Twin Hunters Of Hidden History

20260613

Prompt from “pridemonthprompts” 2025 list.

Most people thought combing through remnants of a deceased stranger’s life was morbid, depressing even, but Patty and Gwen were hunters of hidden history. Always on the lookout for estates going to auction - or straight to the skip! They were now on close terms with every waste removal service in the county (except that one run by Alex B. Fuck Alex.), and frequently received offers of documents or photographs which were due to be thrown away.
But even the best network of connections didn’t negate the need to occasionally hop out of the car and rummage through a promising looking bin. Thankfully this rarely got the police called on you when you were a pair of little old white-haired white ladies. If anything the confused bin owner was more likely to come kindly ask if you needed help.
This haul had been a real windfall - bundles of letters and piles of photographs! All for the low cost of a snagged jacket and minor sprained ankle. And possibly local infamy, if that neighbour who’d been filming them chose to share the video.
“We really ought to get some of those fancy t-shirts, where people filming you directs them to your website.” Gwen said once again, and Patty again replied “I’m not sure we should.”
And the matter was once again swiftly forgotten in favour of excited speculation about what they’d find this time. Their original destination also forgotten as they headed straight home.
First step was always to take the historical materials to the Clean Room, to be carefully unpacked, inspected, treated or cleaned as necessary, scanned, and properly stored. While the originals would be referred to frequently, the twins tried to do most of their work with digital copies. It was safer.
Not to mention, the ability to zoom in or up brightness was much appreciated, especially as they got older.
Once everything had been loaded into the system the work was split up by type; Patty had always been the more visual of the twins, and by now excelled at identifying people, guessing ages, and placing the era or location of a photograph. Whereas Gwen proudly declared she could read ‘even a drunken doctor’s handwriting!’, and could track slang usage like archaeologists used index fossils.
Sitting opposite at their battered desk (a repurposed farm table), Patty with her single large monitor plus drawing tablet, Gwen with two monitors and an ergonomic keyboard, they chatted back and forth while shifting through the new materials.
While they always tried to put everything in order before scanning, few people put the date on every picture or piece of paperwork. And how faded or tattered something was told you more about how it had been stored than how old it was. So this first pass was mostly about figuring out what went where - or rather, when.
“Hm.” Gwen leant back in her chair (prompting a sleepy grumble from their elderly labradoodle, who’d been using her slippered feet as a pillow). “I think we might be dealing with a couple of ‘confirmed bachelors’.”
“Oh? What have you found?”
“Nothing concrete, but… it’s unusual to keep so many letters from someone you’ve shared a house with for decades. And it seems like they wrote one another whenever they were apart. Plus, letters from other people talk about them like a unit. Anything in the photographs which hints one way or the other?”
“No. But then, given the time frame…” Patty flipped back through the album she’d been assembling, then thoughtfully amended “Actually, there’s this small photograph of Silas in uniform. Here, can you make out the message scrawled on the back? It’s quite faded.”
Gwen studied the inscription and confidently declared “‘Pray for my glory’. Given to Oscar when Silas went off to war, you think? There’s lots of letters between the two while Silas was deployed. Oscar keeps bemoaning how his poor vision meant he wasn’t eligible to serve, because he’d much rather they were together. Despite how poor Oscar is describing the horrible situations he’s stuck in!”
“Does sound daft and melancholy enough to be young love.”
“And these letters from Silas’s mother… partway through ’68 she swaps from addressing the holiday letters to ‘D.S.’ - darling son? - to ‘D.S. and D.S.I.L.’. Which, if ‘D.S.’ is ‘darling son’, surely ought to be ‘darling son in law’. Yet I can’t see anything about Oscar marrying into the family.”
“Certainly no wedding photos, nor a woman looking like his wife. Think we should flag these as being of interest to the Queer History folks?”
“Well, let’s see what else we find, first. Check the public registries and such. But I do think this might be relevant to them.”
“There’s also some photos here which ought to be of interest to the local Curling Club.”
“Ooh, let’s see!”

Prompt was “Letters or Photographs”.