This New England

Photo and Commentary by WILLIAM MORGAN

It seemed pretentious to call it an estate sale: the remnants of 65 years of marriage in a two-family frame house in Pawtucket. Mom, long widowed, is 91 and has moved to a nursing home.

Italian-American Rose and Nick -- whose surname was Polish or Czech -- were married when he was home on leave from the military (the small service was in a church rectory). He returned from World War II and the couple raised two daughters and filled their modest house with mountains of stuff.

There were no treasures unearthed here. And all the furniture, clothes, sewing machines, pots and pans, and other detrius not sold at the sale was bound for the landfill.

Yet, a chunk of this family's life was for sale for almost nothing. Boxes of photographs offered up formal wedding portraits, pictures of the children awed by a department store Santa Claus, square Kodak Brownie snapshots of summer days at the beach. A family's history, discarded.

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