Archaeolibris

Echo from 1939: A Texas High School and its Six-Man Football Team

2011-12-12T12:26:00.000-06:00

I like looking at old school yearbooks, particularly those from the surrounding area where I live. Spend a little time turning the pages and see what kind of interesting history you dig up. Local ads reveal business history and photos of students and activities capture the culture of the day. Old yearbooks offer a time capsule between the covers.

I was fortunate to find one of these time capsules last fall at a local book show where I was exhibiting. I say fortunate because this nondescript book lay hidden among more colorful, inviting covers on a bargain table. Many hands had touched it and brushed it aside to get to more substantial looking treasure. I picked it up for a quick inspection. Fingerspitzengefühl?

A bit beat up and soiled from decades of not-so-ideal care, The Echo, a 1939 Beasley, Texas High School Yearbook, was better preserved on the inside and provided a wonderful glimpse into rural Texas more than 70 years ago.

Paper covers opened to mimeographed text with old photos pasted onto the pages. This old yearbook is pretty much stripped down to the bone--no slick production with tons of content here--a reflection of the lean years of the Great Depression. But it's precisely what this yearbook doesn't have that makes it interesting from an historical and even cultural viewpoint.

The yearbook has about 50 pages and includes sections on Administration, Classes (less than 20 students in each), Athletics, Activities, and Advertising.

What really caught my eye, though, was the Athletics section and the old photos of the six-man football team.With so few students comprising each class, and the whole student body for that matter, the school would have been hard-pressed to field eleven boys on each side of the line of scrimmage, not to mention the extra cost for uniforms and equipment. The six-man version of the game was a perfect fit for Beasley High School in the late 1930s.

Six-man football wasn't invented in Texas, but Texas seems to have laid claim to it. The game was conceived by Stephen Epler in Chester, Nebraska back in 1934 in an effort to give small town schools short on players a chance to have a football team. So the eleven-man squad was cut down to six. The field's dimensions were shortened and a few new rules were instituted. This modified version of football was sanctioned by the University Interscholastic League in Texas four years later, in 1938. Play commenced that fall and the game spread rapidly across the vast rural areas of the Lone Star State.

The photos above are representative of the game in its inaugural year in Texas. As the yearbook in which I found them refers to the Senior Class of 1939, the Beasley six-man football team would have played their games in the fall of 1938, making these photos some of the earliest images of six-man football in Texas.

Today, more than 150 schools, both public and private, still play six-man football. See the YouTube videos below (the second one an NFL trailer) for an idea of how the game has permeated small-town, rural Texas over the last seventy-plus years.

Words of gold from Paul Margulies

2011-11-14T02:14:00.000-06:00

Paul Margulies authored a children's book in 1969 titled Gold Steps, Gold Stones, with lavish illustrations by James Kenton (J.K.) Lambert. It was published by Harlin Quist, who was known for his elaborately designed books and standard of excellence in children's book publishing in the 1960s and 1970s.

I found this copy of a first printing languishing inconspicuously on a corner shelf of a resale shop and, though unfamiliar with the author, illustrator, and publisher, recognized the book as a quality piece of work worth having and researching.

Margulies wrote this fantasy tale of a boy's journey and adventures for his children, one of whom grew up to become an Emmy Award-winning actor. Her name is Julianna Margulies (popularly known for her roles in ER and The Good Wife, among other television and film roles). Her father authored one more children's book that I know of, this one specifically for her: What Julianna Could See.

Paul Margulies was an advertising writer, who wrote something much more memorable in popular culture than this children's books. For an Alka-Sletzer ad campaign, he came up with the well-known television jingle: "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh wait a relief it is." I'd bet, though, that for Julianna and her sisters, their father's most memorable writing had to be the books he wrote for them.

Gold Steps, Gold Stones is about a boy who who lives in a house made of gold and embarks upon a journey of fantasy for which he has a gold box he cannot open until the journey is completed. He becomes a boy King in a strange new land, helps people in need, and leaves at the end of his one-year tenure for a desert island. There, a stone walkway leads to a stone cottage, all of which turn to gold as he makes his way inside, where he discovers he has actually arrived home.

