Looking for a quaint postcard to send a girl I like, I wander into a salvage store on the outskirts of town. The building is small, but the back lot is stacked high with random junk stretching back hundreds of feet, a sorting task to last a lifetime.

I step into the fluorescent-lit main building and browse the antiques aisle while an oldies station croons distantly from somewhere in the ceiling. The shelves are piled haphazardly with old telephones, black and white photos, ancient soda bottles, and various other junk made valuable solely by its age. On the bottom rack is a large box of post-cards, jumbled together in a heap. I begin sifting through them, looking for just the right card. Something that will be funny in that quirky antique way. A silly old ad, maybe. Grinning men smoking pipes. Something with the word "swell".

I pull out and consider several cards, but can't seem to find what I'm looking for, so I dig deeper, piling the cards on the floor next to me to get at the lower layers. I am about to give up when my fingers catch something that is not a card. I pull it out and set it on the floor, filled with the vague sensation that I have just found something interesting.