[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Friday/Saturday



The only thing nicer than Friday morning on the desk is Saturday
morning on the desk.  We've had a few patrons but they are almost
always quiet and well-behaved, and best of all the phone doesn't
ring.  I feel like Joni Mitchell's "Free Man in Paris..."  "...unfettered
and alive / no one was calling me up for favors / and no one's future
to decide..."  Not that I really decide anyone's future, and it's
usually me askin' for favors.

I missed most of the ARCHIVES list week, due to show-n-tell to
photography classes, using real photographs for examples,
speaking of a topic I read in some message, although maybe that
was the Photo-history list.  In fact, funny how the topics on the list
kind of mirrored my week.

A couple of random thoughts generated by reading through the
ARCHIVES emails of the week:

-strange requirements by donors (matchbook covers): I might get
corrected on this by the folks down the hill, but rumor had it that
the owner of the race car the MORMON METEOR wanted to give it
to the Utah State Historical Society, but insisted that it remain
fueled and oiled.  Naturally they couldn't meet that requirement,
and have the thing sitting in the middle of their museum with a tank
full of gas.  I'm not sure where it is now; it might be back in the
state capitol where it resided for many years.

-the RAIN story on the buyer of the old newspapers made me think
of something similar; that thrill of holding in your hand a piece of
real history.  We have a collection from a river runner named
Norman D. Nevills.  In the 1940s, Norm as the premier Colorado
river runner of his day, world renowned.  He kept a little pocket
notebook on each trip, jotting down thoughts or notes.  We have all
of those but the 1949 one, which has never been found.  They are
obviously soaked and dried repeatedly, the pages swelled and the
paper has taken on a desert pink color from muddly Colorado River
water.  (Much like items of my own clothing!)  So whenever I take
one out of its box it evokes the river, the light on the cliffs, the
breeze off the water in the evening, the dry mouth at the top of a
big drop.  Unfortunately for him and his family but fortunately for
history, he was a better pilot than a boatman.  Never flipped a boat
but made one too many takeoffs in his little Piper J3.  Fortunate for
history because his collection of papers, including the pocket
notebooks, were never edited by a man in his dotage or a widow in
hers, worried about what history might make of their departed one.
(His wife Doris was with him at the time he crashed).  They came
down to us pretty much unstirred, saved by a devoted daughter.

Except for the 1949 notebook; given that the others have non-river
jottings ("new sink for lodge" kinds of things), and that the crash
was just at the end of the river season, I've always thought that it
was in his pocket on September 21, 1949.

I won't even go into what my office looks like!  I know where
everything is, though.  We went through a major move about two
years ago, two of them in fact as I'm sure many of you might
remember.  It took me over a year to move from Room 560 to room
565, which are about ten steps away from each other.  OF course
there was a detour to the other side of the building, but I still have
about 15 years worth of ephemera of my own on the walls (two old
shelving end panels that make very nice privacy screens for a glass
wall on one side of my office.  They're tall and you can stick things
to them with magnets.

But then I said I wasn't going into it.  Back to work,




Roy Webb, C.A.
Multimedia Archivist
Special Collections
J. Willard Marriott Library
295 South 1500 East
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah   84112
(801) 585-3073  //  fax (801) 585-3976
rwebb@library.utah.edu

A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List!

To subscribe or unsubscribe, send e-mail to listserv@listserv.muohio.edu
      In body of message:  SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname
                    *or*:  UNSUB ARCHIVES
To post a message, send e-mail to archives@listserv.muohio.edu

Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html

Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <rschmidt@lib.muohio.edu>