"There we are a long time ago. ..."
Somebody wrote this inscription on the inside cover of a small tan photo album containing more than 75 family photos.
Maybe the same somebody who left the album on an Anchorage People Mover bus in October.
"People Mover has an agreement with us," says Anchorage Police Department community service officer Catherine Diehl-Robbins. "Their lost and found goes to us if they can't find the owner. We get a lot of wallets, cell phones and Walkmen -- items with monetary value."
The photos don't have monetary value, but Diehl-Robbins took them anyway and made them "a personal project."
"It's haunting me," she says." It's like the photos are screaming 'Find my owner.' "
The People Mover staff tried. So did Diehl-Robbins. After research convinced her the photos were from Minnesota, she brought them to Daily News photographer Fran Durner, who called me.
The photos, mostly black and white, are from the '50s and early '60s. Some have dates in the margins left by the print maker.
The family -- Dad, Mom, two girls and their younger brother -- lived in a large frame house in a rural or suburban area. They are not city people. A tiny photo of the blond brush-cut boy, no more than a second-grader, bears the imprint "1955-School Days-1956 Lake Johanna." (The oldest daughter was born circa 1945, the second daughter a couple years later, the son a year or two after that.)
There are two Lake Johannas in Minnesota, one in suburban St. Paul, the other in Pope County southwest of St. Cloud.
"I think this is the Pope County Johanna," says Patrick Coleman of the Minnesota Historical Society in St. Paul. "The lake near here isn't associated with any political subdivisions such as a school district."
The photographer, obviously a family member, was not a professional like Robert Frank who chronicled American life in the '50s with an iconoclastic eye. But the photos are irresistible, especially to anyone over 50 -- irresistible because of their familiarity.
Here is Every Family progressing through the stages of middle-class life. The kids as tots in the front yard with Mom and Dad, the kids -- the girls now teens -- posing in the living room like adults. And inevitably, photos of the kids at Christmas in front of the tree with their dog, and the kids at Halloween in costume with their jack-o'-lantern.
There is no hint at what Dad did for a living, but we can be sure he was a veteran. There's a photo of him in uniform, probably during World War II, mugging with Mom, a trim young woman, perhaps a bride to be, on a snowy day.
The album is not the original home of the photos. It's fairly new. I'm guessing one family member put it together for another, perhaps the boy. There are eight photos of him in succession from tot to teen.
If, as Diehl-Robbins says, the photos scream "Find my owner," they also whisper "These children were loved." The parents' love for their children is the subtext of the album.
The photographs also said something personal to me. My cousins grew up in the western Minneapolis suburbs. The three of them are in the same birth order as the kids in the photos, if not born in the same years, close. My uncle, a World War II vet, was a school teacher, my aunt a homemaker. The photos in the album seem not only of the same era but the same neighborhood.
Two of my cousins live in the Twin Cities. The third, the boy, moved away. Perhaps one of the kids in the photo album moved away too -- and left the album on the bus.
I'm hoping whoever lost the photos will contact me. I'll give them back right away. Catherine Diehl-Robbins will feel better. So will I.
Michael Carey is the former editorial page editor of the Daily News. He can be reached at mcarey@adn.com.
By MICHAEL CAREY