Category Archives: memories

books, career, Engineering, Genealogy, memories

Weary Work

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Into he trash went my engineering seals, lead sharpener for engineering drawing work, and service anniversary pins.

The main work I’m doing now—work at home that is, but not including my writing and stock trading work—is shedding possessions in anticipation of future downsizing. It’s wearying work. Not so much physically wearying, but mentally so. For a couple of months we’ve been pulling books from the basement and listing them for sale on Facebook Marketplace. We’ve sold a fair number, though have many more to go.

We have cleared out a fair number of things. We donated 400 children’s books to a church function. With our son’s and daughter’s help, on separate trips here, we took at least three loads of donation stuff to Goodwill. That included some odd pieces of furniture.

Some day I’ll have to actually read this old probate document and see how it fits in with family history.

One thing I was doing, but which was delayed by my hospitalizations and recuperation, was scanning my genealogy papers, saving them electronically in a retrievable manner, and getting rid of the paper files. This week I got back to that project, and over three days got rid of around 50 sheets. Some of those sheets were probate records from Massachusetts in the 1600s and 1700s that I had my son research years ago. The sheets are difficult to read, and I don’t really remember how some of the people fit into our family tree. I’ll have to transcribe the probate documents and figure out exactly who the people are (ancestors or relatives). That’s something I can do from the electronic files better than the paper files, because I can enlarge the e-docs and read them easier. But when will I ever take the time to do this additional step?

You know dis-accumulation cuts deeply if I’m getting rid of Carlyle books.

Another thing that we did in the storeroom was pull out our daughter’s old bedroom set, unused for at least 10 years, and little used for 20 years before that. We snapped some photos and I listed it for sale. Only one person showing interest so far.

With the bedroom set pulled out and on display, this allowed me to reorganize stuff. I moved an old entertainment center and restacked stuff around it. That allowed me to see what stuff we have, and gave me an idea of what we can get rid of soon with the greatest reduction in volume. Those would be the old VHS tapes.

Some of the things I’m going through are cutting deep. In a box of things I brought home from the office, I found my professional engineer seals. It took me a few minutes to make the decision to put them in the trash. The seals meant a lot to me when I was a practicing engineer, but that ended close to four years ago (retirement followed by two years on retainer. I also found a large roll of discarded engineering drawings that I salvaged with the intent of using the backs to draw big genealogy charts. But I now know that’s not going to happen, so the paper roll is moved to recycling staging. Last week I tossed twenty-five years of continuing education certificates and a couple of stacks of my old business cards. Next will be my many organization membership and annual licensing cards.

One big space keeper is my old stamp collection. After years of storing it in the storeroom, I’ve decided to get rid of it. I don’t know if it has any value these days. Does anyone still collect stamps? Are dealers out there and are they buying? Or is it possible to find a private collector?  So much work to do.

Downsizing, which requires dis-accumulation, has become more important now that I’ve had health issues. My recovery from heart surgery is going well (including three days a week in cardio-rehab), recovery from my last stroke less so. But clearly my health is not what it was a year ago. We’ve got to cut deeply into our possessions, got to. We are leaner than we were a year ago, and significantly leaner than we were four years ago. But we have much much more to do.

All this is quite wearying. Dealing with the genealogy papers is more wearying than anything. Each piece of paper I toss in the recycling basket feels like I’ve parted with something I should keep, something that someone among my descendants may want or benefit from someday. Ah, well, in the future the Internet will contain so many records and resources that my paltry files may have no value.

Tonight, after dealing with books for about an hour, I pulled two genealogy notebooks off the closet shelf and went through them. They were mostly forms for copying information on. I kept two of each kind of sheet and discarded the rest. I did keep any lined sheets without writing on the front or back (maybe 20 of them), as who knows what I could use them for someday.

books, home improvements, memories, miscellaneous

So Sick Of Books

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The legacy books on the built-in shelves in the living room.

No, not sick of reading. I’m in the midst of reading two different books, one print book and one e-books. Actually, it’s 3 books. There’s one other one out in the sunroom that I’ve almost given up on. Maybe I’ll read a little more in that. And, when I’m done with these two, or three, I’ll transition into two more. Wait, it’s four. There’s also the book I read in the mornings for devotions.

The books on the left are waiting for the buyer to pick them up. The books on the right are waiting for reshelving.

