‘You Never Know What You’ll Find’––

Surprises Await Book Sale Volunteers

By Dottie Evans

How often do we slip something in between the pages of a book, sure that we’ll remember exactly where it is later when we need it?

What if later never comes?

What if decades pass and the item tucked between the pages is entirely forgotten?

This happens more often than one would think, according to Friends of the Library Labor Day Book Sale volunteers who spend hours and hours unpacking, sorting and pricing countless boxes of books.

They have been getting ready for the 28th annual sale that will take place, as it has in recent years, at Bridgeport Hall on the Fairfield Hills campus over Labor Day Weekend.

Last year, there were 160,000 books in the sale. This year there may be more. It is a gargantuan task. But one of the bonuses of the job –– aside from working alongside friendly people who share a common love of books –– is the element of surprise each box of books holds.

 “You never know what you’ll find,” said 11-year veteran volunteer Susan Shaw on Monday.

And she is not just talking about the books themselves or the words printed on their pages.

Wedding Photos, Money, Stamps, Postcards

Ms Shaw and her co-workers keep bins by their work area where they toss all the random artifacts that are found during unpacking and sorting of donated books. The boxes are labeled “Photographs,” “Postcards,” and “Bookmarks.”

A bin marked “Other” might contain anything from children’s toys to recipes to legal papers to baseball cards.

“I always give the books a little shake to see what might fall out,” Ms Shaw said, adding she wishes donors would check their books and cartons before bringing them in.

But of course, no one has time for that.

“We know they’re just grabbing things off the shelves,” she added.

A sampling found items discovered, so far, include an actual divorce decree, a death certificate, a packet of 15-cent stamps with Buffalo Bill Cody printed in green ink, a gold-plated plaque engraved “Holly Drorbaugh, M.V.P., B.H.S., 1979–1980,” an eight-inch by ten-inch group photo of the Command Defense School taken August 9, 1954, a Peewee Reese baseball card, and an early 20th Century wedding photograph by Sol Young, inscribed “with love, Natalie.”

Postcards get slipped between the book covers, and most of them are not written on. They come from every era and locale. There is the 1964–65 New York World’s Fair, The Old Man of the Mountains at Franconia, N.H., photographed before his nose fell off, a 1958 black-and-white photo of Sputnik, an advertisement for a $16 single room at the Applejack Inn in Aspen, Colo., and scenes from the Gettysburg cyclorama showing Major General Hancock fighting at Little Round Top.

One of the most touching finds was a cache of penny-postcards written in early August 1949 to Mr and Mrs Ince of Garden City, N.J. Presumably, they were sent by their daughter Judy, who must have been away at camp in New Hampshire.

The messages written in careful cursive were as follows: Dear Mom and Dad, I am having a lot of fun at New Castle. I swam a 100 yards over my head. Love, Judy; Dear Mom and Dad, Did you get the other post card from me? I’m so glad I swam a 100 yards. Love, Judy; Dear Mom and Dad, How is Poky? Have you been feeding him? Did you have fun up in Connecticut? Love, Judy.

It seems hard to imagine that Judy is now in her mid-60s, and Poky is only a fond memory.

Newtown’s History Yields Treasures

On Monday, Library Collections Curator Carolyn Stokes, who was sorting books in the antiques, architecture, and local interest categories, found nearly a pound’s worth of paper artifacts inside their pages –– and that was just one day’s worth.

“It’s incredible. I’d toss them usually, but some are so interesting,” she commented.

She also mentioned the many inscriptions written inside the front covers.

“They reflect the givers’ love and interest in books…the comments reveal very thoughtful hopes of pleasure the recipients will get,” she noted.

Usually, Mrs Stokes does not keep a record or try to remember the titles of books where items are found. But she could not forget the source of two of this year’s most interesting discoveries: a pure silk bookmark commemorating the 1841 death of the ninth President of the United States, William Harrison, and a packet of clipped fashion photos from a 1957 Family Circle Magazine article using Newtown landmarks as background for the photo shoot.

The items were found in a donated copy of Ezra Johnson’s bound volume titled Newtown’s History, published in 1917. The fashion clippings and the old bookmark were found pressed between its pages.

“There were only a limited number published,” Mrs Stokes said, “but old books have a way of coming home to roost.”

She figured someone with an interest in Newtown’s past had put the clippings inside Johnson’s book for safe keeping, and then totally forgot they were there.