Having ended his travels, he is finally able to open the gold box he has carried so long and faithfully not opened. Now the open box reveals a miniature version of the room he and his family are sitting in.The inside of the box's lid reveals images all the people he helped on his journey. Had he opened it during the journey, he wouldn't have seen anything. But he did as his father told him, helped people where he could, and was able to return home to a golden home where the sun shone splendidly upon the walls where his family dwelled. It's not to hard to find the lessons or moral of this charming little story.

J.K. Lambert's colorful illustrations evoke a fantasy world appropriate for the dream-like travels of the young boy who became a King and found gold in his family and accomplishments away from them.

The Dragons of Kangaroo Island

2011-11-03T21:21:00.000-05:00

Here's a book I was delighted to find recently, the reasons for which appear farther down the page: The Dragons of Kangaroo Island (Tangara Publishing, Seattle, 2002), written and illustrated by Jacqueline Vickery Stanley.

Last summer, I visited the aquarium at Moody Gardens in Galveston, Texas and saw something I never knew existed. Sea Dragons.

They are some of the most fascinating creatures I've ever seen and I watched mesmerized as they floated ethereally in front of me. They are small and delicate in appearance, dispelling all monster-of-the-deep images their name might suggest.

The photo above I took is not too good, but check out the following video for some brilliant underwater scenes with these mythical-looking marine animals from the south coast of Australia.

This, of course, got me searching for books on sea dragons. Or any information about them I could find from any source. To my disappointment, there wasn't as much on the Web as I thought there might be and books were virtually nonexistent, except for children's stories.

But it was a children's book I came across one day recently while scouting for books around Houston. At a moment when sea dragons were the farthest thing from my mind, a nice, jacketed copy seemingly jumped out at me. And it was signed by the author-illustrator no less. I had not encountered this title during an online search months ago and, of course, I bought it.

The illustrations are appealing and accompany a story about being comfortable with who you are and the way you look. That alludes to the "plain" Weedy Sea Dragon wishing she could look like her "flashy" cousin, the Leafy Sea Dragon.

Personally, I prefer the look of the Weedy Sea Dragon featured in the video above. I find its features much more striking. And for striking photos of each, see the Leafy Sea Dragon on National Geographic's Photography page and the Weedy Sea Dragon on Club Marine Magazine's site, the preceding link for which also displays a Sea Dragon cover story issue with a good bit of information about these endangered species. The photos of the divers getting up close and personal are stunning.

The author does a good job, in the course of the story, introducing her readers to other marine life in the Sea Dragons' neighborhood, as well as the dangers and threats to their environment and existence. No surprise that humans are number one on the list. She also provides a Q&A at the end of the book to educate children (and adults) about how the Sea Dragons live and reproduce.

I was surprised to learn that the Australian author (Jacqui Stanley) also lives in the Houston area, at least part of the time. That might help explain why a signed copy landed in this Gulf Coast city, a corner of the world completely devoid of Sea Dragons. Most of the world, for that matter, is devoid of Sea Dragons. As the author informs us at the beginning of the book, the south coast of Australia, around Kangaroo Island, is where you'll have to go if you want to see a Sea Dragon in the wild.

And if you can't make it to Kangaroo Island, there are a number of aquariums around the world that have made a second home for these guys and an opportunity for humans to see up close one of the most amazing creatures on the planet.

Some aquariums in the United States, in addition to the Moody Gardens Aquarium in Galveston include, but are not limited to: The Georgia Aquarium, The Monterrey Bay Aquarium, Ripley's Aquarium, Myrtle Beach, The Florida Aquarium, The New England Aquarium, The Tennessee Aquarium, and The Birch Aquarium in San Diego.

Seabiscuit, 9-11-01

2011-09-11T07:58:00.000-05:00

This seemed an appropriate cross-post from Writing in Books for this blog. Found in a used book at a resale shop earlier this year and saved for today.

A copy of Seabiscuit (Random House, 2001), by Laura Hillenbrand. A simple gift inscription from a father to his daughter on September 11, 2001:

Dear Bethany, I hope you enjoy this (I did). Love, Dad.

