Elmer and Addie

Don’t you just love a flea market? Here in the Denver area, I look forward all year to the Paris Street Market. It takes place once a month, May through October. (What’s actually French about it remains unclear.) Thousands of like-minded treasure hunters fight over parking spaces for the privilege of delving through booths filled with everything from handcrafted objets d’art to actual collectibles to interesting junk. Personally, I am attracted to the junk. (Excuse me. I prefer to call it ephemera).

So I really struck it rich when I was searching through boxes of old photos. Not only did I find a great picture of this nice couple, but there was a negative as well! Large enough for sunprinting! (Eight minutes at noon in the Colorado sun produced the image you see below.)

But there’s nothing like paying fifty cents for a picture of interesting strangers to capture the imagination. Instant relatives! Just look at them! What’s their relationship? Is she his wife? His daughter? And look at her smile. Is that a Mona Lisa smile, or what? And how, of all things, did these good people end up in a shoebox in a shopping center parking lot in Littleton, Colorado?

On the back of the photo, the number 1210 and two illegible words, both starting with capital C, are written in pencil. There’s a logo stamped on the back. It says Star Print/Star Photo Co., Anderson, Indiana.

A friend suggested the man was named Elmer. It took me a while to come up with the right name for the woman. Addie. For the time being, anyway. Does anyone know who they really were?

…Jan Magee, The Quilt Life