When I was in school (long, long ago) we were sometimes
assigned a scrapbook project. I can remember doing one on Venezuela that
included an essay on Simon Bolivar, agriculture, industry, history, maps, etc.
with any illustrations I could find. (Wretched old textbooks and National
Geographics from the thrift shops often helped with such projects.) Another was
on Abraham Lincoln (I can still feel the coarseness of the construction paper –
brown – that comprised the pages of that album. It was old paper, and had a
distinctive dusty odor, too.)
Many young friends kept scrapbooks of movie stars,
horses, cats, animals in general, the Dionne Quintuplets, Shirley Temple,
flowers, and other subjects. Boys tended toward subjects such as aviation,
radio, sports, heroes (Charles Lindberg, boxing champs) cars, comic strips, and
other “manly” matters. I think my first unprompted
effort was on science, but then, I was always a weird child.
Adults collected recipes, albums of family travels with
photos and souvenir ephemera, records of military service or occupations. Mothers
kept scrapbooks on their children’s progress through childhood. College
students kept a record of the years in school, with photos, programs for plays
and dances and sporting events; clippings, grades, class schedules, lectures,
and other souvenirs. I once acquired a pre-WWI album compiled by a student at a
vocational college in our state who was studying pharmacy. After much research
and a visit to the pharmacy school archivist, we determined that the album
maker was in the first graduating class of the pharmacy school and became the
first instructor under the dean. A lot more was discovered about his career,
including the fact that I had no doubt dealt with him numerous times in a local
pharmacy years earlier. Since the school was celebrating its centenary, the
album found a home in its archives.
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