A scrapbook should tell a story, and ideally that story should be something your children, grandchildren, and later generations can understand.
Today, I uncovered a scrapbook album that my parents had begun compiling in 1964, at the time our family moved to Port Washington, Wisconsin. The album consists almost entirely of newspaper clippings. Most of the clippings are glued to album pages, but several dozen clippings were dropped loose in the book, sometimes without dates or other context.
While I found some happy memories in the scrapbook, I also felt some loss that I did not know why some items were included. I hope these examples will help others consider whether their scrapbooks actually tell the stories that matter.
I'll start with a photo and caption that were dropped loose into the book:
 |
(Mrs. Joan Brown, head librarian at Neiderkorn Library, reads to
children during Story Hour.) That's me sitting and leaning against the chair at the far right. I recognize myself from the picture, and I'm also named in the caption, so the "story" of this picture seems pretty clear. My fiancee immediately suggested that perhaps this picture shows the beginning of my lifelong love of libraries, books, and learning. It looks like I was fidgeting, and I still do that, too.
|
Alas, there are a lot of lost stories.
 | I honestly have no idea why these clippings about Port Washington High School are included in the album (in 1964, my brother was in first grade and I hadn't yet started kindergarten). If there is some story that connects this to our family, I don't know what it is. |
 |
This is an interesting picture, but I don't know who these two guys are, and
there is no caption provided for the photo. Did my parents attend the "Port Washington
Newcomers Party" in November 1964? Did they know these guys? I'll never know. Similarly, the unrelated article glued in below the photo provides no information that would let me connect it to my family. |
 | I can only speculate that Dale F. Baltus was a friend of one (or both) of my parents while they were attending Wisconsin State College in Stevens Point, Wisconsin in the late 1950s. Any story associated with this clipping, or with some relationship between my parents and Mr. Baltus, is lost. |
 | My dad worked at Bolens/FMC at this time, so I assume that this article is included because E. Peter Janke was somebody he worked with. But was Mr. Janke a friend, a boss, a rival? Was our family sad to see him go? Did my parents celebrate this news? I'll never know. |
 |
Once again, I can only speculate about the significance of this picture. I don't see any
members of my family in this picture, nor is anyone named on the part of the page
that's included in the album (but the bottom of the page was torn away). Clearly,
this was a Cub Scout "Pinewood Derby" competition, and in February 1968, my brother
and I were probably in the Cub Scouts. But nobody in the picture looks familiar. Whatever the story was, it is lost now. |
 | I've included this photograph of some blank pages in the album to demonstrate that scrapbook pages from the 1960's turned yellow with age, even in the absence of light. I can only assume that these pages (from the middle of a section of blank pages) were never left out in bright light, and yet they are just as tanned as pages with clippings attached. (The light line across the bottom right corner is not actually in the album; it is sunlight reflected off another surface in the room while I took my photo of these pages.) |
|
|
These entries (reviews, critiques, commentaries) are written by Mark J. Welch, and reflect his personal opinions. They are not the opinions of this site's advertisers and sponsors, who are not responsible for this content.