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Sometimes things happen in the world that just seem too coincidental to be coincidental. We have lots of words to describe these moments — luck, serendipity, maybe fate or destiny, perhaps a miracle?
Texas Standard Commentator WF Strong remembers one of these moments he just can’t explain.
The full transcript of this episode of Stories from Texas is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
WF Strong [00:00:00] A couple of years ago, I rushed to the post office late to mail some copies of my book to about 15 people around the state. I wanted to get them mailed before 5:00, and I was frustrated to see that my nearby post office was closed early. They were resurfacing the parking lot. I heard five miles over to the next nearest post office and they were open. Better still, there were no lines. Perfect. I took my box of books up to the clerk and he began preparing the labels for each individual mailing. He asked, out of idle curiosity, what kinds of books I was mailing. I said, History. Late history or popular history about Texas? He asked, Do you like historical photographs? I said, Yes, I do. Do I love them? He said, We have an old photo album here with pictures of over 100 years ago in it. It’s been here for eight years and our dead letter files. We don’t know who it belongs to. Would you like to see it? I said sure. I’d love to take a look. He brought it out and I quickly leafed through it and saw that they were indeed photos from probably 1900 1910, something like that. No doubt. Photos of Texas. I said, I have an idea if you’ll let me take this. I know Jack Dyer’s naked traces of Texas on Facebook. He specializes in black and white photos of historical Texas. I bet he can post a few and maybe figure out who this album belongs to. He said, Please do. We’ll never find the owner here. So I took it home. The next morning at breakfast. I took it out to peruse it over coffee. First photo I saw had a man in a suit standing in front of a Model T. Ford reminded me of the Bonnie and Clyde era. The photos had dates like 1910 and 1920 of well-dressed people in front of large white homes. One such home had the word Denton beneath it. Some photos were of ranch country with barns in the background. I saw a toddler boy descending house steps in overalls. The photo was labeled GB. I told my wife that we had a job in my family. An uncle, actually. I said it was quite common back then to call boys and men by their initials. I kept turning the pages of this album of old black and white photos mounted on now ancient black construction paper and tied together with a skinny string. Halfway through, I saw a woman, about 30, who I immediately recognized. It was my grandmother. I realized to my shock that these were photos of my family, but a lesser known branch of my family tree, at least to me. But the greater shock was how this had come to be in my hands. How had the universe delivered this to me in this incredibly random way? I had never seen this collection of photos before. As I wracked my foggy brain for an answer I remembered many years before. But ever so vaguely my mother sending me a Christmas package to that very post office. I use that branch more frequently. Then she had sent me a package and asked me to forward the one within it to my great Aunt Mabel, who was then in a nursing home in Austin. I remembered forwarding it right then at the post office without knowing what was in it, how it happened to get returned to this post office? I don’t know. I suppose there was no return address on it or it got damaged in shipment. By then, both Mabel and my mom had passed. No one could solve the mystery. Yet they marveled at the sequence of events that made it possible for this album to come back to me. I had to be in a rush to mail books that day. The nearest post office had to be shut down at that moment. I had to choose to go to the other post office. I had to run into a clerk who was curious about what kind of writing I did. He had to care enough to say, You know what? There’s something here you might be interested in. And then I had to be curious enough to want to see it. And then he had to trust me to take it with the intention of finding its owner. All that had to align to get that album back to my family. But for some, it is not a miracle. Some say there are no coincidences. Only destiny. Only fate. Who knows? I’m WF Strong. These are stories from Texas. Some of them are true.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
