This was a toughie. The Sepia Saturday theme this week is a drawing, not a photo, so it poses a bit of a challenge, but if I take it as a drawing or doodle, I actually have something that works! Grandpa Leon Kitko was quite the doodler, and in his sophomore year in high school at Beccaria Township High School (BTHS, which merged to become Beccaria-Coalport-Irvona high school after his sophomore year), he had a bunch of doodles of coal mining machinery. Having been fascinated with machines and how they work his whole life, and growing up surrounded by them in the coal mining country of central Pennsylvania, it’s no wonder he took to drawing them in his notebook. From a D-8 Caterpillar bulldozer, work truck, to a Bay City coal shovel, he covered the more commonly seen pieces of equipment. The work truck is even labelled, “George B Lynch, General Cont, Wil, Del,” presumably, Wilmington, Delaware. I don’t know of anyone by the name George Lynch who was friendly with the family, but he apparently saw the truck often enough to commit the name to memory.
There are some other things still in the notebook other than blank paper – there’s an assignment for English II dated May 25 and May 10 of 1949, so I have to imagine these doodles date to about the same time. There’s also what looks to be a final exam schedule along with room numbers, dates, and times. There’s a page with two addresses that don’t seem to correspond to any family members. It’s interesting though to see what he jotted down and left behind in the old notebook and it makes me wonder if there’s some old notebook of mine out in a box in the garage with odd notes and addresses scribbled inside! My high school friends and I had a habit of stealing eachothers books and writing weird notes and sayings all over the school-required brown paper cover, and I’m not sure I can even remember what they were about at this point. I’d have to imagine that even if Leon was still alive, he might not be able to explain addresses from over 50 years ago! One last image as this Sepia Saturday draws to a close, the cover of the tablet including his name, school and grade.
How wonderful you have your grandfather’s notebook with those drawings. He was a pretty good sketch artist. Do you know if he continued to draw & doodle throughout his life? When I inherited a scrapbook of my father’s from his school days, I was surprised to find not only sketches, but water color paintings (two of which now hang, framed, in our living room) along with a project regarding mythology where he clipped appropriate pictures out of magazines & etc. & pasted them into the scrapbook. It’s a true treasure, as is your grandfather’s tablet to you. We are so lucky to have them!
I like looking at old drawings in letters and notebooks. Nice.
Those are interesting doodles. I never thought about kids in different regions doodling different things.
A great choice for this weekend’s theme. My father was also a doodler in school and left many similar notebook drawings, but in his case they were of fantastic tanks and military equipment that was inspired I think by the old Popular Mechanics magazine.
Your Grandpa was quite an artist. Lucky to have kept his notebooks and drawings like that.
Perfect! You can learn a lot about your grandfather from those doodles and notes.