A Scrap of Wallpaper

Do you ever think about the people who have lived before you? Ancestors, icons, or just ordinary, random people? When we redid the wallpaper in our living room, we had to strip off the old layers and at the base of the layers was a lovely patterned wallpaper that was relatively similar in color to the one we had chosen to put up. I thought it was cool that we had similar tastes to one of the original owners of the house. (From what we have been told, our house is over 110 years old.) Are they dancing with joy in heaven because someone bought their house and was taking care of it and in their style? Who put their wallpaper up? Were they bright-eyed newlyweds doing it themselves? Or did they have the money to hire it out? This makes me start wondering who they were. Businessmen and their wives? Blacksmiths, tailors, grocery store owners or employees? What kind of people were they? Kind, mean, generous, stingy, upper society, or working-class citizens? Did they hold on to the traditions and behavior patterns of their ancestors? Or did they try to break some of the less helpful molds they had grown up with?

Looking at those scraps of old wallpaper makes my brain travel back to what might have been. Was electricity and running water in when the house was built, or did they start with an outhouse and candles? Straight razors and ice boxes, cocaine in the medicine cabinet, formal attire for going out… I imagine their clothes: weekday simple and Sunday-best outfits. As our house is a moderate house, they likely only had a few outfits to wear. Although, most of the closets are a decent size, so maybe they were a little more lucrative – one of the early owners was the daughter of one of the lumber barons, so perhaps…

These little, historical things can impact me. Maybe I’ll write a story about that wallpaper someday when I have time to research the house more. It would be fun to mix some fact with fiction and see what I come up with. For now, I can speculate to my heart’s desire.