Wednesday, June 25, 2008
The Crawlspace Letters
I live in an extremely old apartment --- it predates the SF earthquake. It has some strange features that you don't see in buildings these days, including a potato storage basin and a flour bin. Today, I was reaching into a dark and dusty crawlspace behind my bookshelf, which is deadbolted to the wall. I was just trying to get to a couple of pictures and books that had fallen way back into the crawlspace-- but when I reached back there, I found a clutch of old, yellowing papers. It turned out to be love letters that an American G.I. sent to his girlfriend (or wife -- I can't tell...) from Europe in World War II. I'm hoping to use my research skills to track down the author of the letters (or the descendents of the author) and send these back to their rightful owner. More later.
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2 comments:
OMG it's your next book.
Well, it's certainly a mystery that I want to solve. I took a brief, guilty glance into the contents of the letter today. The young man was stationed in Germany-- and it seemed that he was very much in love with a woman living in this very apartment. The question is: why would someone leave such an important letter in the crawl space? My guess is that she probably left the letters in a big stack of papers in the drawer and the letters somehow got shoved backward into the crawlspace (and they have been lying there untouched, in darkness and dust, for the past 63 years.) I would also guess that the recipient of the love letters missed them later on, but probably couldn't pinpoint how or why they went missing.
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