The Four Dollar Box

I set out one sunny Saturday morning in 1999 to do a little grocery shopping. Before I reached the four-lane I noticed a small red and white sign to the left in front of a neat white-framed house: Garage Sale Today. Spotting a few pieces of antique glassware on the makeshift table, I decided to pull over.

The house was being sold and everything from the attic had literally
been strewn about the yard, placed on sheets and stacked under tables. I was about to make my getaway with a hand painted wooden bowl and crystal pitcher I'd found in the rubble when a medium-sized cardboard box caught my eye. Unopened, yellowed......and full of old ephemera.

At first glance it looked like just a bunch of yard sale junk - envelopes, greeting cards, a few stamps, maybe a postcard here and there. A
few matchboxes and military-looking things. Might be interesting, I thought. I asked the elderly lady, who'd apparently been perched all morning in a rocker overseeing strange people poke through her things, "Do you know what's in this box?" "I found it in the attic," she said. "That stuff belonged to my late husband. He was in WWII. I don't know what's in it. Just some old papers of his. Nothing much."
"How much do you want for it?" I asked.

"Oh....I'll take four dollars if that's not too much." "That's fine," I said. I paid the nice lady and went on my merry way, much more excited about the bowl and pitcher than the dilapidated box.

Later that evening I decided to unearth the cardboard treasure.
I so love a good mystery. Wonder what I'd find. ....

Every time I tell this story I get a bubbly I-can't-believe-this-happened-to-me feeling in the giggly part of my stomach and shake my head in disbelief.

Are you ready for this?

Inside the four-dollar box - the one I nearly decided not to stop for - were hundreds of antique postcards from Vienna, Germany, France, Nice, Lourdes, Paris, Marseilles and other parts of the world. Most were untouched - in perfect condition. There were official military holiday greeting cards stamped 1944 and 45. Army regulations and security letters to the troops. A soldier's pocket atlas, cup, knife, tags, instructions, Army show pamphlets. Complete sets of untouched artist signed postcards from Vienna in mint condition, twenty-four Vienna Wien collection pieces still sealed in paper wrapping. Swiss original watercolour postcards. The list goes on. And more United States Army memorabilia than I knew what to do with.

It was the day my love affair with antique postcards began.


Sometime later I had time to research their history and determine what I'd found. I became somewhat of an antique postcard connoisseur and still love to find oils and mini watercolors to frame (such as Raphael Tuck) in good condition. Unfortunately, I later sold some of the army tags and articles in a post-divorce moment, most for a fraction of what they were worth. One of the postcards was eventually sold to a museum curator in Florida. Other small things found their demise in an EBAY frenzy.... the most memorable example of 'getting something for nothing' is the story of a book of souvenir matches from Florida (found in the four-dollar box) dated 1940-ish that sold for $42.10. A book of oversized matches with ugly pink flamingos on the front!
Amusing.

But that was not the greatest treasure, by far, in the box. I still have the most precious things. Neatly stacked and rubber-banded together underneath the postcards were a collection of Military Censored handwritten letters from Europe...

From a fifteen-year-old Austrian girl
Who was in love with an American soldier.

From what I can gather, he never returned the correspondence and was probably already married at the time he met her on holiday in France. Whenever I read them I feel a bit like I'm invading their privacy. Did his wife know? Did the sweet lady in the rocker ever discover them? What happened to the young girl? And who is "the boy" she keeps referring to?

Were the postcards reminders of places they visited together?

Is that why he kept so many? Is it possible that Mr. American Soldier was a true romantic? Did he love her? Were they ever reunited? Did he miss her?

I have pictures of the soldier that were made into real-photo postcards. There are no pictures of the girl. But I know she was lovely. And I know she loved him.
Struggling with the English translation, here's a sample from one of her letters (also see scanned image above)...."I know that many girls go with soldiers to get things to eat. And I always thought maybe you think the same thing about me.....Sometimes I miss you a lot. It's hard to think that I can never see you again......"
I like to take the letters out from time to time and conjure up a happy ending, delicately turn them over in my hands and think about how she must have felt when she wrote them. I can laugh at her jokes and peek inside her heartache - maybe even understand the angst between those carefully crafted words, painstakingly written in broken English and giddish delight.
I have no words from him on paper. No pictures of her. Just memories in a box. But I don't have to wonder if he returned her feelings.
You see, it's just this simple to me. And how I wish I could tell her.

The loveliest thing of all - is that he kept them.

*Parts of this post were reprinted from December 2006.
 Copyright © 2008 Mimi Lenox. All Rights Reserved.