Next to the inscription, the father created a tiny memorial of sorts to mark the day for his daughter: a small American flag affixed to the page by a 34-cent US postage stamp that depicts the Statue of Liberty. A caption underneath states simply "9-11-01."

Various scenarios come to mind about why this book was presented on 9-11-01 and why it wound up in a resale shop where I found it and thought it worth saving. Scenarios come forth for each, but I'll just let the moment of the gift resonate here--the father's gift to his daughter, a book and a simple, poignant observance of the tragedy that befell a nation ten years ago today.

That day will never be forgotten in the lifetimes of those old enough to have had it indelibly imprinted into their memories. Many memorials and observances, in various forms, were erected that day. Even in a gift book, whose story of inspiration, hope, and renewal may have reflected the needs of the gift's recipient as well as those of the gift giver and an entire nation.

What to do with those dirty or damaged books?

2011-08-07T18:00:00.007-05:00

Books can present cleaning and restoration challenges when stains, dust, and other foreign substances invade the covers or leaves, or when a book's structural integrity has been compromised.

I recently came across some YouTube videos that offer inventive methods for the maintenance and restoration of dirty or damaged books. You'll want to hold onto your leg for the first one and I'm not so sure Rube Goldberg didn't have something to do with the second one. The last one may require general anesthesia. A sense of humor would also help.

Up first, here's a guy who starts out with a certain air of authority and then rapidly spirals into a farce of epic proportions. As the video rolled, I thought I was tapping into an old trade secret, albeit unconventional by initial appearances. Unconventional methods yielded quickly to serious doubt and laughter upon the realization I'd been had. And it kept getting worse. Please don't try this with your books!

Next up is an interesting contraption for automating the dusting and cleaning of a large amount of books as you would find in a library. Following the previous video, I was a bit skeptical going into it. Presenting the Depulvera...

And finally... Book to the OR... STAT!

Rare South African book recalls Luke Limner

2011-08-05T09:04:00.000-05:00

I just came across this BBC article about a rare South African book believed to be the first French book, as well as the first travel narrative, published in South Africa. The book, whose title translates in English to Account Of The Wreck Of The French Ship The Eole In April 1829, was discovered by Dr. David Culpin of St. Andrews University.

The book is also important because the survivors of the shipwreck provide detail about contemporary events, including their interactions with indigenous people, the Xhosa, who were featured in a book I sold earlier this week: Red Blanket Valley, by Joan A. Broster

But there's another book I'm reminded of that I haven't let get away: Pen & Ink Sketches in Parliament, by Limner; published by the “Monitor” Office, Castle-Street, Capetown (South Africa) in 1855. I wrote about this interesting little volume nearly five years ago on this blog. See Hunting a Limner in South Africa, 1855.

Interesting in its own right, it still pales in comparison with Dr. Culpin's treasure. But it needs no translation into English and it's chock-full of contemporary views of Capetown life as well as ads for Capetown merchants.

Also important is the fact that Luke Limner was the pseudonym of an important book designer of the 19th century: John Leighton. Leighton was a writer (satirist), as well as a designer of books, fine bindings, and bookplates.

Happy August 2nd?

2011-08-02T17:49:00.000-05:00

Where's the fireworks? Today is the day the Declaration of Independence was signed. The day we Americans celebrate, though, is July 4th, when independence was formally declared. That's the day the colonies (except New York) adopted the Declaration of Independence.

I was reminded of that today and remembered having written a piece about the Declaration of Independence on this blog a few years back. I checked it and my source book: Signers of the Declaration: Historic Places Commemorating the Signing of the Declaration of Independence. This title is Volume XVIII in the series, The National Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings. The series editor was Robert G. Ferris. My copy is a revised edition, dated 1975, but it retains the Foreword written by Richard Nixon from the White House, Washington, D.C.

Sure enough, August 2nd was the day the document was actually signed. But not everyone who was supposed to sign actually did so. About fifty men showed up for the signing in Philadelphia on August 2nd, while another five signed later in the year. And one last straggler wrapped it up with his signature the following year--Thomas McKean from Delaware.Delaware may have been last in signing the Declaration, but in 1787 they were the first state to ratify the Constitution of the United States.

