Publisher’s Porch: Until enough Wednesdays pass

I have reached the age where I apparently own boxes of things whose primary purpose is to make absolutely no sense to whoever eventually has to clean out my house.

Old pictures. Newspaper clippings. Programs from events I barely remember. Things my kids made when they were little. Ticket stubs. Pieces of paper that probably should have been thrown away years ago.

And yet, I keep them.

I’ve been thinking about that lately, probably because I’ve spent more time than usual looking backward over the last couple of months. Going through old pictures and memories has a way of reminding you how much of our lives is made up of things that seemed completely ordinary at the time.

Which might explain why one of my favorite parts of the Expositor is also, as far as I can tell, one of yours.

Peeking in the Past.

Every week, we reach back into old editions of the Expositor and pull out little pieces of Yale’s history. And judging by the comments I hear, the conversations it starts, and the number of people who tell us they read it every week, I’m pretty sure we could eliminate half the newspaper before you’d let us get rid of that section. (Don’t worry, we don’t have plans to do either of those things!)

I understand why.

Most of what’s in those old newspapers wasn’t history when somebody wrote it.

It was just Wednesday.

A new business opened. Somebody got married. The school board met. A team won a game. A family came to town. Somebody celebrated an anniversary. Kids did something worth putting their picture in the paper.

None of it probably seemed particularly historic.

Until enough Wednesdays passed.

That’s also one of the things I’ve come to appreciate most about community newspapers.

We’re filling the boxes someone will open years from now, and sometimes lining a playpen for a litter of new puppies.

Both are important public services.

But here’s what I like about the stuff we keep: we almost never know we’re keeping history when it happens.

Today, it’s a team picture, a wedding announcement, a new business opening, or a kid whose name made the paper for the first time. It’s a story you read, fold up, and set on the kitchen counter.

Nothing historic about it.

It’s just somebody’s Wednesday.

But Wednesdays have a way of piling up. Kids grow up. Businesses change hands. People we love aren’t here anymore. And suddenly that ordinary picture or three-paragraph story means a whole lot more than it did when the ink was fresh.

That’s why I love Peeking in the Past. It’s not really about looking at old newspapers. It’s about being reminded that the ordinary days we’re living right now are the ones we’ll someday wish we could peek back into. 

Peeking and I will see you right back here next week.