When I was 13 years old I had a photograph of my father, which according to my mother was an 18-year-old version of him. The photograph was taken when he came back from sea, after the ship he was on had been taken by a British Royal Navy prize crew during World War 2 and run aground off the coast of Scotland. He looked much older than 18. And he looked Italian.
This was a picture I loved and took good care of. Mother also had a copy of this picture on her bedside table. Hers disappeared during house cleaning when she passed away. For some reason, mine has also gone astray. I really have no idea where it went in all the fuss. The strangest thing is that my two siblings have no idea what picture I’m talking about. It was as if it had never existed and that this was just a figment of my imagination.
A few months ago I was back in my hometown for the first time in many years. By impulse I stopped by a photographer who has been around for generations.
He gave me some old books where all the orders were recorded. And there it was; picture No.: 171 taken in 1940.
Father’s picture has been there all these years, during his youth, when he met my mother, while fighting with his friend in the park and they both fell asleep on their respective benches in the middle of winter, when he married and had a daughter, while traveling north to re-build cities after the war, while he contracted tuberculosis and infected his three-year-old daughter , while they were both in a sanatorium for a year, while he started his own business, while he built a house, had two sons, built a cabin, had a wooden boat, had a heart attack, got cancer and died when I was 7 years old. And in all the years that followed, the two portraits have only been lying there. Without anyone knowing it. It was just a whim that I stopped by the photographer´s shop after all this time.
This just shows the importance of never giving up digging and exploring the past. The treasueres are there to find for those of us who seek.
Billy Bronco is telling you 