It Ain't No Fish Wrapper

Old Trunks mentioned baseball stats from little league recently. That made me think of something. Who of us have old books with clues in them. As mentioned in a very early post, The Opseth family Bible with the names of the children and their birth dates and the death dates filled in by someone else. Who do you believe when the dates in the book don't match the dates in the Bible? Do you have an old family Bible? Have you recently learned it wound up in a museum? Do you think you can get it back?

What about books that do not have that sort of significance, that is birth names and dates? What would one surmise if one picked up the book with the baseball stats? Let's use Jaeme for an example. She knows she has a grandmother in Fargo, ND and has heard stories. What would detect, without telling her who the book belonged to?

For the sake of mystery, Old Trunks has scanned a few pages to help you get the feel for just what this journal contained. For those of you doing genealogy, look for a date. Perhaps there is a hand writing analysis in the offing; was this journal written hurriedly? Formulate questions which you can use across the board. Collect those hand written letters and see if there is a trait that follows through all of them. Perhaps you are considering an analysis of your own precious papers.

Gold: Let's hope that Jaeme asks her mother what those funny numbers are and why are Bud, Ryen, and her mother and grandfather mentioned?

Pink: What does it mean base of toe, forcefully?

Green: What are all those funny numbers and why is 1,000 circled?

Blue: We have a date! Look for who, when, where, how.

For the owner, one page was significant. There were comments that mother's write and are forgotten. Now, relived twenty five years later or greater. Like: Bud used blood pressure machine as an electronic toy. OR Ryen saying, "Take picture of me on hide", (meaning stuffed animal), OR referring to Rachel, "We are just out of the city and Rachel is reading her new book".

For those of you who journalize on vacations, I admire you and know that in time, the comments like, "we kept Ryen in the tent last night by using safety pins to pin the zippers down" will be fun to remember.

What is fodder to one is a feast to another. My children will remember that 7x7 orange tent that shook like a rag in the rainstorms while camping. They will remember the fiberglass poles with finger nail polished pieces so we knew three rings meant those pieces go to gether and so forth.

But this is about old books, orphan papers in old books, boxes of letters, and Bibles. Camping is an essay in itself!

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