No, not sick of writing books. This last week I finished the first chapter in my next Bible study. I enjoyed doing it, though after almost two months of writing nothing due to my health problems. And the two months before that I was writing at reduced capacity due to the two freak injuries I had in mid-July. So I’m having to get re-used to taking a portion of my day for writing. And working through my fine motor skills for typing. Yes, re-learning the elements of being an author.

Keepers to go back on a shelf, or possibly to be revaluated, but right now adding to the decor in the dining room.

No, what I’m sick of about books is selling them. You see, in the interest of a future downsizing, which after this year of health problems is much closer than we though, we decided to make a big dent in the 2 or 3 thousand books in our house.

That includes what I’ve been calling my legacy books, or more properly termed heirloom books. These include a large number of books published in the 1800s. This has been a lot of work. Looking up the books at on-line sales sites, deciding on a price, placing an ad on Facebook Marketplace, fielding queries, scheduling buyers in, dealing with no-shows, etc. It’s a lot of work.

Books on the dining room table.

I could also say gathering books from various places in the house. We had many boxes of books on shelves in the basement storeroom. Lynda was the one to identify the boxes and carry them upstairs (since I wasn’t allowed to go on stairs after my operation). Our daughter, Sara, also helped carry books upstairs while she was here. The basement is now much cleared of books. Yet, the bookshelves in the basement living room still have lots of books. We have no shortage of building material.

Books on the garage worktable.

The garage worktable is covered by boxes of Christian novels, mainly for women. The dining room table is covered with boxes of misc. books, a cross between legacy and modern books. All those are for sale. Then we have boxes of books in the living room and dining room that Lynda hasn’t yet made the keep/get rid of decision. We also have a pile of books on the hearth, waiting for the buyer to pick up, and another, smaller pile near of books we have decided to keep but haven’t yet looked where to reshelve them.

Why not just give the books away, you ask? It may come to that, especially with the modern ones. But for the legacy books, it seems a shame to not first try to get something for them. Some of them have been in the family for 130 years—first on bookshelves of some kind in the houses David Sexton rented, later in boxes in the boxes in the basement of the house I grew up in in Cranston, Rhode Island, then finally on the bookshelves or in boxes in our house. All that storage and transporting deserves compensation, don’t you think?

At some point, the inventory will be small enough that donation will be more likely. Or the few that are left will be manageable to keep. We’ve already done that with children’s books, 400 of them donated to our church for a special event.

But at some point, I’ll be glad for the dining room table to be clear, the living room clear, and the garage clear of book boxes and loose books to be gone, either sold, donated, or re-shelved.

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, memories, Short Stories

New Story Published: To Laugh Again

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I had one more Danny Tompkins story to tell. Will this be the last.

Some time ago, such as in July 2018, the idea came to me for another story in the Danny Tompkins short story series. At least that’s the earliest I have about it on paper. I thought I was done with the series at six stories and then cobbling them together into a short book.

But the idea sat there from mid-2018 until November 2023. Having just finished two fairly major writing projects, I looked for something to fill in a couple of weeks until I was ready to start the next. This came to mind, so I hog-tied it and whipped it out in a week or so, either November or December 2023.

In January I ran the first few pages past my writing critique group, the Scribblers & Scribes. It was obvious from that that the story wasn’t working, wasn’t as clear as I wanted it to be. At another meeting I ran a few more pages by them with the same results. In between other writing, I pulled this story out a few times and made some fairly major changes. I sent it out to the critique group via e-mail and received some comments in return. It seemed that I had the right structure as the comments I received were about smaller things, such as better wording here and a little more detail there.

Last week, while waiting on my Bible study project to simmer a little, I brought Danny’s latest story out and made those final polishes based on comments or what seemed best to me. On Sunday last, I declared it done, or as done as I could make it. Here’s a link to it on Amazon.

I had some trouble writing the book description for the listing on Amazon. Here’s what I came up with.

Daniel Tompkins received word that his sister died, which triggers memories of a day, more than fifty years before, after his mother’s death. He faced a dilemma back then, a dilemma that stressed him out. The memory of what he went through as a 13-year-old helped him deal with his grief now.

So on Monday, after a routine dentist appointment, I got to work on publishing tasks. It all went surprisingly well, including making a simple cover, one that fits in with the rest of the series. Less than three hours after I uploaded it, it went live.

