My dad found this photo of my Grandpa in a newspaper from 1934. It’s of my Grandpa next to a piece of furniture he built. The last place my dad remembers seeing this piece was in the garage attic of their Dixon house.
On a mission to find it my dad and I drove out to Dixon and knocked on the door of 302 Elm St. No one answered. A dog came from the backyard, barking at us.
A man pulled up in a truck with two kids in tow. He asked what we were doing. My dad pulled out the newspaper and explained. The man says he hadn’t seen anything like that in the attic. He then commented, “It’s probably worth a lot of money, huh?”
What we really wanted was an invitation inside, to see for ourselves. We explained that my Grandpa had built this house in the 50s. The man didn’t seem too interested.
We left, not surprised, but a little disappointed. We had a glimmer of hope that it would still be up in that attic, nearly 30 years after the last time anyone had seen it.
We stopped by every thrift shop in town (all three of them). They were all closed for the day, but I peered in the windows hoping for just a glimpse. We found nothing.
I daydreamed about breaking into that garage attic to have a look for myself.
Now, whenever I pass an antique shop, I’ll be looking, hoping to find this small part of our family that’s gone missing.
Update from my cousin Susan: “A note about Paul Palmer’s chest that Don was trying to locate – I stopped in one of the antique shops in Dixon – the one closest to the railroad tracks. It was divided into two small stores with an old fashioned barbershop in between. One held dishes and the other furniture. The dish shop was open and I described the chest to the owner. He said he was pretty sure he remembered the chest – he said the first day the furniture part of the store opened, a man came in and bought it. They have no idea who the man was. So…could have been the chest or maybe not.”