Scott Swanson
Sometimes, when you’re plugging away, it’s easy to lose perspective.
It happens in journalism, just as in other walks of life. I was reminded of this a while back when a reader came in and asked for our archives.
Now, before I go on, you have to understand that your’s truly is usually the one who types that column up.
I actually like history. I like to learn about what people have done in the past. I’m an adherent to the notion that human nature is the same today as it was when Adam and Eve exited the Garden of Eden and that history tends to repeat itself. So you can learn from history.
It’s kind of fun to look at the old editions from 25 and 50 years back, to see how Sweet Home has changed ? and not changed, as the case may be. I’ve learned a lot about Sweet Home in the last six months just reading at the various stories in those newspapers.
It also can be a bit of a pain to type up, particularly when I’m already behind on other stories I’m trying to write. I have to confess that I wondered how many readers really looked at that column. I’d made a mental note to ask former Editor Alex Paul about it ? how it got started, what kind of feedback he’d gotten to it over the years, etc. Lots of newspapers do those kinds of columns, but that didn’t necessarily mean it was good for The New Era.
So in comes this reader. I was out of the office at the time, so I heard the story second-hand.
Seems she’d been perusing the “From Our Files” column that runs weekly on page 4 when she saw her father’s name in there. He’d died in an automobile accident back in 1955, when she was young, and she apparently was not sure of some of the particulars.
So in she came to read the article and discover some things she didn’t know about her dad’s death.
Guess I’ll keep typing that column.
Reading about things that happened 25 or 50 years ago can be quite interesting. I’ve learned that the idea of a bypass around Lebanon (one that has occurred to me numerous times as I’m creeping through that town on my way to the freeway or east Albany) is not new. It was a hot topic 25 years ago.
I remember when I was a kid in Grants Pass how many accidents you’d hear about in the woods. Looking back at the 1955 edition, it seems serious injuries or deaths in logging accidents around this area happened frequently ? maybe not weekly, but nearly so sometimes.
The community volunteerism in Sweet Home is nothing new. That’s for sure. In both 1955 and 1980, people banded together, just as they do today, to help those in need and to raise funds for public needs.
The language, though, can be different. For instance, in this week’s column, a “lady driver” was pulled over after running her car through a plate-glass window at Dan’s Duds clothing store in 1980. Uh, I don’t think in this day and age it would be too cool to call someone a “lady driver,” at least not in print. Especially someone suspected of hit-and-run.
It’s kind of interesting, too, to see some of the social mores that were in place 50 years ago. For instance, in one recent edition, we learned that a dance after a 1955 football game would NOT be open to alumni. Hmmm, wonder what prompted THAT decision?
Some things don’t change. A couple of weeks ago, we ran a report, again from 1955, about a middle-aged woman (my age, actually), who had trashed a jail cell. In today’s liberated environement and with the ready availability of drugs that make people do things they normally might not do, I could see that happening today. But, fueled by alcohol, this gal “tore up the bed in the jail cell and battered the toilet and sink to pieces,” causing $160 in damages.
Well, maybe things are different now. That damage would be $1,600 today.