I'll do my best, but...

I am not well-enough-organized to present this story in a fully logical fashion. If I wait until I have everything in order, Ill never get to anything! Hopefully the photographs and story will compensate for any frustration in this regard, so please have patience with my jumping around with the dates and the story.

Two lives, long gone, almost forgotten...

Why do people take photographs and write journals? Maybe we do it only for ourselves and our families, to re-live our experiences, to see our pasts again. Or maybe we do it to document our lives, hoping that some future generation will see and hear us.

I don't have a clue why Will and Eva Rauch left so much stuff for me to find. Certainly they never figured that a snoopy great-grand-niece by marriage-- born long after both were cold in their graves-- would stumble on their personal papers. I'm fascinated by their lives in Los Angeles from 1900 to 1940, and hope you will be, too.