An Obsession with Old Books

I have an obsession with old books. An exchange I had with a couple visiting the museum this past December taught me that perhaps not everyone who is a lover of history also shares my strange interest in antiquated literature. The couple was looking at a 19th century book about the history of the exploration of Africa that once belonged to my supervisor's grandfather. As they were looking it over, I mentioned that, while I had only read the first 25 pages or so of the book, it was an interesting read. The woman looked at me and replied, "Not really." Wait, what?! How could someone who seemed so knowledgeable about history find an old history text so dull?

Perhaps my fascination comes from the nostalgia of utilizing the public and school libraries as a kid. The town library used to be housed in a section of a strip mall with a Tom Thumb gas station on one end, which I vaguely remember from when I was quite young. The town built a larger library just southwest of downtown when I was in middle school. The school library of my Catholic elementary school was located in an adjacent building which formerly housed the nuns who at one time ran the school. Library day was a fun day because we had numbered, colored painting sticks to help keep the place on the shelf while we looked for books, the card catalog was the best way to learn the Dewey Decimal System, and most of the books I read as I got older had that old book smell. An added bonus was that you got to see who in your class checked out the book before you under the old system. The only downside was that we had to go outside to get to the library, and we never used coats in the middle of winter to cross the "frozen tundra" as we called it. "Oh, it's twelve below zero outside? Psht, who needs to wear a jacket?" Minnesotans are tough (or stupid) like that. As a kid, I had an interest in Nancy Drew for the longest time while the rest of my class was reading either The Boxcar Children or The Babysitters Club (I read a few of those but never really got into them.), and I can distinctly remember listening to the school librarian read the book Redwall to my class, which then became my favorite book series in middle school.

Perchance my fascination comes from memories of sitting upstairs in my grandmother's farmhouse reading the old books that used to belong to the old country schoolhouse that my mother, aunts, and uncles attended as children. Since my grandfather was on the school board and the school sat on his property, I think he acquired quite a bit of the old texts when rural and town schools in the area were consolidated. I used to sit in that little room upstairs and read for hours from the antiquated school textbooks, Dick and Jane style readers, and Betsy-Tacy. There was not much room to sit on the floor, and when I got tired of the floor, sometimes, for a more comfortable place to sit, I would sit on the indoor toilet (lid on of course) that my grandfather had made for use instead of having to use the outhouse in the middle of the night.

Either way, I have a fondness for old books that perhaps only a few would understand. My imagination runs away with me each time I pick up an old book. Who was the previous owner? What did the book first look like when it was brand new? Was it given as a gift or was it a personal purchase? When and where was it read? It is something that certainly reminds me of the insignificance of my life as compared to the history of humanity, and it is a very humbling feeling.

Over the years I have purchased a few 19th century school textbooks for use in the one room schoolhouse at the museum. I received a few more in the mail towards the end of December (Thank you, eBay!), and I am always amused when books that I have purchased have an inscription on the first page. Sometimes it can be a few words, but sometimes it is just a name. I imagine that person writing in that book so many years ago, and it makes me wonder about him or her and what his or her life was like.

"Sigmund Drechsler" as found in Schillers Werke. Vierter Band., 1867

"Louis Rhoades 1874" as found in Wilson's Larger Speller, 1864.

"Della Buchanan's Book, bought Nov 8th A.D. 1881" as found in McGuffey's New Fourth Eclectic Reader, 1866.

"Charles Bunting. 1229 Ky. St. Quincy Ill. owner." as found in Deutsches Zweites Lesebuch Für amerikanishe
Schulen, 1886. The left-hand side is "Charles Bunting" written in the German style script of the time.

"Mary E. Young, Danville, Illinois, U.S.A. - Regards of Stm. [sp?] L. Dec. 1890." as found in Deutsches Drittes
Lesebuch Für amerikanishe Schulen, 1886. It was very common to abbreviate names in the 19th century.

When we finally buy a house, my husband and I are in agreement that we need a library of sorts, so I tend to not get rid of very many books that have been purchased over the years. The only downside of having so many books is finding a place to store them in the meantime. Oh, and moving them every time we find a new place to live. Those boxes are usually the heaviest. But one thing is for certain: my obsession with old books will certainly add some extra character to our future home library.

Family Celebrations

My family is a large family, and I love that there are so many of us. It makes family gatherings quite entertaining because there are so many people to catch up with, and we all have such distinct personalities. We can easily fill a room, and the noise level, depending on the side of the family, can make it difficult to hear oneself think. I would not change any of this.