Here's what the original looks like. It's so worn and faded by time, it's hard to see the signatures, even when you click on the image to enlarge it.

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration.html

Some interesting facts from the book:

On July 4th, all colonies except New York voted to adopt the Declaration.
The document was first read to the public on July 8th outside the Pennsylvania State House.
New York approved the Declaration on July 15th. Four days later Congress ordered the document prepared on parchment for signature.
The 56 signers did not sign as a group and did not do so on July 4th.
The official signing took place on August 2nd, 1776. Fifty men signed at that time, five more signed later in the year, and one more the following year.
On January 18th, 1777, Congress finally authorized the printing of the Declaration. Congress was worried about British retaliation against any and all who signed the Declaration, so they delayed having the signed document printed until after General Washington had claimed victories at Trenton and Princeton. Only one signature was missing at the time of this first printing: Thomas McKean from Delaware.
Declaring one's independence is one thing, actually getting it is another. The fighting had begun before the Declaration and continued for seven years afterward. In the Treaty of Paris in 1783, Britain officially recognized the Americans' independence, which they had declared in 1776 and fought so hard for in the ensuing years.

Revolution, war, and canning

2011-06-25T17:30:00.002-05:00

Next time you open a can of vegetables or fruit, think about revolution. Think about war. Without either, canning may not have developed to what we know today, or certainly not as rapidly as it did.

I came across this fascinating relationship in an obscure book, The Canned Food Reference Manual (American Can Company, 1943). I was about to toss it into the donation pile when I caught a glimpse of the image of Nicolas Appert, as he might have looked in the late 1700s/early 1800s, and paused to see how he figured into a 20th century reference manual for canned food.

Nicolas Appert, of France, is generally credited with discovering the process of canning, having spent the most time of anyone developing a method for food preservation between 1795 and 1810.

In 1795, France was not only experiencing revolution, it was also fighting wars in Europe. Adequate and safe, nutritious food supply to the soldiers became a serious issue, so the French Directory--the governing board that ruled the country--offered a sizable cash prize to anyone who could devise a successful method for preserving food.

Appert was a Parisian confectioner with no technical knowledge or experience in the processes he experimented with. That he not only invented a process through trial and error, but also was awarded the prize, is a remarkable feat in scientific achievement. He didn't exactly know why his methods worked, just that they did based on certain principles such as cleanliness, the application of heat to the food, and a proper seal.

In 1810, Appert published the first treatise on food preservation, based on his years of research and experimentation. Below is an image from the book that depicts this rare manuscript, L’art de conserver, pendant plusieurs années toutes les substances animales et végétales.

A decade later, Boston became home to the first canning operations in America and Appert's methods were used. The canning industry grew steadily in America from Appert's work, but war, once again, created the demand that really kicked the industry into high gear. The Civil War, followed by the Spanish-American War and World Wars One and Two, each pushed the industry to refine methods and processes and greatly increase production.

Without the heavy demands created by war, would food preservation have advanced as rapidly? Arguably not, but certainly it would have gotten to the level we know today as populations increased along with advances in science and technology through the last century.

Food for thought.

The omnipotent book

2011-04-25T17:55:00.000-05:00

Ever ponder the symbolism of books? The book as metaphor?

J.E. Cirlot did, among other things, in his Dictionary of Symbols, published by the Philosophical Library in 1962 (Translated from the Spanish, Diccionario de Simbolos Tradicionales, by Jack Sage).

Here's what Cirlot wrote about the book as a symbol, viewed through the amalgamated lens of history, philosophy, and mythology:

A book is one of the eight Chinese common emblems, symbolizing the power to ward off evil spirits (5). The book 'written inside and out' is an allegory of the esoteric and exoteric, cognate with the double-edged sword projecting from the mouth (37). Broadly speaking, the book is related--as Guenon has suggested--to the symbolism of weaving. The doctrine of Mohiddin ibn Arabi in this respect may be summarized as follows: "The universe is an immense book; the characters in this book are written, in principle, with the same ink and transcribed on to the eternal tablet by the divine pen...and hence the essential divine phenomena hidden in the "secret of secrets" took the name of "transcendent letters." And these very transcendent letters, or, in other words, all things created, after having been virtually crystallized within divine omniscience, were brought down to lower levels, by the divine breath, where they gave birth to the manifest world.' (25)

Divine, omniscience, transcendent, universe... Sounds bibliomnipotent!

