I didn't share too much info with him (partially because I don't want to give this stuff to someone who technically doesn't own it--even though the last name is not "Smith" or something like that--it's pretty "rare").

I told him all I'd hope for in return was any historical info on this house that he or his family members could share, since that's really what I'm after--especially if they indeed lived here for any length of time. Otherwise, it's all theirs. Sadly, there were no pictures of this bungalow among the hundreds in there, so we'll see. Maybe this guy rented the upstairs here and forgot this box when he moved out, and thus his family never actually lived here--I don't know. I guess I'll find out sooner than later... :)