After that, I received some last minute critiques from my critique group (but I had sent it out to them kind of last minute), I made some edits—twice—and uploaded a revised version three times, the last time Wednesday evening. I received one even later critique that I started going through last night. I don’t know yet whether this will result in one last round of edits.

It feels good to get this done and published. I just wish I had better artistic skills and could make a better cover.

family, memories, miscellaneous, Stars and Stripes

Not Quite A Reunion

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Three posts ago, I wrote about a reunion I helped facilitate between my wife and an old friend, who was also an old friend of mine. Along the same vein, but different, was something that happened over the next few days. Let me set this up.

The man on the left is my dad, Norman Todd, somewhere in Europe during World War 2. Who are the other three?

I found the photo at the right in a box of photos at Dad’s house when he died. Dad is on the left. The other three men were mysteries. The photo was taken someplace in Europe. Once Dad was assigned to the Stars and Stripes, he was in Algiers (briefly), then Anzio beachhead, then up the boot of Italy with the mobile publishing unit, then southern France in three different places. Readers of this blog have heard all this before, at posts at this link.

I wondered who the other three men in the photo were. Most likely they were Stars and Stripes staffers, but who? And was there any way to find out?

Perhaps the most famous part of the S&S staff was cartoonist Bill Mauldin. Dad was at the same location Bill was on V-E Day (May 8, 1945), but how long they served together and in what locations was a mystery. Dad told me that Bill sometimes had him model for some of the Willie & Joe “Up-Front” cartoons.

I wonder if Dad modeled for any of these Bill Mauldin cartoons.

Bill is so famous that from time to time a post about him shows up in my Facebook newsfeed. I always comment on them about Dad’s connection to Bill, hoping someone will respond. Not that I think any of the men in the photo are still alive (unlikely) but hoping that someone would say something to me that might help me either identify the men in the photo or hear something that might bear on Dad’s war service.

One of those posts came up this week. A post by Grand Comics Database, showing a Bill Mauldin cartoon of Willie and Joe, the two sad-sack soldiers featured in his “Up Front” cartoon series. A number of people posted to it, and I added this comment:

My dad was a typesetter for the “Stars and Stripes”, in N. Africa, Italy, and So. France. He knew Bill Mauldin and was friends with him. Dad told me Mauldin often had him pose for the cartoons.

One woman answered with the following comment:

Your dad must have been in the same group as my dad, same countries, same background. Bill Maudlin drew this picture of my Dad on an index card, in pencil.

She added the cartoon.

I then took this to Messenger and sent her four photos of Dad with other men, including the one above. There was a delay of some hours, when she messaged back:

The man on the right third pic…is my Dad! what a shock to see him in your pictures. It is a small world.

later adding:

just could not believe I was looking at my dad’s picture, when you sent that one. I only had a few of him during the service and unfortunately he passed when I was only 13, so not enough years to know too much about the war….

His name is Fred R. Unwin. Born in London, he made his way to America (part of the story I still need to learn) and was indeed with the S&S in Europe. After the war he stayed in printing (as Dad did), as a pressman and later a supervisor, in Chicago and Phoenix. I’ll get some more info about him as our conversations continue.

Robyn sent me some photos of her dad, and I said to Robyn:

So, shall we call ourselves Stars and Stripes cousins?

She, of course, said yes. Thus now we are cousins.

When I made that post, I had hopes but no expectations that anything would come of it. But two men in the photo are now identified, Norman Todd on the left, Fred Unwin on the right. Will the two men in the middle ever be identified? Possibly not, but I feel good about having one more known, against the likely odds.

memories, miscellaneous

47 Years Later…

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Juanelle and Lynda. First time they’ve seen each other in 47 years.

We came to Branson, Missouri for a combination of writer’s conference and time away from home. We’re staying in our timeshare. Internet has been spotty, which is why I didn’t write a post yesterday or today. I may have to find a Dunkin’ and use their internet. Right how, as I’m writing, we seem to have a strong signal. Just as well, because as a result I have a different post to make.

Another part of the trip was a meet up I arranged between my wife, Lynda, and a long-lost friend, Juanelle. They were best friends in Kansas City before I met either of them. Both RNs, they worked together as teachers in the Research Hospital school of nursing. They ate lunch together, hung out, and had much in common. Juanelle attended Kansas City First Church of the Nazarene at the time, Lynda attended Rainbow Blvd. Church of the Nazarene.