That being said, I found my family bridal shower to be awkward and intimidating, not because of who was in the room but because of how many were in the room. Counting aunts, cousins, and cousins-once-removed to invite to bridal showers easily adds up to about 75 people. While it is rare to have every one of these ladies able to be at an event like a family bridal shower, it is not uncommon to have about 30 to 40 able to attend. As someone who is uncomfortable in most social situations, I found being the center of all this attention rather nerve-wracking.

I am not sure if my sister felt the same way back in September when I threw her a bridal shower to celebrate her future nuptials with our family, but she seemed to have more composure than I did. For that, I was slightly jealous.

I have been to quite a few bridal showers in which guests have to play games centered around how well one knows the bride. In a family as large as ours, it can be quite impossible to know a cousin or niece as well as the questions of those games ask. So, I asked myself why not flip that concept around?

Thus, a bridal shower theme developed around favorite things. I tried to pick out my sister's favorite foods to serve to our guests. I included a recipe card with the invitations for guests to fill out a favorite recipe to share with my sister, and I encouraged them to consider including a spice listed in the recipe as part of their bridal shower gift. I should not have been surprised, but it was amazing to see such a big response to this gesture.

When it came time for a few games, we played Guess the Age of the Bride. This seemed like a game that would have an equal playing field, and it certainly proved challenging for many. I picked out ten photos of my sister from birth on up, numbered them randomly, and had the women attendees write down my sister's age next to the corresponding photo number on a worksheet. Considering my sister was asked what grade she was going into a few months before her wedding, not many people guessed very many of the ages correctly. It was highly entertaining.

We ran out of good table space, but this cart worked out well for staging the first game.

The best game by far, though, had to have been Last Purse Standing. The whole purpose of this game was to reward the woman who had the most junk stuffed into her purse. My mother and I complied a lengthy list thinking we might need it, but we only got to about the fifteenth item on our list. It was a fitting game in honor of my sister as she nearly gave me a huge welt one time when we were in high school after she had whacked me with her purse. When I screamed out in agony and asked her what she had in her purse, she pulled out a padlock, a golf ball, and quite a few other very random items. For the game, ladies had to produce the item and hold it up for everyone to see. I have never seen so many women digging through purses so frantically before. It was amusing for me to administer, and judging from the laughter and smiles from our family and friends, it was an exhilarating game for them.

I was able to snap one picture at the beginning of the game Last Purse Standing before my camera died.

In keeping with a favorite theme, I gave out prizes to the winners of the games we played. Each of these gift bags was filled with either some of my sister's current favorite things or something she really liked as a child. There was a gift bag full of bath items that included my sister's favorite body cleanser, Neutrogena grapefruit scented body wash. Another gift bag included Leinenkugel's Honey Weiss beer with honey roasted peanuts, the only kind of peanut she would ever eat as a child. A third gift bag was filled with some Minnesota Twins drink-ware items.

The most expensive gift bag contained the movie Gone With the Wind along with some of her favorite candies like Reese's Pieces and Skittles. The Reese's Pieces was a current favorite, but the Skittles had a fun story from when she was small and constantly running around school during our brothers' basketball games with the rainbow colored candy. One of the priests at the Catholic school we attended always asked if she would share some Skittles with him when he stopped in to watch the games. Sometimes she would say yes, and sometimes she would say no. Then one time when our family brought the gifts up to the altar during Sunday mass, this same priest said to my sister, "Gee, Katie, I thought you were going to bring me some Skittles." Needless to say, everyone got a good chuckle out of that.

However, the most entertaining bag had to have been the one filled with coffee and powdered sugar mini-donuts. My sister refused to eat any other kind of doughnut as a kid after Sunday mass on fellowship days. My parents have stories about how she would bring the doughnuts, wrapped in napkins, home with her, and she would get powdered sugar everywhere in the car. I remember sometimes finding half-eaten doughnuts nearly a week later, still wrapped in its napkin somewhere around the house.

When it came time to open her gifts, my sister was certainly blessed by some very generous family members. I am always amazed at how giving people can be in our family. That is probably what makes families so great. We share joys and sorrows with each other, and we are a support network. Whether it is starting a new family or beginning a new marriage, families can be the best kind of encouragement.

A Bridal Shower Built for Two

I really cannot claim credit for this adorable couples shower some of my sister's friends threw, but I can say I offered assistance with the coordinating. The concept of a couples shower is something my husband would have really appreciated back when we were engaged. It would have been a great solution to the taunting he gave me after I came home from my bridal shower with some very generous gifts from my family.

"How come grooms don't get showers?" he often teased.

At the time, I told him there was nothing keeping him from having a shower, but he went on about how shower presents were all women's stuff anyway. (Who eats the meals made using said women's stuff, by the way?)

In reality, grooms can be a part of the pre-wedding celebrations just as much as the brides. This couples shower was simple and low-key, but it was also rather entertaining. A little food, a little music, a little alcohol and you have yourself a shindig. The ladies who did most of the planning came up with a great theme too: music.

