New Year, but Old Times

   Where did I put the “thing?”    I don’t know where it is so I hunt.  The cupboard, the attic, under the bed, the kitchen drawer.  The “thing” may take a different form from day to day.  One day it is the scissors, my shoes, today it is 30 year old pictures that someone needs by Monday.
   It could be absent mindedness or it could be I have too much stuff.  All those organized boxes on a shelf-that isn’t me, sorry. 
   Old photographs should all be in one place, but sadly--.
   On the other hand, if I had not been looking for pictures I wouldn’t have spent a pleasant afternoon browsing old newspapers and clippings from long ago.
   The plastic container from under the bed was full of treasures.  There was ana envelope with newspaper clippings from the Oxford Press, my column, In The Fields from the ‘70’s.
   Here is a tidbit from a November column.
   Is this the year we don’t send Christmas cards? (Wash my mouth with soap.)  Postage has gone up from 6 cents to 8 cents.  Cards cost from 5 cents to 15 cents each.  Breathes there a soul who does not add ten names to his list every year?  Couldn’t we just say “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year” to our friends when we see them at the feed mill or at the grocery?
We could inquire about their health; that’s more than some of us do with a card.

   Then there was the complete issue of the Brookville Democrat, dated 1925.  It was in pretty good condition, considering.  Why had it been kept all these years?  The paper was not yellow, but shades of brown,; the print quite legible and the news very personal.  Wedding descriptions and club news on the front page.  Advertisements for automobiles and such. 
   On the next to the last page was the reason the paper had been saved.  The obituary of Eliza Hampson Hyde; my husband’s grandmother.  She was born in 1857 in Franklin County and died in 1925; 68 years old. Her obit was lengthy; either she had been somebody or she had a good writer in the family.  When her first husband, Thomas F. Hyde,  passed away, she married his brother, Eli.  She had 2 sons with Thomas and 4 girls and 2 sons with Eli.  Despite the length of the article, her real story went untold. 
   Her 24 year old son, Samuel, died from influenza while he was in the navy;  the trials of caring for her 6 year old daughter who contracted polis.  The joys she must have known when her daughters became teachers, expert seamstresses and mothers.  Eliza had lived a full life. 

   I found  another newspaper copy, dated October, 1918, 100 years old.  Why had that been saved? The
 front page contained names of men, 18 to 45 who registered for the draft; bond drives  and a brief article on the war.  It read.
   “The American steam trawler, Kingfisher, reported to have been torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine off Halifax, first was captured by the U-boat, according to information received by the Navy Department”
   On page 2 was the obituary of Samuel Hyde,.  He had volunteered in 1917.  The legendary story that I had heard was that he was too thin to be accepted by the navy. His doctor told him to eat raisins, he did and gained enough to be accepted in the navy. In just a year, he contacted influenza during that great epidemic and died.  His grieving father and brother went east to claim his body.  Mother, Eliza, stayed at home.
   I finally recalled where the pictures of my original hunt were.  Pictures of happy occasions to be used at another time of sorrow.