Featured OPP - Other Peoples Photos

My cousin, childless, passed away a few years ago. I was her Guardian. I'm still going through boxes of her stuff that we put in the spare room. One box contained a variety of photo albums of people she knew, dinners, picnics, just hanging out. I don't know any of them. She lived down in Florida for awhile and had a job driving a signal car when they moved trailers and such so she made friends on the road. I plan to toss the albums because I have no way of knowing any of them. I'm always seeing posts from folks who think it's awful to throw away old photos, but what would I do with them? It's not like thrift stores want them!

 

I don't think there is any shame in tossing unwanted stuff. My local thrift stores would take them, as they seem to take everything. I have sorted through piles of old stereo views, photographs, and postcards at thrifts but haven't found much of value.

 

I agree with Joe about there being no shame.
I had to pass up on my photos of my grandparents because I had no more real room.

One suggestion is to make a lot of them and try to sell them for journaling crafting things. I know they sell some on etsy and people buy them to make other things.

 

Yeah that's a tough call. My only suggestion is if your cousin had Facebook, maybe check their friends lists and see if any match up? At least then you know you tried..

 

If all else fails, post them for free on FB or similar, or even donate to the local library. I bet there are kids who would be fascinated. First, because they're printed pictures and not on Mom's phone. Second, they're images of life before they were born. If no takers you can always toss them later.

 

She's been gone about 6 years and had dementia for 10 years before that. These photos are all from the 70s-80s. She never did Facebook. The crafting idea is a good one. I'd give them all away if someone wanted them

 

And you might also try thrift stores, just to make sure. Somebody may be interested in them.

One of my mother's neighbors passed away a couple of years ago. Her sons were selling a lot of her possessions out of the house and the garage. One day in the garage I saw boxes of old photos of a lot of people, not identified. I thought about taking them, but these were too new for my collection and I already have plenty of research projects. I suspect they tossed the photos, but don't know for certain.

I did buy a painted vase that the deceased woman had painted in 1975. I didn't know her well, but this is my memento of her life.

 

It does seem very sad to me to throw someone’s life in the garbage. My only suggestion is taking them out of the albums. They’d probably all fit in a small box rather than a big stack of albums. I don’t know what the answer is if there’s no one in the family that will take them. That’s what was so cool about big old family houses. Generations worth of stuff could just be put in the attic or barn and forgotten about for more generations. I’m not sure I wasn’t kids at this point in my life but it would be sad getting old without anyone to care for you and about your legacy. I suppose you could make digital copies of them for prosperities sake. You could make giant Reddit posts directed at no one in particular. That would probably get hoovered up into the internet archive and live on forever that way.

 

I know my kids junior or high school asked for photos b/w or color I believe it was the art or English teacher. It’s been so long.

 

She was 8 years older than I but she always had issues. When her mother was in hospice she held my hand and made me promise to take care of Sylvia. I did and became her Guardian. For several years when she was younger she traveled up and down the East Coast driving a car with a Wide Load sign when they moved trailers and such. The people in these photos could be from anywhere between NH and Florida. Definitely not family and not local. Just people she knew along the way. Six large albums and several small albums.

We did crazy things that I didn't know were crazy when I was a kid. I had to live there summers because my mother worked. When I was 14 we went to the World's Fair in NY and slept in the car in the parking lot for a week because we couldn't afford a motel room. Imagine two young women sleeping in a car in Queen's today. It probably wasn't as bad then, but still, not exactly normal. She'd get a whim and we'd drive up to Montreal or out to Ticonderoga on a Friday and, again, sleep in the car and come back on Sunday. I doubt my mother knew.

 

It doesn't sound crazy to me. When you're young, you can do stuff like that. She was used to driving distanced and really logging the miles, so it didn't bother her. She wanted to go see something, so she went and saw it.

 

Wow Bev. Do you know what kind of issues she had?