It was "oldies but goodies" week in my library, and I book talked a number of very old books. Very few were checked out, but I can't bring myself to deaccession things like Jenny Kimura by Betty Cavanna, Light a Single Candle by Beverly Butler, or Junior Miss. This is a collection of short stories by the author of Meet Me in St. Louis that was published in 1941, and recounts the travails of growing up in New York City. It is a fascinating glimpse into a long-gone world where ordinary people had maids who served them dinner and stayed to do the dishes and where young girls dressed in wool coats with squirrel collars would go to the soda fountain. The chapter where Judy gets $5 a week allowance (which equals $70 today!) and has to pay 25 cents a day for lunch was fascinating to me! Surely, this book is dated, but so many things have not changed. *Sigh* It will be here on the shelf, waiting for just the right person to check it out.Today is a teacher work day, and I will be dealing with televisions, some of which I fear are very dead.
Interesting in view of the fact that within months the United States would be plunged into total war by attack from the Far East, joining the Allies who had been at war in Europe for 2 years. Really enjoyed it when I was an eastern Canadian adolescent in the early
ReplyDelete'40s, and didn't think in gloomy world terms at the time. Just enjoyed thinking life in that glamourous foreign city in what was developing as a Teenager consumer demographic.