My home office is very dark. I was feeling this acutely today. I didn’t want to stop working, but I needed more light.
I walked a few blocks to Atlas Audio Repair, a reuse/recycle store in Pittsburgh. The work clock was ticking.
I stood with my hands on my hips, scanning over a row of plant-like desk lamps reaching towards the ceiling. Some were wilting. Others thrived in their own glow.
“Aren’t you the girl who bought a bunch of old photos?” the owner said, peeking out of the back room.
“Yes.”
In September, I had purchased a mountain of radiant photos from the 20s up to the 80s at his store.
“What did you end up doing with them?”
“Let me think,” I said. “Ooo!”
I scrolled through my iPhone and handed it to him.
“It’s one of your pictures,” I said.
He gazed at FOUND Magazine’s website on my phone. The post featured our found 1964 picture of a family around a table in the dark. The family huddled around the photo’s only light source – candles on a birthday cake.
“See, found at Atlas Audio Repair,” I said, pointing at the post’s description.
He looked down and smiled.
“Jeez, that’s really neat,” he said.
He disappeared in the room behind the counter. I waited.
“Here, you can have this,” he said and handed me this photo from 1941.
Julie Sokolow 