One of the more interesting things I cleared was a folder from the newspaper's photo morgue (which long ago lost some of its most valuable files, like the Bill Mazeroski folder, to late night thievery).
Can't remember why I had pulled this file; all I can say is that every time I venture into those dusty stacks, I get sidetracked by one life in a folder or another. Also, there is sneezing. Lots of sneezing.
The envelope labels often read like this:
Mrs. Jones: Accused of killing husband with hacksaw
xxxxtown: Fire kills 3 people and 8 horses
Gertrude Michael: Actress
The photo files (the older ones are bigger and clearly were labeled with a Courier font typewriter) document all kinds of crime, tragedy and daily life in general from the early 20th Century through about the mid 90s, when digital photography killed off dark rooms and developed film.
The file still sitting o
n my desk was full of images of a forgotten actress named Gertrude Michael, from Talladega, Ala., whose flame burned out fairly quickly. She died at 53. Can't remember what I was looking for when I stumbled across her. She's back in her dusty spot now in the morgue, a life compressed to a stack of faded images. (Side note: When I was a tween in the late 60s, I spent a week in Talladega with my cousin Kim and her sister and sister's husband in Talladega. Jim was an ob-gyn. I remember a beautiful lakefront A-frame, watching "Let's Make a Deal" and a country club visit that included some sort of sweet cocktail that bartenders hate to make. There was moonshine, too. Payment for Jim's services from the local folks. Miss Michael came from an interesting place.)The picture is of a pop-up kind of life. And look, there's a paper, too! From a temporary storefront art installation on 6th Street, Downtown, called Fraley's Robot Repair. I'm a big fan.
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