Finds - The Mystery of the Ivory Charm

I have bought things other than language books. There are a number of interesting books that end up at the library book sale. One of them was this copy of the 13th book from the Nancy Drew series, The Mystery of the Ivory Charm by Carolyn Keene, first published in 1936.

I bought it for...a dollar? I think? The librarian I paid down at the circulation desk was always really weird toward me, acting like I was suspicious whenever I bought something and I remember she actually went and checked with another librarian to make sure that really was the price. There are the shelves where you pay by type of book and then another section where the books have price stickers because they are more valuable. I think she thought I'd taken the sticker off to get it at the normal hardback fiction price. I am so glad she no longer works there. I don't know what I did to make her think I was some sort of cheat.
Anyway. The initials of whoever owned it were S.A.

Well, not actually by Carolyn Keene. These adolescent book series were ghostwritten by a number of different people, apparently, and this one was penned by Mildred Wirt Benson. It's 216 pages and 19cm x 13cm. There's a picture endpaper and one picture at the start of the book.

The illustrations were done by Russell H. Tandy and the original edition had more and in color from what I've found. This particular copy must have been printed in about 1954 or so because there is a list of other books in the series and one for the Dana Girls Mystery Stories and both of the last books listed were published in 1953. The dust jacket did not come with the book.

It was sold at The Book Shop in Fitchburg, MA.

It appears to have been at 536 Main St. and opened in 1952 by a man named Alexander Krysil and run until his death in 2014. Here's a link to a picture of their window display in the 1958 Billboard.

I have never read a Nancy Drew book in my life.

A few preliminary pictures

Most everything's dried out now. I'm going to try and record what's there maybe over the weekend but I took a few pictures now just for the heck of it.

The girl with the bob is probably my grandmother and the teenager with the curls is most likely my great-grandmother.

Apparently the autism awareness symbol is a puzzle piece. Consider me informed.

Here's my great-grandmother.

I have a new computer at work; I am thrilled. I spent most of today (re)familiarizing myself with various databases and search engines and writing tutorials about how to use them. I need to write search strategies and reading comprehension sheets as well. I was glad of the air-conditioning today. The other building is having problems with the A/C and the heat outside was like a second skin. I got in my car at lunch time and the dashboard thermometer read 107. I need to remember to put my driving gloves back in the car so I can steer better and more easily handle the car key now that it's summer.

My parents drove to our poor flooded and stripped house over the weekend to save as many wet things as possible. My grandmother's year books and fairy tale books are gone but I was expecting that. So they brought me back a plastic bin of soaked things. While you don't want to store old paper in plastic (the fumes given off by old paper products would hasten their deterioration), it kept the moisture in long enough to allow me to separate a lot of pages. It's much harder if not impossible to peel apart dry paper. A number of photos are gone, stuck together with their own chemicals, but other photos remain along with a number of newspapers and correspondence.

There are a few papers dealing with the Hindenburg disaster. My grandparents were just parking the car to go watch it land when they saw it explode. One paper deals with conspiracy plots about sabotage. I think Bolsheviks were involved, I haven't gotten a chance to look closely.

There are a couple announcing the death of President McKinley. I'm drying one of those out now.

There are a lot of invitations to my great-grandfather to go to various events. He was chief clerk to the secretary of state of New Jersey during the 20's, 30's and 40's. Now the title is assistant secretary. There are a number of photographs of him working in his office. They must have had an official photographer. He always looks like he's been surprised at work but they had to have set those shots up.

There must be an entire ream of paper dedicated to my great-grandmother's high school graduation, including her last report card (she was an excellent speller and did quite well in rhetoric) and a poem she composed on a typewriter to commemorate the event.

There are several booklets on weird subjects. "The Germany of Asia" written around 1917 about Japan. "The Hole in the Hauptmann Case" about the man convicted in the Lindbergh baby case. I'm still drying that out but I think Bolsheviks are involved in that also. There's one on the German-Bolshevik connection written around WWI as well. There's Masonic Temple stuff but that's not surprising as my great-grandfather was a Mason.

Once everything is dried out I'll start taking photos.

I'm reading Treasure Island because I wanted an adventure book and I remember enjoying it as a kid.