Lynda and Juanelle on our wedding day.

It was at First Church that I first met…Juanelle, not Lynda, in a singles Sunday School class. About eight months later, I met Lynda, at a national singles retreat held by our denomination. Image, we lived five miles from each other and we had to go to Glorieta NM to meet.  We hit it off, and were married in January 1976. Lynda asked Juanelle to be her maid of honor. Here’s a photo of them on our wedding day. It was not too long after that that Juanelle moved from KC to California, and we didn’t see her and somehow didn’t get her address.

Fast forward to the 1990s. Through one of Lynda’s cousins visiting Juanelle’s church, we reconnected. Then we moved and she moved and we lost connection. Then I did some internet sleuthing and found out her contact information. Juanelle’s husband had just died. I wrote her a letter on behalf of Lynda and me. Some time went by before we received a letter from Juanelle in the mail. She had just moved from California to Springfield, Missouri to be closer to family. Springfield, I thought. Why, that’s just a two-hour drive from us!

Lynda and Juanelle in deep conversation while the rest of us talked among ourselves.

To shorten this story, I finally arranged a meeting with Juanelle. She came to Branson with her brother and sister-in-law, and we had a long lunch and getting reacquainted time. Three hours went by very quickly. I figure it was just over 47 years since Juanelle moved, after which until today we never saw her.

Here’s to meet ups with long lost friends. May we meet up again at least a few times before the great reunion in heaven.

family, holidays, memories, miscellaneous

An Odd Delivery

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Grandfather Todd’s trunk. Came from Yorkshire to NYC in 1910, to Providence in 1912, to East Providence around 1914, back to Providence around 1945, to Cranston in 1950, to NW Arkansas in 1997, and to Myrtle Beach in 2023.

One of the consequences of being in West Texas on a long-ish (more than two weeks) grandparent duty is that I wasn’t home to handle one very important item, scheduled since January. This relates to decluttering and dis-accumulation in advance of a downsizing some day, specifically to the Stars and Stripes that I’ve written about before.

For decades it held wartime copies of the “Stars and Stripes”, but they are now gone.

Not really about the newspapers, but the trunk they were stored in. This is an old steamer trunk that was one of three trunks that sat in the basement of my parents’ house for decades. As a kid growing up, I never knew the origin of those trunks nor what they were storing.

Someone who knows trunks could probably figure out more about it, such as year of manufacture and value.

On one trip back to Rhode Island, in 1990, Dad and I talked about his war service setting type for the S&S. We went to the basement and Dad showed me all those newspapers he’d sent home from Europe, which his parents kept and put in the trunk.

When Dad died in 1997, I took the trunk back to Arkansas and there it sat, either in my garage or basement, until a few days ago. Last year I removed the contents and shipped them to the University of Rhode Island Library as a donation, keeping a handful of copies as keepsakes.

That left the empty trunk. It was a steamer trunk, nothing fancy. On one end “OT” was painted. I assume, therefore, that this belonged to my grandfather, my dad’s dad, Oscar Todd. He emigrated from Yorkshire, England, to the USA in 1910 at the age of 20. He was in New York City for a couple of years, then made his way to Rhode Island. There he worked, married, and raised a family.

The “OT” painted on the outside is the only real clue I have about the origin, and the reason I believe it belonged to my grandfather, Oscar Todd, and was probably the trunk he brought with him from England to the USA.

I assume that this trunk was the one he brought from England in 1910. I’m sure there’s a way to research it and determine its age and origin. But I’m convinced that’s what it is: my grandfather’s trunk. He kept it, and when those newspapers came in wartime mail, it became a good place to store them.

From 1910 to around 1950, the trunk was wherever Oscar was, in NYC, the Riverside district of East Providence, and Providence. From 1950 to 1997, it was in the basement of Dad’s house in Cranston. From 1997 to 2023, it was with me in two different houses. While not overly large, it just doesn’t fit in with the concept of dis-accumulation. So when I decided to donate the S&S, I decided to get rid of the trunk.

Neither of my children wanted it. I don’t fault them for that. The trunk would take a fair amount of restoration to be a display item. The heirloom value would only be to someone who knew Oscar, and he died before they were born. I thought of others in the family who might want it, and decided on a cousin’s son, Frank Reed. He and his wife have six children, Frank knew Oscar, his great-grandfather, briefly and remembers him, so that seemed the next logical place for it to go.

