Artifacts

Last year when I was going on a Facebook rant about school censorship, I cracked open my 9th grade yearbook because I wanted a picture of my English teacher to go with it. The first thing I saw written in there:

“LMU 62, Bama 60”

The 1990 Sweet 16 game. Sonuvabitch that still hurt three decades later.

 

One of my all-time favorite books: "Lies My Teacher Told Me."

 

Ms. Smith was quietly one of the good ones. She’s the one who had the copy of Black Like Me on her bookshelf that I picked up on the sly. By the time I finished, it was pretty much sealed that I’d be going down a different path than the children of white tobacco farmers and factory workers I largely shared a school with. Now they’d put her in the stocks for a weekend before depositing her across the state line.

 

At one point I probably had 500 pounds of media guides, including some you'd think would make money (hoops guides for IU, UK, UCLA, UNC, Duke, etc etc), but the internet has shot all of that to shit. You can't get a nickel for any of 'em.

 

How sad that she had to be quiet about being right.

Up here in Dairyland I had a HS history teacher who landed a slot in the White Sox farm system as a young man before he threw his arm out and ended his pitching career. In 1970 he told his students about Vo Nguyen Giap, who was prepared to fight for decades to free Vietnam from round-eye colonialism. Students nicknamed him "Ho Chi." To the credit of the school system, they recognized him as an outstanding teacher. And yes, the pitchforks and torches might be out for him today.

 

Time capsules are fun. Journals are also great for peeks into lives. There's one in The Kentucky Collection that was kept by a little girl in the late eighteenth century. The graduate student who scanned it let me read the files of the pages as she did them. It gave me food for thought about how we've defined childhood throughout history.

I have a greater appreciation for people who digitize fragile books and documents for the rest of us to enjoy because of Claudia's generosity with her work.

 

I covered that game at Oakland Arena. Wimp was truly a wimp. With a team that had at least 3 future NBA players, he tried to stall out the clock with a 10-point lead going down to the wire.

 

I am a pretty prolific journal keeper for just that very reason. Life events have gotten in the way of being a daily recorder more than I once was, but I try to keep up, and hopefully the passion will return. I know for a fact some entries have come after I've had a little too much to drink, so goodness only knows what someone will read some day. I'll be dead, but they'll probably get a good insight in the bare bones Driftwood.
Probably the star of the collection is a pages and pages I wrote when I was riding out a hurricane.

 

Wimp was good, but he was no Dean Smith.

 

I have a 1957 Dodger Year Book

My grandfather was a surgeon for the US Navy during WWII. I can't imagine what he saw stitching together Marines in the South Pacific. The ship he was on made up a book with stories and photos. I also have photos of him with Pacific Islanders.

My father was in BUD/S class with the second guy to lead Seal Team 6. I have a bunch of stuff.

 

I probably have 500 pounds of media guides in my basement. I hate the idea of dumping them into a dumpster, but as you noted, they're not worth anything anymore. There's only one Jeff Pearlman out there who might need a 1998 Rockies media guide.

 

I kept my college course guide. In college you were instructed to guard it with your life because the book was your contract with the university as to requirements.

I never questioned this. In hindsight that seems insane. You’re telling me if I lost my course guide, they could make me take an extra journalism course?

It’s fun to look back at all the synopsises(?) of courses I took and the ones I should’ve taken.