Author Description

Alma Caldwell's informative diary gives the teenagers prospective in a detailed view into 1913 and 1914. It starts in the summer of 1913 when activities for young people, due to the warm weather, were abundant, reluctantly chronicles her return to high school for a junior year, hurdles thru the heartbreak of a chilling winter, and rockets full blast into the spring and early summer of 1914. The manuscripts first chapter introduces who Alma and her new boyfriend Emmet Thornton were and the manuscript ends with how their lives played out. In between is the first person look at the times through Alma's experiences as a junior in high school. Added to her words are articles from two newspapers, which covered the two Northeast Texas towns she frequented, Sulphur Spring and Commerce. The Sulphur Springs Gazette (1862-1928) and The Commerce Journal (1891-present) publications increase the account of events she witnessed, both good and bad. Finally, she kept a notebook of magazine clippings during the time of the diary illustrating special moments in her life. This is a teenager taking a pencil and writing of love, disappointment, secrets never to be revealed and joy in an age compared to the present in terms of a young person's changing social life. Ours is computers, Twitter, and Face Book while hers were silent movies churned out like never before, Model T Fords that were being subject to new laws, frequent passenger train rides, and the heartbeat of American entertainment, seen under a tent and not on TV, named the Chautauqua and Lyceum Courses.