Talking Leaves in anticlimatic

I continue to spiral into historical research, though I’ve branched off a bit from my targeted house research into other avenues. The answers I need to progress on that front are in the county building, which is only open until five. Between work being particularly busy in the spring, and my girlfriend being quite under the weather for the last couple weeks, I haven’t had any time to go pour over the ledgers in the back room of the deeds department.

I did print out the quit claim deed from 1878 in which the two native sisters hand over the large plot of land that includes the place this house is built in it’s southeast corner, which is written in mostly illegible cursive on plain stationary by someone who did not particularly care if it was ever going to be read again. Scribbled. Almost unceremoniously. I can’t shake this feeling that they were swindled out of their land.

I gave it to my grandmother, who I caught up with over the phone last night, as she has more experience reading cursive than I do. She admitted she probably wasn’t going to get very far either, it’s just too old and too odd, but maybe she can find someone who can do better. Deciphering old hieroglyphics is kind of fun, though I can’t justify the time it takes.

While I wait to get back into the Deeds room, I’ve discovered the newspaper records from my early adulthood, teenage, and even childhood years. Found myself pouring through small local papers from the early 2000s, allowing myself to be transported back to coffee shops and flip phones and grabbing a free copy of one of these every week they came out to look through the photos over a bowl of soup to see if there were any people I knew.

I couldn’t believe how beautiful and vibrant everyone was in that era. Something has changed, and it’s hard to put a finger on what exactly. People seem sicker now. Stranger. The old people don’t Old People very well, and the young people don’t Young People very well either. Maybe it was the more conformist style…nobody had much at all in the way of body modifications or tattoos, something so normalized now that seeing it absent is surprisingly jarring. The clothing was in some ways more modest- no leggings, for example- but in others more lude.

An old native gentleman named Simon Otto who was a local kid in the early 1900s that lived in a house up-river of the same river I live on, used to write a column for this paper called “Talking Leaves,” that was a favorite when I was in my early 20s. He would tell old native stories, and mix them in with old stories about what the town was like way back when. I wrote him a letter once, expressing that I was a big fan, and asked him some questions about the history of the river dams. The very next week he mentioned me by name in his column, thanked me for my letter, and answered my questions. Or tried to. I’ve been looking for that particular response…I think it might be in 2010 somewhere. Still haven’t found it.

For some silly reason the idea to write him another letter and ask him about my old house crossed my mind. It lasted about three seconds before I came to my senses and ran a search on him with the keyword “obituary” in the title. June, 2016. 96 years old, he “walked on.” I tried to remember what I was doing in 2016. Having one of the last best years of my life, it turns out. Far away from thoughts of Simon Otto. Though I am thinking about him again now. And about everyone else I wish I could write.

Last updated April 23, 2024