It was an ordinary day. Cleaning the drawers of my old worn wooden desk with the glass top that I have had in my office on Harrington Drive since I brought it home after retiring from teaching and asking my principal if I would be allowed to keep my desk. He did have to correct me and remind me that it had once been used by Mr. George Ehemann who had hired me to be a teacher at Manheim Township High School and gave it to me after he retired from teaching in my 6th year at the school. Anyway, he said I could have it, "but just don't let anyone see you take it out of the building." No Problem! The desk is made of oak with three drawers running down the right side that have mortise and tenon joints and one long drawer where the chair fits under it. Oh yeah, there is an oak board that can be pulled out and used to write on should the entire top of the desk be covered with debris. And, I must admit, I use that board quite frequently. Well, as I cleaned out the three side drawers, I found two really neat magazines hidden under just about everything. One was an October 1998 issue of Vette Magazine that featured a photo of me with my '87 Vette and a story titled "Me and My Vette." Pretty neat so I bought a few extra copies and this must be the last one that I have left. The other magazine was the 60th Anniversary copy of Life Magazine. Has to be a collector's item and maybe someday I'll put it on EBay and see what it will bring. Anyway, I went through the magazine and found that they had printed every cover in this issue that they had ever printed. 2,128 covers had been printed since the inception of the magazine on November 23, 1936. Had the familiar red rectangular block in the upper left hand corner. Price of the magazine: 10 Cents. Life was a month old when Britain's archbishop overstepped the red border on the bottom of the magazine. That red border was deleted only once in the next 25 years (12/27/37), otherwise it remained sacrosanct. After a few years they could probably could delete the word LIFE from the red block and people would still know what magazine they were viewing. Each one of the forty 9"x11" pages in the rear of the magazine featured a year's covers on it. I naturally drifted toward the year I was born and checked out all the covers to see what had happened during that year. Really brought back memories for me. I'd love to be able to post whatever year you wanted me to, but that's not going to happen, so I'll give you a chance to see what life and history was like in my birth year, 1944. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy. PS - Remember you can click on the image to enlarge it.
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