Editors: Mary Slayter, Jeanette Dickson, Roy Childers
Softcover
62 pages
 
Book description
Most of us enjoy taking pictures, saving special letters and newspaper clipings, holding family and school reunions. Such activities someohow seem instinctively satisfying. This book stems from the same kind of impulse that impels individuals to keep family albums-- a need for a sense of continuity-- a desire to know more about the people and events that preceded us.
 
How did the people of this community work together, help eachother, and provide entertainment for themselves in teh early 1900s? Rogue Community College students attempted to find answers to these questions by interviewing oldtimers in the area. Townspeople sent in newspapers, pictures and books; several people in the community called or wrote to suggest individuals to interview. Because of the cooperation and involvement of so many people in the community, it seemed appropriaate that the book should ultimately take the form of a community scrapbook.
 
The selection and organization of material follows a typically random, scrapbook pattern. Students arranged their own interverviews with people they knew (or with anyone they could catch who seemed to be a likely prospect). No attempt was made to focus only on noteable public figures; the working theory was that anyone who had been around for a while would have some stories to tell-- and we wanted to hear them. We were not searching for hard historical data; we were trying to capture something of the flavor of life earlier in this century. Students checked published documents to verify information, but the top-most concern was to preserve first-hand accounts of former struggles and triumphs of every-day life in Josephine County.