The problem is, Frank recently removed from New Jersey to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. How to get the trunk to him? Shipping was a possibility, though expensive. So in January I put out a call on Facebook for anyone making a road trip there who would be willing to take the trunk. Amazingly, a woman responded saying she would be going to the North Carolina Outer Banks and could drive the trunk as far as Raliegh-Durham Airport. Could my cousin meet her there? He said yes, and arrangements were made for the trunk transfer at a certain time on May 9.

But then, grandparent duties took me away from home at the time we would have to get the trunk to the woman who was driving it east. She contacted me; I was in Texas, not planning to be home before May 7, when the trunk needed to go to her.

Our neighbors had a key to our house to water the plants. I contacted them and they were happy to help out. The first transfer, from our house to our neighbors, happened on the 6th. The second transfer, from our neighbor’s to Kimberly’s van, happened on the 7th. The third transfer, from Kimberly to Frank’s son’s car (he went to pick it up), happened in the cell phone lot at Raleigh-Durham Airport on the 9th, and the drive to Myrtle Beach the day.

So much work to get a simple trunk halfway across country. But it happened. Now Frank and his family can decide how best to display and enjoy this family heirloom, either as-is or with restoration.

Dis-accumulation continues. Next, Uncle Dave’s 1900 Encyclopedia Brittanica.

 

letters, memories

Letters Between Friends

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Corrected, redacted, and now available as an e-book. And as a paperback, though that’s quite expensive.

My latest book, Letters Between Friends, is different. It is a collection of letters, mostly sent as e-mails, between Gary Boden and me. We met in high school, most likely when we were both on the track team. Our real friendship began in college, however, and continued on into adulthood. We had many common interests, including track, boy scouts, political views, and summers spent on Point Judith Pond in Rhode Island, our houses visible to each other less than a mile away but a five mile drive to get from one to the other.

The idea for this book came to me shortly after Gary died in July 2020 (not from covid). I took a little time to pull up all e-mails he and I had shared through the years, all of which I had saved. I found it to be a rich exchange of ideas, happenings, and on occasion foolishness.

The idea came to me to pull these together into a book to present to Gary’s widow and daughter. I didn’t know if Gary saved e-mails the way I did. I thought that would be a nice gesture, a lasting memorial to Gary and to the friendship we shared. While I exchanged e-mails and sometimes snail mail with a few other friends, they amounted to a tiny fraction of the amount Gary and I shared.

I asked Gary’s daughter about what e-mails he kept, which turned out to be fewer than what I had. I’m not sure mine are a comprehensive record. In fact, I have only one letter before 2007, one that Gary sent with a Christmas card in 1993. I had an e-mail program I used before 2007, but alas, those letters are lost into the ether.

The letters in the book include some from a few other besides Gary. In those years when I made trips to Rhode Island, four of us would try to get together. The e-mails usually flew between us as we tried to coordinate our schedules. Then, after my visit, we kept up the multi-person exchange for a while. All but one of those correspondents were fellow 1970 graduates of Cranston High School East.

These letters are not works of art. They are what would be called “familiar letters”, not artistic letters. They capture normal thoughts and communications. For me, those are the letters I tend to like to read best. I left in all the typos so as to reflect what we read at the time they were sent. Here’s an example, showing excerpts from letters we exchanged on 17 November 2008, a day Gary and I celebrated as National Boise Idaho Potatoe Day (don’t ask why):

David to Gary: I begin my work day, at least the pre-hours, by wishing you felicitations on this glorious day. I’m afraid the adherants [sic] to what should be a national holiday are slowly dwindling in number. Is it more than 2? Or has it always been just 2?

Thanks for coming by and reading my blog….

Gary to David: May you also have a grand and glorious NBIPD.

It’s always been only two.

I don’t know how you keep up the volume of writing you do and have time for anything else. Maybe it’s that engineering training and a billable hours mindset that makes you efficient. It’s fun to check in on your blog and I’m curious about a lot of things so your topics naturally raise some questions for me.

