true stories – In the Vintage Kitchen: Where History Comes To Eat

It’s been two years and five months since this story began unfolding on the blog. Back then, the blog series with the impossibly long title – A Monumental Story of Real-Life Serendipity Told Over Many Parts detailed, in installments, the story of a mysterious package that was sent by a random stranger to the Vintage Kitchen in the summer of 2021.

Inside the package was a valuable 100-year-old item that had been found in a Southern city suburb by the random stranger in 2008. The item was connected to the Vintage Kitchen but did not belong to the Vintage Kitchen.

In 2021, the story had been rolling out at a nice clip. There was one blog post a month – one chapter a month – dropping hints and clues as to what the package’s contents could be and how it came to be connected to the Vintage Kitchen. In addition to the hints, Chapter One, Chapter Two, and Chapter Three also included historical information surrounding the lost item’s importance.

Chapter 4 was next on the horizon with details of how the lost item would be transported to its final destination. Then the lingering pandemic stalled the publication of that post. Our move to New England prolonged it even further. But now the timing has lined back up again and we are back on track to finish this story and reveal the contents of the package in Chapters 4 & 5 coming to the blog this month. These last two chapters will officially wrap up the whole remarkable story of how a lost 100-year-old item finally found its way home after traveling through 13 years, four states and one century.

I realize that if you are a new reader to the blog this information is absolutely confusing. And perhaps, if you are a regular reader you might need a recap to remember what exactly this story was all about in the first place. Two and half years is a long time to keep a good mystery going so I’m including links to the first three blog posts below so that everyone can catch up before we continue on to Chapter 4, which I promise is coming in a few days (not years).

So here we are… links to each. Click on the photos or the highlighted chapter title links below and they will take you to the original posts laid out chapter by chapter.

Chapter One, titled It Arrives highlights the arrival of the mystery package and introduces some key information about the contents of the package.

Chapter Two, Meet Angela introduces the random stranger who sent the package to the Vintage Kitchen. It also highlights her research journey of how she wound up connecting the item to the Vintage Kitchen.

Chapter Three, The Time Period, highlights the era that surrounds the package’s contents – the 1920s and features several hidden clues as to what the mystery item might be.

Coming up next, it’s Chapter Four – One Last Journey – where transportation of the mystery item will be discussed as the item embarks on its final adventure to the place where it belongs.

While the story continues to unfold, there is still time to take a guess as to what the mystery item might be. Feel free to post your speculations in the comments section below. I can’t wait to share the rest of the story with you, so stay tuned for Chapter Four coming soon!

{Spoiler Alert: This is a series of blog posts detailing the real-life story of a 100-year-old item that was lost 13 years ago and how it found its way home in 2021. Follow along from the beginning of this story at Chapter 1: It Arrives.}

It takes a special person with a unique spirit to rescue something from the brink of obscurity and then commit to taking on the uneasy task of finding its home again. It is not lost on me that the word angel appears in the name of the random stranger, the delightful woman, who found the mystery item that began this story in our last blog post.

In Chapter One of this series with the impossibly long name (A Monumental Story of Real-life Serendipity Told Over Many Parts) we began with a few introductory details. There was a century-old item that was lost and then found over a decade ago and recently discovered to be connected with the Vintage Kitchen. It’s a curious case of luck, timing, and careful consideration that guides this whole story from start to finish. As it unfolds over many chapters, the mystery item will be revealed and the rightful owner declared. Each chapter of this series reveals new information, so if you like to solve mysteries, or guess at scenarios this story will be your cup of tea.

In case you need a little refresh, let’s recap all the info we have learned so far about the lost item and the mysterious set of circumstances that surround it…

The lost item is 100 years old.
It was found by a random stranger 13 years ago.
Over the course of the following 13 years, the stranger searched for the original owner of the item, but to no avail.
In July 2021, the stranger read a blog post that connected the item to the Vintage Kitchen.
Last week the item arrived in the Vintage Kitchen via UPS.

In today’s post, we are continuing on with new information about the 100-year-old item and the story surrounding it. I’m pleased to introduce you to the random stranger, the delightful woman, the angel, who changed the course of fate for a misplaced piece of history. One that would have been lost forever had she not intercepted it. Meet Angela…

Angela lives in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, in the same Southern town where she’s spent her entire life. It’s also the same town where she found the item thirteen years ago. At the time, she was 23 years old and working full-time at an office supply store.

There’s Angela, at work thirteen years ago, at the time she found the item! Photo credit: Angela E.

She remembers the day she found the item well. She was cleaning up an area of the store that sees a fair amount of daily traffic and she noticed that something had been left behind near a workstation. She took a closer look, and immediately sensed that the item had been left accidentally. It was valuable, important, and definitely something that someone would miss.