Thank heavens for preschool teachers! They have tons of cute ideas, not to mention decorations.

My sister and her fiance first met when he was running karaoke at a nearby bar and grill. It was love at first song. Well, sort of. It took awhile before they actually started dating. Her fiance really loves music, though. So, the ladies thought it would be fun to make a bridal, err... couples shower, revolving around love songs.

Don't forget dessert!

A little music-themed Jeopardy, anyone?

The wall decorations were rather clever. Miss Heather had a few cute decor items she borrowed from her preschool classroom supplies. Miss Michelle helped cut out the music notes and hang them on the walls. The ladies made records to hang from black paper plates with a piece of construction paper made to look like an album label.

The records were actually used as labels for the food items. Each item had a designated song:

DYI Sandwich Station - "Any Way You Want It" by Journey

Cheese Tray - "Big Cheese" by Nirvana

Veggie Tray - "Vegetables" by The Beach Boys

Fruit Tray - "Strawberry Fields" by The Beatles

Fruit Tray - "Watermelon Crush" by Photo Jenny

Fruit Tray - "Blueberry Hill" by Fats Domino

Candy - "Candy Man" by Sammy Davis Jr.

Sweets - "How Sweet It Is to be Loved by You" by Marvin Gaye

Drinks - "Waterfalls" by TLC

Drinks - "Genie in a Bottle" by Christina Aguilera 

And of course, the sign for the bathroom was "Let It Go" from Disney's hit movie Frozen.

My sister and her soon-to-be husband.

The music trivia game was entertaining yet challenging, and then we ended the night at a bar and grill the couple frequents for some karaoke. Singing in a public venue like that is really not my cup of tea, but it was an entertaining time nonetheless. The most important part was that the couple had a great time.

The best part of this video clip has to be that our older brother can be heard singing louder than my sister for much of the song.

10 Years

Milestones have meaning. Milestones cause us to pause and reflect. Ten years may seem so small for people who have graced the earth for so long like my ninety-five year old grandmother, but for someone my age, a decade is a big deal. This summer gives me the opportunity to recognize ten years since finishing undergraduate college. The great thing about my alma mater is that it schedules an alumni reunion weekend every summer. Class years celebrating special milestones organize a committee to plan extra reunion events to bring the cohort back to campus.

Even though the years between present day and college are ever increasing, I still talk about my experiences at college quite often. And since I am my mother's daughter, I have no idea how many times my husband has heard the same stories told over and over again. He has yet to complain, though. I asked him if he would like to go with me to my class reunion because I wanted him to be able to experience a little bit of that place so near and dear to my heart.

A lot can change in a decade, and while the campus of my alma mater may look somewhat different in some areas, it still feels like home. My husband's remarks about how small the campus seemed certainly gave me pause to stop and realize that it never felt that way while attending school. The walk through the main hall where classes were held and then peeking into one of the dormitories in which I lived was an entertaining trip down memory lane for me.

My husband was merely convinced all of the buildings were haunted, which to be fair, some of them do have stories. I usually win instant brownie points with middle and high school kids when I share with them that I lived in a haunted dorm in college. Honestly, I never truly believed in ghosts before my sophomore year in college. Entertained the possibility? Yes. Actual convictions? Not until fall semester 2001. While doing a quick walk sometime between midnight and 1 a.m. around Heffron Hall as the resident assistant on duty one night, I saw a shadowy figure on the third floor for which I have no explanation. I was so rattled that I actually skipped my last round of the night. My girlfriend, who also lived in the dorm that year, kindly reminded me this weekend of the night we tried to watch a movie. For some reason the VHS tape kept popping in and out of the VCR player on the television as the movie played. After some failed determination at getting it to work properly, and becoming increasingly spooked, we decided it was a good time to take a late-night walk around campus. Reunions are great for trips down memory lane because I had completely forgotten that incident. She and I would take a lot of midnight walks around campus that year and in the years that followed.

(For fans of ghost stories, there is an excellent series on the evolution of the Heffron ghost in the Winona Post written by a classmate's father, Patrick Marek: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8 )

Coming back to see everyone again had a different feeling for me since I only had a roommate for one year. Working for the Office of Residence Life had its perks, but sometimes I wish I had had a few more roommates. That is, until I recall walking in on my freshman year roommate and her boyfriend getting frisky with each other. She apologized to me profusely, but I was never able to burn the vision of her boyfriend's butt cheeks from my retinas. So, no roommates can be a nice thing.