I had planned to have the book ready to go in time to take it to Rhode Island in August 2022. Unfortunately, I had to cancel my trip there. So I completed the book and shipped it. I published it on Amazon so that a few friends could buy copies. My plans were to pull the book down after everyone had made their purchases. However, one of the correspondents thought it was so great, he posted it on Facebook for the world to see. I quickly asked him to take it down, explaining that I hadn’t sought permission of the copyright owners for publishing their letters to a broad audience. He removed it. Another correspondent in the book said he, too, thought I ought to let the book be known to the world.

So I went through the process of obtaining the permissions needed. Two correspondents asked for a handful of redactions, which I made. I saw two redactions that should happen as well as a half-dozen typos to correct, and I did those. Then I reformatted the book for print, and developed an e-book. I uploaded the new files on Saturday, March 18. Amazon approved them the same day. The book had remained for sale all the time while the permissions process was progressing.

Now, Letters Between Friends is out for purchase by the general public. Letter collections are not very interesting to most people, so I don’t expect this to be a best-seller. In fact, I would be shocked if it sold more than 10 copies. But it’s out there, for whatever good it will do. It is available at Amazon should you want a copy.

A tribute to a friendship cut short.

books, memories, miscellaneous

Library Memories – Part 5: Later Adult Years

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This post continues in the series of my memories of times in libraries Earlier posts are: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

After moving to northwest Arkansas, with our children a little older, with a house that had space to accumulate books, with the school libraries apparently adequate, we spent less family time at the Bentonville library. However, from 1991 to 2000, my office in downtown Bentonville was across the street from the Bentonville Public Library. I went there frequently during lunch hours, even sometimes on breaks. Once in a great while, I would go there with some of my company work and find peace and quiet, away from the telephone and people, and get some real work done.

I don’t have memories of particular books or discoveries from this library. One thing I did was look at investment publications, particularly Value Line. You couldn’t check that out, so I would sit and read it over several days. Was it time well spent? I’d like to think so. The things I learned about stocks, for investment and trading, provided a foundation for how I use the stock market now for supplemental income.

The Bentonville Library built a new building at the edges of downtown, and our company moved way away from downtown. I used the Bentonville library less. In the last ten years, it has been more of a meeting place. I used to meet with our pastor there for coffee and conversation. I donated a number of my books to this library for their local authors section.

Nowadays, my library forays are to the Bella Vista Public Library. While I sometimes browse and find a book to check out, it’s more a place for organizations I belong to to hold meetings. My critique group, Scribblers & Scribes, meets there one afternoon a month. Another group, Northwest Arkansas Letter Writers Society, meets there one afternoon a month. And another writers group, Village Lakes Writers and Poets, does the same. So I’m in this library typically three or four times a month. A recent expansion makes it much more functional.

If it weren’t for the 2000 or so books in our house, which I’m trying to sort through and read those I don’t think I will ever read, or read again, I would get more books from the library. I actually checked one out last week. But that was at the Big Spring, Texas, Public Library. It was a biography of C.S Lewis. I had only a few days to read it, and couldn’t get through all the 300 pages in that time, not with the babysitting and pet sitting duties to read a whole lot. I read a number of sections, determined it’s a book I’d like to read in full, and returned it to the library on the way out of town. I’ll see if they have it in Bella Vista, or if I can get it on interlibrary loan.

This will be the end of this series. I conclude by saying: Long live the public library!

books, Magazines, memories

Library Memories Part 4: Asheboro, NC

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This post continues in the series of my memories of times in libraries Earlier posts are: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

I learned a lot from reading Congressional Quarterly in the library.

In 1984, after returning to the USA from Saudi Arabia, we settled in Asheboro, North Carolina, instead of Kansas City. Asheboro, the seat of Randolph County and then was a city of less than 30,000 people, stretched out along a highway. In the downtown district was a very nice library.

Our children were 5 and 3 when we moved there, and many times in our four years in Asheboro did we take them to the library. That meant a lot of time spent in the children’s section. I think the number of visits increased as they became young elementary school students.

But it was in the adult section that I made two discoveries in this library. They weren’t, perhaps, quite as mind-opening as the atlas of the universe in Dhahran, but they led to other things.

The first was the magazine Congressional Quarterly. I had never heard of it before. It is (was; the name and format of the magazine may have since been changed) a reporting of Congress’s actions, and other things related to our national government. It may have been a weekly magazine then. For sure it was at least monthly, not quarterly as the name suggests.

