Introduction
I’ve always fancied myself a bit of a sleuth. When my family lived in the shed, I read Mom’s old Nancy Drew mysteries with a flashlight or kerosene lantern. I then graduated to my own room in a trailer. I moved on to Encyclopedia Brown then grew up to love Agatha Christie novels. I even have several draft chapters to a murder mystery that I wrote in longhand on spiral notebook and scrap paper. (Reminder to dust those off and submit to Mortified. Gah!)
In the 90s, I collected on multi-million dollar commercial loans, initiated foreclosures, purchased property at auction on behalf of the bank and then helped maintain and sell those properites. I was 25. I never even went to college so this is as much of a surprise to me as it is to you. But I was good at my job. When the Board of Directors appointed me Assistant Vice President, I joked that my role as a banker was my best paying acting gig.
To hunt down debtors’ assets, I searched all sorts of public records. The internet was fairly new and most documents were not available online. I became somewhat obsessed with how much intimate information I could find out about a person from newspaper clippings, yearbooks and wedding photos. I could piece together past and current relationships, favorite restaurants and bars, you name it, simply by going to the library or the local courthouse.
I was in a toxic personal relationship at the time and actually “stalked” a couple of people we knew (in the paper sense of the word) to hone my “skills” convinced I could turn my curiosity into a money making business like being a P.I. for hire. Always the entrepreneur, I guess, but ultimately detective work is a tremendous time spent alone which is not my thing. Plus, it’s steeped in negativity.
Fast forward to February 2012. My memoir was days from being published, and I needed something to occupy my thoughts besides the looming possibility of failure, criticism, and public shame. So, I joined Ancestry.com. Minutes gave way to hours that spanned into days of my pouring over legal documents and Google-sniffing out family history. Finding a long lost document or a tidbit of news was exhilarating and poignant.
For example, I found this article from 1963 in the Emporia Gazette about my great uncle Billy. Like his twin sister (my grandmother Betty), Billy was born deaf. He was killed when a train struck the car he and several other deaf people were riding in. With just one click, I was reading an archived article, documenting the tragic accident. His name, his life and death, were summed up neatly:
Billy Thornton Fitzgarrald, 29, Tulsa.
I burst into tears upon seeing it so plainly. I sobbed for the life cut short and for the pain his family — my family– suffered at the abrupt, violent and senseless loss. My emotions surprised me – Uncle Billy died years before I was even born– but seeing his full name (his last name, Fitzjarrald, is misspelled) struck an emotional chord in me on a cellular level.
My comfort was knowing that Billy’s story is still alive, like that of his twin sister, my Deaf maternal grandmother Betty. They live on through letters, Polaroids, journals, and the book and stories I’ve written. She will always be more than a simple sentence:
Betty Mae Fitzjarrald Worth, 81, Tulsa.
It’s been a few years since I found Billy. I reached the end of the family line; or, at least, tired of researching the same few people without results. Real dedication and trips to libraries and other government buildings would be needed to get any further. And, well, my book came out. I went on tour and gave speeches around the world. I opened a theater.
I still get the bug to shake the trees of past and see what falls out. So, I turned to bite-sized research projects in the form of vintage postcards I’ve found in antique shops. It’s fun. I put on my sleuthing cap and try to solve the mystery of the writer of the postcard and to whom they wrote.
The internet is at once the thing that allows me to be an armchair detective and the thing that is making sweet little notes like postcards extinct. Archived newspaper articles and handwritten letters serve as tangible wrinkles in time allowing us to travel across decades. One hundred and seven years from now, will a great grandchild cherish a Medium posting? Maybe. Just in case, I’ll keep writing postcards.
If you want a postcard from me, email your address to me at kambricrews@Gmail.com. Also, I love getting cards! Send me a postcard c/o QED, 27–16 23rd Avenue, Astoria, NY 11105.
First up on my vintage postcard hobby project thing, I’ll research the card written to Miss Ida Martin which started me down this whole path:
