On Saturday somebody dropped their recycling in shopping bags next to (but not in) the recycling dumpster, the way folks do. One bag held two crumbling pasteboard folders. So I grabbed the bag to toss it to the bottom of the full bin, and then with a yip of surprise saw what was inside. I left the bags and hurried my discovery upstairs.

There I set it on the bathroom counter and fetched a sharp knife and scissors. It took about ninety minutes of chipping in little careful bits to remove crumbling pasteboard and layers of very hard mucilage. Then I cleaned up the bathroom, wrapped up the board and glue debris and ran that straight back to the dumpster, washed hands and tools, then took my find into daylight for a good view.

It was two photographs. There were no names and no date. Both came from Roberts Studio, Brooklyn New York, and were printed on Eastman Kodak film. I turned them face down on the balcony laundry rack for an airing in the sun. Then I opened the internet and started some research.

Roberts Studio was at 683 Fresh Pond Rd., Ridgewood, New York. The Ridgewood Times had a little article about the Fresh Pond neighborhood.

The newspaper invites readers to share any pictures or memories. I may just make prints of these, and send them to the paper. Meanwhile I photographed them, then showed my cell phone images to people around me. One neighbor made a little fun of my all-out rescue. “You do realize,” he said, “that one day all of your stuff is going in a dumpster too?” I said “Yes it will, but their stuff won’t if it depends on me. The hope and beauty in these faces does not belong in the trash.”

How old are these pictures? Kodak film was invented in 1889. Roberts Studio had a second shop as well, at 1230 Fulton St., Brooklyn. That was originally a family house built in 1910; it still stands today. My sentiment, and it may be wrong, is that the wedding fashions are from before the Roaring Twenties, perhaps even before World War I.

Both pictures have the same faint painted arch background. Both grooms are dressed alike, down to the little flower ornament in their lapels. The brides seem to be dressed alike too. Perhaps instead of buying wedding clothes, they rented them from the studio? If so, that would suggest that they were not wealthy people. Judging by everything I heard from my relatives, and from Brooklyn scenes I saw as a kid, life there 100+ years ago might have had its spirited occasions but was in no way easy or serene. There is something appealing and heartfelt about two people facing the future side by side in the best clothes they could manage.

For right now the wedding pictures are in page protectors at the front of my address book binder, protected from light. At first it was only basic respect, to pounce on ancestor pictures put out with the garbage. Then, the work of freeing these pictures from their old folder frames, and doing the research, made me care about these people. Now I want to find out how to preserve them well. Unless of course a reader at the Ridgewood Times says “Holy Smoke — that’s Grandma and Grandpa!” If so, they’re getting sent back home to be with their relatives.

I like to go open the binder to look at these young people, to hope that they got through the Great War and the 1918 flu, to wish them a good and long life together.