A minor treasure trove...

The kitchen is, as I write this, being dismantled to make way for the new cabinets showing up tomorrow, and behind the "non-working" part of the counter (the one where the phone sat, where food was rarely prepared) were the following:

• a very old hat pin, still in remarkably good shape
• a 1971 calendar from a local liquor store, whose outer pages were reduced to looking like fine doilies by a generations of various itinerant insects
• a 5-cent postcard, very nearly the consistency of toiler paper in some places, but still recognizable, that I had apparently written to send to Tom M., my first correspondence chess opponent

What clued me in about the postcard was a relatively undisturbed "Dear Tom" in the upper left-hand corner of the message side, a hand-drawn pawn on the front, and just enough ink left for me to fill in the name and address in my mind.

Cheers...