My desk, always cluttered. Magically enough I never seem to misplace important stuff on it.

Aloha! Today’s blog post will be on two of my favorite things – thrift store shopping and old photographs. I did a blog post a few years ago on old photos piled up in antique stores but I haven’t revisited the thought until today. I love looking through the baskets and boxes of old photos; so many decades and centuries mixed together. It’s crazy how these photos were the memories of people and now they are just piled up in a dusty old shop, waiting for someone like me to come along and guess about the subjects frozen inside of the frames. Well usually I have to guess. Today I was lucky enough to hear a whole story.

Dr. Cooper was a Hampden resident. According to the woman manning the shop, he didn’t have any kids or family, so all of his stuff was transported to the thrift shop down the street. What Dr. Cooper did have was a lifetime of traveling the world with his beautiful wife.

Dr. Cooper, what a suave looking man.

Dr. Cooper’s wife, name unknown.

I’m guessing somewhere warm.

Or maybe Hawaii?

Watch out, now we are in Italy.

Smoking is cool when you have a cigarette holder.

Dr. Cooper was a pretty stylin’ man.

I’m not sure what kind of doctor Dr. Cooper was but something tells me he would have done well as a photojournalist.

It was so fascinating to be able to know the background of these mystery people. Along with Dr. Cooper, I also found several other people whose stories I do not know but who look just like people I know now.

Thrift stores house the best stuff. Usually people don’t even know the value of the things they have in there. I love digging through boxes and old bins because it kind of reminds of me of treasure hunting. Along with these old photographs that I will probably craft into a college of some sort, I also found a working Yashica IC, which is a 35mm rangefinder from 1968.

As always, here’s a little iPhone tiny photo essay from today’s thrifting adventures.