Monday, May 17, 2010

Microfiche fishing

I've been spending time in front of a microfiche machine and the fact that the airconditioning in the library was not working didn't deter me one bit.  A little heat and humidity was nothing compared to what I was learning about struggles and obstacles of the late 1930's. I could get through this minor inconvenience.
I read about  the mudslides and the all too frequent autocrashes, the Hindenburg and the society pages of who invited who to supper. I searched through red herrings like a detective only to be disappointed that the lead didn't pan out. Slowly, in each inch of the old newspapers, I'm putting it all together. The gap is narrowing on my story and I'm close to finding the "why." I could work faster except for one thing.
I'm having too much fun reading. There's one local community called Joy and right down the road is a another community called Worry. I've been keeping up with their news, well, not new news, 1936 news. 1937 news. They have babies. They visit each other. They have rattlesnake stories, gold nugget stories. There is no difference between the two places. Only the names. So did the people from Joy look at life differently than their neighbors from Worry? Did the outside world look at the people from Joy differently than those from Worry? I've been worrying about that.

Gretchen

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