While the kids were engrossed in their books, I would sit with CG and read for hours. Well, we didn’t really stay in the library for hours, but I could have. How interesting I found this publication. It seemed to me to be balanced politically, neither pro-Democrat nor pro-Republican. I learned much from its unadorned pages.

Dad at the truck-mounted mobile unit of the “Stars and Stripes”, putting out the Combat Edition in Italy.

The second discovery was a large book—coffee table book size—about the Stars and Stripes military newspapers. Readers of this blog will know that my dad set type for the Stars and Stripes in Europe during World War 2. Yet, we kids didn’t know that in the basement was a steamer trunk full of those S&S, sent home during the war and preserved by my grandparents then passed on to Dad.

So, I found this book of the S&S, which consisted of copies of the newspapers along with narrative about the newspaper. I skimmed it in the library and was fascinated by it. When we were preparing to drive to Rhode Island one year for a holiday, probably Thanksgiving, I checked the book out and brought it with me. Dad looked at it with less interest than I expected. But we had a good conversation about the S&S. Dad was glad that one of his children took more than a passing interest in what had been most of his war service.

That was in 1985 or 86. Fast forward to Fall 1990. Kuwait was now behind us, I was spending a couple of weeks a month in Boston working a temporary job while the family stayed in NC. On weekends, I drove to R.I. to spend time with Dad. Somehow in our conversation the S&S came up. He said, “Come with me. I want to show you something.” He led the way downstairs and showed me the trunk with the newspapers. He said, “When I croak, these are yours.”

Dad died in 1997. Lynda and I drove from Arkansas to Rhode Island for the funeral. One reason for driving instead of flying was to be able to take the S&S back with us.

So, my obtaining the Stars and Stripes from Cranston RI came about probably because of time in a library in Asheboro NC. Like I said, perhaps this isn’t an earth-shattering memory, but it fits with my current theme. Thank God for libraries.

books, memories

Library Memories Part 3: Early Adulthood Discoveries

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Continuing with my library memories series. This post will likely be shorter than the last two. See them here and here.

This was a good library find, probably in 1976 or 1977.

A long, long time ago, back in the second half of the 1970s decade, I first discovered the joys of library use for other than school stuff. Lynda and I bought a home in Mission, Kansas in 1976. Early in career, early in marriage, there wasn’t much budget yet for buying books. So we found the nearest public library, and checked books out there.

Two particular books that I got at that library stand out in my mind, even after all these years. The first was The Origen by Irving Stone. This is a biographical novel about Charles Darwin. Stone has done many of these, and I’ve since read a couple of others. This was my first introduction to Stone and to the concept of the biographical novel.

I didn’t know a lot about Darwin at that time, either, other than what I learned in science classes, that he had put together the theory of evolution and that he was English. The novel treated Darwin very fairly, I thought. He was a sympathetic character, and I learned much about him from that. I came away with a favorable opinion of him. I’ve since read Origin of Species, and reviewed it on this blog. I’m currently reading the first volume of Darwin’s letters, although I’m still in the lengthy biographical preliminaries. Hopefully I’ll be in the letters themselves in a day or two.

The second book was a genealogy book on Lynda’s family, The Cheney Genealogy. This was published in 1898, and I believe I got it via interlibrary loan rather than it being a book at our local library. At that time, I was having conversations with Lynda’s dad and paternal grandparents about genealogy, and just beginning what would become a serious effort to trace family history.

In that book, I found much information that appeared to be relevant to her family, though with a missing link that prevented me from making a firm connection to the original Cheney ancestor, John Cheney of Newbury, Massachusetts. Years later, in the internet era, I was able to build upon The Cheney Genealogy and make the connection. But it all started with my local library and the book I accessed through it.

23 Feb: Editing to add: One other book I found at that library was Rees Howells: Intercessor. This told the story of Rees Howells, a Welshman who was in the USA at the time of the Welsh revival around 1903. He went home, was converted himself, and began working in Christian ministries, including a Welsh bible college. He became known for his praying. The book tells about times of intense prayer in his personal life, in ministries, and in the life of the British nation during World War 2. The story of Howells has stayed with me, and in later years I picked up a copy of his biography for my personal library. Another good find at the Shawnee Mission Public Library.

Well, these are not profound memories, but they fit in this series, so here they are. Look for more going forward.