Hoarder Stories Volume 1: Somebody Else's Family Heirloom

The above images are from what might be the most interesting item I've collected over the years. It definitely has one of the best stories.

Back in 2011, the town of Smithville, MS was hit by a bad tornado. The donations to get the town back on track were so plentiful that they ended up with way too much stuff. They received so much they decided to put all of the excess in one huge building and allow people to come in and buy as much of it as they’d like. They’d give you a garbage bag at the front door and you could take all you wanted for $5 a bag. 

I found a lot of good stuff that day, like Versace ties that I made a decent profit from. But, in a pile of toddler toys I found the most interesting item. It was a photo album from a 1950s/1960s ballet trio. It included a lot of beautiful images from their dancing and travels around the world. There’s a program outlining their performances as well as an autographed picture of the Sultan of Johore. Here’s a collection of images from the album, it includes letters that were in the album as well. (https://imgur.com/gallery/StjUDgF - be sure to click "see more images" when you get to the bottom to see everything) 

I’ve always wondered who these people were, and tried to search for information based on what I could see in the images and read from the letters and program. I never found anything more than a couple old newspaper clips noting their arrival in a town. I kept the album on a coffee table for decoration, resigned to never finding out anything more.

During the Covid quarantine days I dug it out of the closet and realized I should see if I could get the fine folks over at Reddit’s r/translator subreddit to translate the notes for me. I posted images of the letters and album and they did in fact let me know what was written. (https://www.reddit.com/r/translator/comments/fzxngz/unknown_english_letters_found_in_a_ballet_photo/)

Even more interestingly, I Googled the name on an envelope in the album for the first time in years. This time it produced a result, an article from 1986 about  a college student who had just recently located her long lost father in Germany. I did a little internet sleuthing and found the woman mentioned in the article, and contacted her to see if she'd be interested in having the album sent to her. 

Then, over 550 days passed without receiving a reply.

I figured they hadn't received my message, or perhaps they had and didn’t care about the album. Mostly, I was concerned I'd stirred up some bad old memories or something.

Fortunately those concerns faded away when I eventually did receive a reply. The woman I reached out to seemed VERY excited to see the album and to get it back. She told stories she'd heard that corresponded with some of the images. It was all nice to hear.

So after spending many years with me, this beautiful and mysterious album was mailed off to Arkansas. A new home where it could be appreciated on a more personal level.