Notes taken

In the past I've written about both of my grandfathers here. Recently I made a delightful discovery in the front hall of my parents' house: an old school copy of Silas Marner that belonged to my dad's father. This had apparently come to us when my grandpa passed away, but I'd never seen it before. When I expressed excitement over the discovery, my mom told me she also had an old junior high school math book that had belonged to her father. Where was she hiding it all these years? I don't know, but she dug it out and I found myself in possession of both volumes. Given my love of history, especially where it concerns people and places I know, I was as pleased as Kanye West in a room full of mirrors.

The books are special to me because they contain little glimpses of what my grandfathers were like as teenagers. Notes in the margins, jokes scrawled across the pages, doodles. Silas contains much more in the way of notes than the math book, but the math book is cool in its own right. I may feature it in a future entry just to highlight all the interesting things one can learn from old math books. Things that have nothing to do with math. Like this:

I had no idea how many bushels of potatoes were harvested in Wisconsin in 1919! Until now.

Here are some detail photos from the books. Some more are on flickr.

Grandpa Bob's copy of Junior High School Mathematics.


If he used it in 1929, he would have been twelve. Impossibly young, to me. This is the same grandpa who didn't finish high school, yet wound up building telescopes and tutoring kids in calculus - so it seems fitting that of all his old schoolbooks, a math book is the one he kept. (I hope he actually spelled his name RoBert all the time back then, too. Extra points if he ever pronounced it ro-bair.)


I wonder who Diane was...


Inside the back cover. Huh? Whistler's Mother. Old times. "Huh" indeed.


Silas Marner - my grandpa Jack used it in 1935, his senior year of high school


Jack in his 1935 senior picture - in the middle, wearing a vest


Inside the front covers


The "yea man" just kills me. And what's on page 150, you ask?


There you go. He wasn't the best speller, was he? He had the same handwriting his whole life, though. I'd recognize it anywhere.


Not I!