PLEDGES, PROMISES, AND THE NUMBER 101 by CLIFFORD DOBYNS In 1938 I was 6 years old and learned in the first grade how to say the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag. This activity would be hard to find today. At 7 years old I got a bicycle for Christmas and joined the town’s only […]
*Note: This is an exact Transcription from Historic Houses of New Jersey By Weymer Jay Mills .J. B. Lippincott Company – written in 1902 The Burrowes Mansion, still standing in the picturesque village of Matawan, New Jersey, — noted for its old trees, old churches, and old dwellings,—is very much like the former Mount Pleasant Hall […]
The Wall – Coping with Grief by Dorothy Graham Gast The early morning sunlight burned through my swollen eyelids as I struggled to hold on to the last remnants of sleep. The funeral had been Saturday, and family members were home and back to their normal pursuits. O. J. was gone. The long months fighting […]
SMILE AWHILE by Clifford Dobyns A man had stopped his car and was on his knees crying beside the road. A woman saw him and ran up to him and asked “What is so terribly wrong”. The man said “I tried to miss this rabbit but I hit it and I think I have killed it”. The woman […]
The stores of downtown Circleville, Ohio have probably changed many times over the years. The photographs below show Main and Court Street businesses in 1938 when taken by photographer Ben Shahn. Grand clock This is a grand clock outside the entrance of Butch Jewelers. L. P. Butch Jewelers was established by L. C. Butch, on […]
First Fourth of July Unlike today, the first July 4, 1776 was a quiet and solemn day in Philadelphia. Pleasant morning in 1776 Thomas Jefferson even noted in his account book that at 6 a.m., July 4, 1776, “it was a ‘pleasant morning.” He also included the price of a doll for his daughter and […]
Alabama contributing Author, Joyce Ray Wheeler, shares a personal July 4th in Kentucky that turned out quite differently than expected. JULY 4TH FIREWORKS By Joyce Ray Wheeler (b. January 4, 1926- d. November 1, 2012) A tragedy for our tiny Kentucky town occurred at midnight on July 4, 1941, when I was fifteen years old. […]
Those old small refrigerators didn’t hold much as Alabama Author, Inez McCollum depicts in this story. OPEN REFRIGERATOR EMBARRASSMENT BY INEZ MCCOLLUM A recent program of Anthony Bourdain told of his visiting an American-Okinawan while in Okinawa. The young man had returned with his mom to Okinawa at age 9. While in America, his Mother […]
The Dust Bowl, also known as the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the US and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. The migrants moved from terrible living conditions back home to not much better living conditions in California. The photographs below were taken by […]
During the 17th century, much of the land in Tidewater Maryland was patented in huge tracts to the first settlers. The acreage of these often being more than one family could farm, they were divided into smaller tracts during the 18th century. On these parcels, the colonial planters built their homes, usually dwellings of frame […]
