Show The Herald Journal Logan Utah Monday July 8 1985 This is the house By Summer Allen This is where I live Here are the yard the tulips the bush where the bees swarm in the summer The trees we planted young in the hard-blac- k ground the leaves we saw the wind take every fall and every spring watched bud and blossom The sidewalk which we walked up so many times that even the place where we carved our initials when the cement was soft is worn over The doorstep where we sat in the hot sun shelling peas or braiding long chains of yellow dandelions from the lawn where we sat on a dark spring night lighted cigarettes glowed as two people sat talking quietly This is the house Red brick windows and shingles — it is ours This frame has held our growing our laughing our loving Here we have been sick We have run away from this place We have fought and cried and slept and sung “I’ve been Workin' on the Railroad" while doing dishes in the kitchen sink This is where we peel the potatoes and brush the dog and laugh at the cartoons in The Saturday Evening Post This U the door we have opened for our neighbors and locked against prowlers and to it came a woman with a portfolio marking us down as “American with one bathtub a washing machine two children born in Chicago" This is where one person on the 6:05 carries home his paper brings the pay pocket every other week and tells us the good joke “he heard at the office today” And this is the place jre come to after we’ve been away This house has heard our music and tie piano the phonograph a faulty cornet Spike Jones and Tchaikovskys' “Symphony 05 in E minor" and It has heard the radio blaring news of announcing men over 35 with a family would not be drafted and here a first corsage withered in the x a boy ran crying into his room with torn pants and a swollen cheek a large black dog was hit by a truck in the street a car dug deep groves into the side lawn and a girl walked slowly up the back steps with a kiss on her lips D-d- ice-bo- Here — we earnestly repeated “Our father who are in Heaven” at 7:30— bedtime Here report cards came and as the seasons passed mother talked to daughter and father to son Our lives in this house But have been molded and torn and it stands apart — unchanged — only growing a little more worn each year This house will see us leave and watch those who stay age and slow down In it two will breathe in sobs and die Nothing of us will be left here Someday someday I’ll come back I’ll walk down the street in the spring rain and see buildings where fields and meadows used to be Our house will look older than I remembered the bricks will be faded The bee bush will be chopped down and the trees which were once so scrawny will be thick and spreading and the rain drumming through them will make a lonely sound I’ll walk up the pavement and no dog will run to meet me I’ll stop and stare a little at the numbers that tell the address to which I came so many times On the pavement will be a chalk picture and on the doorstep a forgotten dandelion chain woven by half-wash-ed a strange girl I will lift my hand to ring the bell but afraid of what will come consider a moment then turn quickly down the street with the rain on my back For the echoes of our laughter our heartaches and our love will have died with our leaving And no one will know how important it all was to us then the trees the doorstep the house — and one another and no one will care re-bu- ilt Editor's note Summer Allen J says she enjoys writing as well as painting drawing and singing In addition to her many artistic interests she has a stained glass business and Is the mother of three daughters Tips on preserving family diaries and ledgers Fourth ota series Amongst the key belongings that any family can have as part of its family archives is the diary ledger or account book of an ancestor — or even of members of the family presently living even a diary or ledger belonging to oneself It’s a weighty responsibility and it’s certainly one that must be considered in any discussion of “The Home Archivist" It’s a discussion that naturally divides itself into two parts: that which deals with preservation of what has come down to us and to insure that that which we write today is done in such a way that it will be preserved by its very nature and not necessitate difficult and expensive remedial action however far in the future With old journals we’re fairly well stuck with working with what we have Fortunately most were written on good paper and in good ink If they weren't it's time for the experts to be called in But if they were there are some things that can be done to assure their further preservation One of the real problems with old manuscripts — especially old manuscripts (and books) that have been often read — is that each reader’s thumb or index finger left a trace of oil or dirt on the pages Look at the family Bible and check the lower right hand corner of each page I'll wager that in heavily used lections the spots 4 are visible The edges of oft-use- d pages are smudged That can be an especial problem We use talcum powder or a Faber-Caste“Magic Pad" to absorb as much of the stuff as will comfortably come off a page Repeated applications will usually get off most of the stuff e that can still be a hazard for ll long-tim- preservation We use the “Magic Pad" (and these can be obtained at any stationery or office or architectural supply store) to also remove the loose dirt that has managed over the years to work its way into a volume Sometimes I've regretted that cleaning process We have one small journal that covers the last miles of travel of an emigrant from Great Britain to Great Salt Lake Valley The journal (or notebook) was written on the wagon trip from Benton Wyo (then the of the Union Pacific Railroad) to Salt Lake City Embedded next to the stitching in the spine of the book was a lot of red sand the tail mi Uuug liui Auuiu have uiuuu iuio ihe end-o'-trac- book during a couple of the windstorms around South Pass in 1868 that the writer describes Now I’m sorry I did such a careful job of cleaning that book I think that in another hundred years when we are even further from the days of wagon trains and sudden Sioux Indian raids than we are today the mere sight of that sand in the stitching of a little notebook might have proven more exciting to a student or researcher than even the words of a contempo- rary journal Another hazard that is encountered in old journals is the fact that quite a number of them are written in pencil Over the years the opening and closing of the book has acted as effectively as sand in river water as an erosive agent on the writing This is a situation that I confess stumps me We regularly microfilm everything we get in pencil (I suppose just like we used to regularly Xerox every newspaper clipping we got) and then restrict the general access of the public to the penciled volume Everything wears out in time and fragile writings in pencil wear out faster than ink In the next century I am confident that most research in Cache Valley's pioneer diaries will have to be done on microfilm just because of the wear on the originals That will come as no surprise to any genealogist who reads these words Quite often it's the binding in an old journal or diary or ledger that is the real problem with preservation Leather dries and cracks at our altitude and in our climate Constant opening and closing eventually wears out the stitching of a book But this is not the job of the “Home Archivist” unless that home archivist also happens to have g some experience in This is the time to call in those who are trained to do it Over the years I have learned enough and studied enough and experimented enough that I feel pretty comfortable in minor repair One of my student colleagues at USU Richard Saunders of North Logan is better than I In a couple of years he'll be a first rate conservationist The only flair I would send up about the decaying bindings of these items is don’t have the item unless there is no other help It is much better to preserve the original if it can be repaired Too often I have seen grand old books commercially and ruined in the The are trimmed and the ends of process pages words disappear New bindings (and new glues) are applied — and all of the good old stable kinds of bindings that our ancestors knew are replaced by things that are highly acidic in effect and ugly to look at in sight book-bindin- re-bou-nd re-bou-nd To be continued |