Angela, realizing the history that encompassed it, looked the item over for any owner identification information. Right away she did find a name on it, so Angela looked in the store’s customer database to see if it matched any work orders that had come in that day or at some point previously. Nothing matched. Next, she googled the name, just in case by random luck she’d find some contact details online. Again nothing matched. At this point, thinking that the person who left it would certainly realize their absentmindedness and come right back for it, Angela tucked the item away on a shelf in the back room of the store for safe-keeping. The day went by. The week by. The month went by. No one came for it.

Initially drawn to the item because of its personal value and historical significance, Angela felt a certain protectiveness over it. There was a vulnerability about it, not only in its physical appearance but also in what it symbolized. As it sat there on the shelf in the backroom of the store, the item spoke to her. So much so that she found that she just couldn’t treat it casually. It was not an item meant for indifference or carelessness. This item was special and unique, in ways that few found objects often are.

For a year, the item sat there on the shelf, unclaimed. Finally, Angela decided to take it home and see if she could locate the owner herself. Confident that it might not be that hard of a task in our digital age of information, she began searching and sleuthing around the internet.

Daydreaming about reasons why no one returned to the store for the left-behind item, Angela’s imagination was alight with possibility. The two scenarios that kept recurring most in her mind were that 1) the person who left the item behind was a traveler passing through town on their way to somewhere else. 2) That the person had died unexpectedly in the days or weeks after leaving it behind in the store. Both scenarios sensibly explained why someone might not return for their belongings. One, confusion as to where it might have been left, and two, a tragedy that would make it impossible to return to the store.

Angela’s ultimate goal for the lost item was always to try and place it back in the hands of the original owner, but should that not be possible, then to try and find someone else who may be connected to the item in some way. If tragedy had indeed struck as she supposed, then there would at least hopefully be someone else to pass the item onto. Perhaps a family member or a friend who would have some association with the name she was trying to search.

Angela’s initial confident, kind-hearted quest turned into a journey that would last more than a decade and was plagued with dead-ends and unanswerable questions. For thirteen years, the item lived with Angela, not only physically in her home among her things, but also in her mind. It moved around her life as life moved around her. In the time between when she first found the item and now, Angela fell in love, got married, had a baby. There were dogs and laughter and love and another baby. There were busy schedules and growing years and life unfolding. There was a third baby and homeschooling and travel adventures and full-time mom life caring for a family of five.

Thirteen years later… Angela with her beautiful family. Photo credit: Angela E.

During all that time that life and love were blooming, Angela never forgot about the item. It lived for a while in a storage box near her bed, and also for a time in a closet tucked out of harm’s way. Most recently it sat by her computer, a continuous reminder of her quest to find the original owner so that she could send it home where it belonged.

Finally, in early July 2021, a lead broke free thanks to a Facebook group that Angela had recently joined. It was yet another attempt to try and track down more information about the item and the owner. In this new group, Angela found a welcoming and knowledgeable community. Within days, thanks to their expertise, Angela was armed with new information about the item and new paths to explore. Like a light switch suddenly flipping on, the information the group shared allowed Angela to quickly find her way to the Vintage Kitchen after finding an old blog post from our archives. The blog post mentioned two very specific pieces of information that the Facebook group helped her uncover. Two weeks later, after confirming that yes, indeed there was a connection between the lost item and the Vintage Kitchen, Angela mailed the item off to ITVK knowing that although we were not the original owner of the item, we would be able to further it on to its final destination. And just like that, thirteen years of seemingly endless searching came to a close. Angela’s caretaking position that began in 2008 had finally been fulfilled in 2021.

The item arrives in the Vintage Kitchen!

I asked Angela what she felt like in that moment when she mailed off the item to the Vintage Kitchen. She admitted to tearing up a little. “I felt appreciated and blessed. To be able to provide so many people connected to this item a sense of joy and happiness makes this such a special thing to be a part of.”

It’s impossible sometimes to figure out why certain people come into your life at certain times but I really do think Angela is wrapped in the stuff of angels. Had she not cared so deeply about the left-behind item she found so long ago, it most probably would have been tossed in the trash. An unceremonious end to a wonderfully unique aspect of history. But thanks to her kind-hearted nature, her dogged determination, and her persistence, patience, and perseverance, she carried this item from the past gallantly into a new future.

As discussed in Chapter One’s post, this item involves many more people than just Angela and the Vintage Kitchen. As the story unfolds, we will keep revealing new details that will get us closer to understanding just how pivotal Angela’s role is in all of this. In the meantime, If you would like to guess what the mystery item is that Angela found, please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Join us next time as we dive deeper into the history of the lost item in Chapter 3 of A Monumental Story of Real-life Serendipity Told Over Many Parts.