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.