The years I spent in college really shaped me, but it was not always from positive experiences. There was a suicide in the dormitory my sophomore year, and I spent much of the next few months unable to shake a feeling of guilt for accepting my hall director's offer to check on a student, after having received a phone call from concerned friends, since I was just about to leave for the computer lab when my phone rang. It seems so silly now, but it was something I struggled with some months afterwards. I even had the displeasure of a good friend inexplicably stop talking to me senior year, to the point of not even saying hello back to me when we crossed paths in the plaza. While I never figured out what her motivation was and have not thought of it much since, explaining to my husband about with whom I socialized the most in college certainly brought back some less than pleasant memories. It was cute to see how he was ready to throw down the gauntlet in my honor after hearing about that for the first time.

My husband and I meandered into the history department to find a picture of another one of my history professors who passed away in 2011. It reminded me of some advice he gave me as I contemplated what to do after graduation. I was considering graduate school, but I had not decided on the program or the school yet. Dr. Gaut, who had attended the University of Minnesota graduate school, bluntly told me I would not fit in there. It irked me at first until I realized his implication was that I was not uppity enough the mesh with the attitudes of the people in that program. I am grateful he was so straightforward with me.

As a history undergraduate major at a small, Catholic university, there were a whopping five of us the year I graduated. For our senior thesis class, one of the five studied abroad fall semester. There was another classmate who only sometimes showed up for class. Needless to say, when there are only four students who should be there, the professor knows when you miss class. So, that meant we usually spent the first fifteen to twenty minutes talking baseball, since my professor was a huge New York Mets fan, as he waited to see if he would have three or four students for class that day. One does not find experiences like that at large universities.

After walking around the campus for a bit, my husband asked how we did not get bored. It is funny because, while I enjoyed my classes, most of my memories from college have to do with things outside of classes. We were always inventive with how we entertained ourselves. Perhaps that is part of the rite of passage into adulthood: learning to make one's own way in the world. As an underclassman, I was way too afraid to try things on my own without someone else there for moral support. As an upperclassman, I spent a lot of time eating on my own in dining halls while reading the newspaper or taking naps on some of the random couches around campus. I just no longer had that fear.

The education I received was certainly a good one. I was part of the Lasallian Honors Program as an undergraduate, which has helped shape how I teach by utilizing the Socratic method. As a sophomore, I spent time in the archives of the library translating an old book from German to English for a research paper on the 1410 battle of Grunwald. It was the first time I had encountered Fraktur print, so it took me quite some time as I had to decipher the old letter style. Needless to say, my professor had questions for me when I turned in a paper that included a book printed in German as a reference since German is not offered as a class at the university. I read Fraktur print on a regular basis now when researching 19th century education in Minnesota. My favorite class, though, was a public history class I took senior year taught by the director of the Winona County Historical Society. He took us on a walking tour of the city and went into great detail about some of the old buildings in town. As part of that class, we were required to volunteer time with WCHS. I helped out with the Victorian Fair that fall by teaching kids how to play marbles, which landed a girlfriend's and my picture on the front page of the Winona Daily News. I also worked the annual event Voices of the Past: Woodlawn Cemetery Walk, serving as a tour guide between the stations. Ten years later, I find myself starting my eighth summer season as a living history interpreter.

My path in life is not the same path as my classmates. That being said, it can be really difficult not to think the grass is greener on the other side when you hear about the accomplishments of so many. Some run their own businesses; others have earned doctorate degrees; while others yet have beautiful children of which they can be proud. Reunions can be fun to see where everyone has tread in life, but it can also certainly feed feelings of inadequacy for the things one still wants to accomplish in life. I have always been a late bloomer in life, though, so all in good time. Hopefully my husband was not completely bored out of his mind this weekend at our class gathering listening to me chat every now and then with people whom he does not know, but I am pleased that he got to see some of what shaped me into the person I was when he met me.

My Tenacious Relationship With Farm Animals

Life has certainly been busy. Each fall the museum has to decide what to do with the farm animals over the winter. If you have ever been to Minnesota in the middle of January, you are well aware the weather can be rough on people. Animals dislike the cold as much as humans; they just complain about it a lot less.

The first summer at the museum Will and Fred had to share space with the sheep.

Our Guernsey cattle survived two winters, and they had a reality shock the first winter they stayed with us. They were my favorite animals on site, though. While quite large and intimidating (especially when one is loose in the yard and galloping towards you - yes, that happened to me), these two steers were pretty much equivalent to giant puppy-dogs. Will and Fred had quite the personalities. Will was usually less moody than Fred which made him more approachable, but Fred was usually jealous of all the attention Will received. I think Fred became more laid back as he got older. Named after Wilhem die Erste & Friedrich der Grosse these two boys honored their Prussian namesakes by responding to German commands. I think that is why I liked them so much. I could speak German to them.

Most of their days were spent laying in the grass, preferably in a sunny spot.