Elvis has left the building, Man

The house we bought was built somewhere around 1930, so it comes with a lot of history. We bought it at an auction and have been very happy with it ever since.

Yes, it needed a lot of (unexpected) updating, but in general, it was a solid house. The original owners passed away quite a few years ago, so you could expect a certain state—and smell—when you first stepped inside. Thankfully, that’s all gone now. After painting, tearing out carpets, and doing a deep clean, it looks and smells fresh again. There is still a lot of work to do, but nothing truly major so far (fingers crossed, knock on wood, or whatever superstition helps 😊).

When we first started cleaning out the place, we ran into so much stuff. The separate garage down at our driveway was packed with loads of old tools and lumber. The in-house garage came with hundreds of canning jars filled with... well, mostly things I had no clue about. Honestly, it felt like opening the door to some horror cabinet; I almost expected to find a jar containing eyes or fingers.

We cleaned out the basement and started fixing all the openings leading into the crawlspace so we could actually use the space. It's officially a full basement now.

And then, we went up to the attic.

What we found up there was amazing and sad at the same time. We uncovered stacks of books—mostly common ones, but a few real rarities too, like a very old edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. You know, the original, non-Disney versions where it feels like the Brothers Grimm were just trying to scare your kids into going to sleep.

We also found a mountain of Elvis Presley memorabilia: pictures, souvenirs, concert ticket stubs, and fan letters. It turns out the previous owners were diehard Elvis fans. We are still sorting through all of that, and who knows, maybe we can make a buck or two.

Then there were the letters and cards—hundreds of them. Reading through them feels like a soap opera poured into a puzzle, mainly because we have no idea what chronological order to read them in.

It feels a bit tacky at times, like you’re snooping through personal lives that were never meant for your eyes. Yet, it offers a fascinating glimpse into how life was lived back in those days—including how certain things written in those letters definitely wouldn't fly today.

And then there are the photographs. So many of them, all neatly kept alongside their original negatives, with names and notes written on the back. Here we are, holding their memories, but not having a clue who any of these people actually are.

The same goes for the home videos we found stacked in a hidden space between the bathroom and a wall, tucked behind a door inside a closet. We watched a few of them just to see what the house and the surrounding land looked like decades ago. It was entertaining, and it even gave me a few ideas for upcoming projects. Yes, the to-do list got bigger again 😊.

What struck me most about all of this is that no one else knew any of this was up there. The people in those pictures and movies will likely never see them again, even though we are actively trying to track down any relatives to pass them along.

I once read somewhere that unless you do something extraordinary to be remembered by the world, the memory of you generally only lasts for about two or three generations. After that, you are reduced to just a name on a family tree.

Looking through someone else's entire life packed away in cardboard boxes really puts things in perspective. It doesn’t make it any easier to digest, though.