The other day, a friend of mine handed me an old school notebook, seven inches by eight, paper cover torn, and pages yellowed.
“You write almanacs,” she said. “You might be interested in this.”
It was a journal by the late A. Z. Kiser from Springfield, Ohio. His record contained notations in pencil for every day between September 1950 and December 1952, and it included temperatures, barometric highs and lows, and a general description of each day as “fine, “ “cold and wet,” “hottest yet,” and so forth.
When conditions were a little unusual, Kiser added a few words to his observations. The 19th of November in 1950 had the “first snow to cover the ground.” Six days later: “a blizzard – 24 inches of snow – stopped the busses. No cars moving, city emergency declared, no one allowed up town.”
Kiser kept his fishing diary in the journal, too: September 6, 1950 : “no keepers.” September 9th, 1950: “two keepers.”
He also mentioned baseball and football scores, like on October 3, 1950: “New York 1, Philadelphia 0.” On January 1st, 1952, he “saw picture on TV of Rose Bowl game for the fist time. Michigan 40, Stanford 7.”
Kiser wrote down other incidents without placing any particular emphasis on one kind of event or the other. For example, on February 22nd, 1951, he “planted a pot of glads in the cellar.” The next day: “Frank died.” Four days later: “Seen first two robins in the yard this year.” May 3rd, 1951: “Best mushroom year I ever heard of.” Late that summer, on August 1st: “Great grandson was born today.” The next entry: September 4th: “First paw-paw of season.”
In November of 1951, these three entries: November 8th: “Eleanor went to work, fainted and died before she reached the hospital.” November 12th: “Eleanor’s funeral today at 10:30 a.m.” November 15th: “I got one rabbit. H. (Kiser’s friend) got two pheasant, one rabbit.”
He collected “almost three quarts of night crawlers” on the 29th of March, 1952. On April 16th, he “had first rhubarb and got 81 mushrooms.” On the 20th of that year, he “got run out of woods” (I assume he was trespassing in search of mushrooms). On the 21st: “Caught the largest rainbow trout I ever seen, 2 lbs 10 ounces.” On the 27th: “Over 100 people here for 50th wedding anniversary.”
The election of 1952 went like this: July 11th: “Ike was nominated on first ballot, and Nixon was nominated by acclamation for vice president.” July 28th: “Went with Bill to hunt groundhogs. Saw 3, got none.” August 15th: “Got about 60 night crawlers.” September 2: “Mary made five quarts grape juice and five glasses of jelly.” October 9th: “Put up the stove today.” October 17th: “Dug glads today.” November 11th: “Ike just cleared the way to White House at 12 midnight.”
Now maybe A.Z. was a man of few words, and maybe he really knew which things mattered and which things didn’t. Or maybe the notes were arbitrary and had nothing to do with his values. Or maybe his daybook told it all, put things into a kind of lineal perspective. I ask myself: Was Ike’s election as meaningful to Kiser as the gathering of worms? Were Eleanor and Frank’s funerals of more consequence than hunting groundhogs? Was the 50th wedding anniversary more significant than putting up the stove?
The journal doesn’t say. Kiser was even handed. He left no clues. All his entries seem to be made with equal pressure on the pencil, and their style is as lean as their content. The reader is left to wonder if, in the light of backyard history, deaths, births, elections, and anniversaries are more important than the weather, baseball and fishing. Or if they aren’t.