(5) Beaumont, A. Symbolism in Decorative Chinese Art, New York, 1949.
(25) Guenon, Rene. Le Symbolisme de la croix. Paris, 1931.
(37) Levi, Eliphas. Les Mysteres de la Kabbale. Paris, 1920.

National Bookmobile Day

2011-04-13T06:25:00.006-05:00

Today, April 13, is National Bookmobile Day, which is coordinated by the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Literacy and Outreach Services, the Association of Bookmobile and Outreach Services (ABOS), and the Association for Rural & Small Libraries (ARSL).

You didn't know there was such a day designated for bookmobiles? Neither did I until I read the Bookmobileana post on Larry T. Nix's excellent library history blog, Library History Bluff Blog.

From the ALA site, these words describe what the day is and why there is a day for bookmobiles:

National Bookmobile Day (Wednesday, April 13, 2011) celebrates our nation’s bookmobiles and the dedicated library professionals who provide this valuable and essential service to their communities every day.

National Bookmobile Day is an opportunity for bookmobiles fans to make their support known—through thanking bookmobile staff, writing a letter or e-mail to their libraries, or voicing their support to community leaders.

In honor of the day, here are some pages from a vintage children's book from my collection about a bookmobile: Here Comes the Bookmobile, by Dirk Gringhuis (Albert Whitman & Co., Chicago, 1952), signed by the author.

Dr. Seuss in the bedroom

2011-02-04T13:34:00.001-06:00

Well, I didn't expect to find Dr. Seuss here: The Bedroom Companion (Farrar & Rinehart, 1935), a compilation of risque humor aimed at sex and the sexes.

As I thumbed through the book, getting a sense of what passed for risque in the 1930s, a comical illustration caught my attention. Its style was very familiar, but oddly out-of-place. Scanning the bottom of the image for the artist's signature, I was surprised to find what I think I already knew--the illustrator was Dr. Seuss!

What was he doing contributing a humorous illustration about a grown woman's sexual desire and a young boy's inability to do anything about it while the two are stranded on a deserted island? The famous children's author-illustrator contributed this kind of material to a compilation that included in its run-on subtitle the words, A Steaming Bracer for the Forgotten Male?

Well, he wasn't the famous Dr. Seuss yet. This was during the Great Depression and Theodor Seuss Geisel was making a living by his wits and artistic talent. The fame with children's books would come later. I grew up with some of the now classic children's books, such as The Cat in the Hat, from Dr. Seuss. Until now, I had no concept of this Darker Seuss.

I searched the rest of the book for more Dr. Seuss illustrations and found just one more, shown below, revealing the salacious thoughts of a couple of male birds admiring a female cuckoo in a clock.

I thought these comic drawings, collectively, must be one of his earliest appearances in a book, if not the very first.

Reading Geisel's biography at a Web site about Dr. Seuss' art (drseussart.com), I found a reference about the first books he illustrated, Boners and More Boners, which dealt with school children's missteps with language. No publication date was provided, but this reference did remind me that I had also referenced these books in a post on this blog nearly three years ago--From Beowulf to Virginia Woolf. The date I provided was 1931 and I verified that easily with a number of online booksellers.

So The Bedroom Companion is not his earliest appearance in book form, but it is still an early appearance in that format and the earliest I can find for illustrations not intended for a young audience.

The first book he published was And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street in 1937, two years after The Bedroom Companion came out. Prior to that, his work, aside from the Boners books and The Bedroom Companion, appears to have been writing and illustrating ad copy for corporations and humor magazines.

How the editors of The Bedroom Companion tapped Geisel for a few contributions of sexual innuendo is a mystery to me at present. But The Bedroom Companion just might have the honor of being the first appearance of such adult audience (bawdy or otherwise) material in book form by this writer and illustrator known and loved the world over for his children's books.