You'll do it as I'm doing now. Reviewing yearbooks. Remembering stories and people's faces. Recalling what was important in high school. As I search for ideas to write, I'm drawn to several incidents that occurred during my high school days. So I reach up to the topmost shelf and wiggle my fingers until they touch THE BOOK. This one relates my single year, the tenth grade, that I attended Central High School. I had earlier spent three years in junior high with many of the sophomores pictured in the Cotton Boll. For that reason I keep the book handy.
The photos are available when I'm helping someone research family members, when the annual is the only source for remembering a particular person, as cameras in the late 1940's early 1950's weren't like cell phones of today.
I've turned to a page to remember an old boyfriend; a friend who recently passed away; a neighbor I"m sure I know but can't place; or a teacher I want to point out to R with a fond experience to tell. Yearbooks are the portals to revisiting our youth.
Recently, while researching on Ancestry.com, I came upon a notice that annuals are being collected and torn page by page to microfilm to add to their vast research resources . I have been trying to tear the Cotton Bowl away from my knarly grasp, like pulling a child from its mother's arms. I'm fearful that if I send it off to the netherlands I'll find thousands of reasons for having kept it. That is something I'll have to work on.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I wouldn't give up my old year books. I like books you can hold.
I'm transferred from the Deep South to your home easily though your words. Home is defined by the nurture we received. My memory is a four-plex with a wide front porch.
Post a Comment