Tuesday, August 12, 2008

A Home For Old Yearbooks

“Bring us your old yearbook.”

Seriously?

“Seriously!” Apparently they make a nice local resource for historians. I was having this conversation with one of the volunteers at the Howard County Historical Society library in Ellicott City a few weeks ago. I had dropped by to do a little research on another post that I am working on. They were super helpful and pleasant.

When he mentioned the yearbook thing, I immediately knew exactly where my copy of the 1972-1973 edition of The Glass Hour was. As it happens, we had recently built a new bookcase in my home office. In the process of selecting which books would stay and and which ones would be relegated to the donation box bound for the library, I uncovered my Wilde Lake High School yearbook. It has survived numerous moves over the years, some of which was spent in musty basement storage bins. It has a certain smell now. I guess it kind of smells like history.

Anyway, the conversation with the guy at the Historical Society (I am afraid I have forgotten his name) resulted in my retrieving the old book for another look. It had been awhile since I had last paged through it. One of the pages that caught my eye was this one. It lists the speakers that tried to enlighten us during our senior year. In a way it captures what the vibe was in Columbia back then.

Of course the question is now can I part with my old yearbook? I mean we’ve come so far already, how could I let it go now? Then again, this is kind of like sending it off to an assisted living facility.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

As I hit my 15th year out of high school, I still display all four of my high school yearbooks in my living room in addition to my senior year college yearbook. I still flip through it once in a while when I hear about soemone from high school or college in the news.

Anonymous said...

Wow, you people are old.